Glob-a-log

Now, this made me laugh out loud:

“The researchers concluded that modern teenagers work less hard and are generally less competent than their parents at the same age. They are just a great deal more pleased with themselves.”

No real surprises there, of course. So, negative parenting has (in the case of baby-boom parents in the US) turned into all-out positive reinforcement parenting. Which comes with the dubious side-effect that now a whole generation thinks they are little Einsteins, Picassos, Jimi Hendrixes etcetera – without doing any of the work that’s necessary to achieve excellence in anything.

Well, apart from the harmful side-effects of lying to your children about both their talents and their achievements, it is also total bullshit to tell each child, continuously, that each thing he or she does is a work of brilliance and proof of genius.

You don’t do your child, who is, let’s say, into sports, any long time favours by constantly suggesting that he or she will be an Olympic champion. There are millions and millions of other kids who play sports. Guess how many of them won’t win any gold medals?

It is, of course, good to stimulate and encourage children but true excellence has always been and will always be the exception. To suggest otherwise is misleading and ultimately cruel and even harmful to the child.

So, as always, this research proves that humans have a hard time finding any kind of sane balance in things. Obviously, it is bad for a child to be told constantly that it is a no good loser that will never be successful at anything it will ever attempt to do. Some children might be stubborn and talented enough to overcome (and actually benefit from) such constant negativity but most will not.

Same with being too positive. For some, no doubt, this will prove to be beneficent. For the majority though, as this research revealed, it will have long term harmful effects. It replaces persistence with complacency, and aspiration with a sense of entitlement.

It is a scary thought, though: That the Baby Boom generation, which, as a species, can be so incredibly smug itself, has managed to raise a whole generation which will become even more unbearable than their parents ever were.

Think about the fame ‘culture’ we are enjoying now and multiply that with some unmentionable X Factor. In other words, remember Orwell and 1984? How the interrogator said, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – - for ever”.

Well, I suppose that will be our fate, now – to get stamped on our collective face forever, by the pink boots of some future, frightful horde of Paris Hiltons.

Now, I’m sure all of you have heard more than enough about the break-up of the Madonna marriage – and this is not another rehashing of that story.

It’s just that, whenever you read about yet another celebrity marriage ending up looking like something (no longer) made in Detroit, you can’t help but wonder why these people ever bother to get hitched. To stick with the economic theme, celebrities and their vows are like all those subprime loans: made in ridiculous haste, in the heat of some greedy moment, and repented & paid for at leisure.

It’s not even hard to see why almost none of these relationships ever last. Celebs only seem to date other celebs – and you don’t need to be a gossip columnist to be able to predict what will happen when two monstrously vain narcissists decide that their coming together would make for good pictures in the world’s tabloids.

In other words, your average celebrity marriage is a bit like locking two mad pitbulls inside one luxury hotel suite, where thousands of assorted pimps and paparazzi throw raw meat at them and command the animals to smile at the cameras, while they tear into each other.

Anyway, why am I even bothering talking about these stupid celebrities? Well, because there are lessons to be learned here for ‘normal’ people as well. The most important one being that if you don’t want your marriage to end up looking like yet another Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae affair, you better avoid dating the wrong kind of people – which very long and rambling introduction brings us to the meat of today’s column, to wit: Eight types of Freddies & Fannies who should never, ever date each other.

N.B.: We are not talking about the intrinsic date worthiness of individuals but about combinations between incompatible units. So, a hopeless racist will probably do okay with another racist. It’s just that an Illinois Nazi should avoid dating Jake (or Elwood) Blues.

1) If you’re an average Freddie who likes his Bud with his red meat, and his Bluegrass with his Red Socks, you should not date any Fannie who’s into crystals, Oprah, tofu and whale song recordings.

(This Freddie & Fannie combination might look like ‘Young Brando meets Marilyn Monroe’ but when they are done with each other Freddie will look like Rocky after yet another lost fight and Fannie like Thelma (or Louise) after the car has landed.)

2) If you are a Freddie who still dreams of playing in a band, smokes pot and has read the Lord of the Rings, at least once a year, for the last fifteen years, you should never date a Fanny who is into triathlons, works in a General Attorney’s office and loves the smell of BlackBerries in the morning

(This particular F & F team may seem like a cute, reversed Dharma and Greg comedy at first sight – but within one season they will become as lovable and loving as Al and Peg Bundy.)

3) If you are a Fannie who likes to read poetry, listens to Chopin, makes Origami figures and dreams of going to see the Bolshoi ballet in Russia, one day, you should not date a Freddie, who loves his pick up truck, has had a Playboy subscription for 25 years and can’t wait till the hunting season starts again.

(This set of Freddies and Fannies, whose eyes met across a crowded room, may sound like Springsteen’s “Jersey Girl”, for a few and feverish first minutes but will soon become like wounded Vietnam soldiers, waiting for the sound of medical helicopters but only hearing the Hellish soundtrack of their own Apocalypse Now.)

4) If you are one of those optimistic Fannies, who will feed the birds before doing the dishes, who loves to dance in her bathrobe, while smoking the first cigarette of the day, and who walks and plays with the dogs so long that the turkey has turned to dust in the oven, you should not date a Freddie who sets his 1000 dollar watch each day to the atomic clock, who prefers to iron his own shirts and who has never forgotten one single misdeed by any of his High School students, ever since he started teaching mathematics (12 years, three months, one week and four days ago.)

(This non-matching set of F & F’s may, at first glance, seem to be the non-royal version of last century’s Match In Heaven, the marriage of Prince Charles and lady Diana but it is, in fact… Well, in fact, it will, no doubt, end like that marriage as well, but probably a lot sooner, and a bit closer to home than Paris. )

(Virgin: Much more than simply an airline)

The most perfect chat up line I ever heard comes from a truly terrible pop song by the Bellamy Brothers. It goes, “If I said you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me.”

Mind you, I very much doubt that it would work in real life but then I have to admit that I don’t believe in chat up lines at all – that is, I don’t believe that they ever work.

Okay, in a way they do work. Bad chat up lines do, I mean. You may never be able to get anyone to sleep with you on the strength of a good opening line but that old Head and Shoulders dictum that “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” works its magic every time, in the sense that a bad first line can blow your chances forever.

In other words, if you insist on putting your trust in the chat up fairy, remember that loose lips can do more than sink ships. They can seriously bugger up your sex life as well.

So, whatever you do, and whenever you try desperately to come up with something clever to say to the woman you want to chat up, don’t go for any of the following lines:

1) The only good feminist is a fucking feminist

2) The name is Bundy, Ted Bundy

3) You won’t believe what happened to me today at the clap clinic

4) If you don’t blow, we’re going Dutch

5) You’re not one of my wife’s stupid friends, I hope

6) Do you like bangers or banging for breakfast?

7) Hey, you know I saw that dress on eBay for two dollar?

8) Hi, my name is Colin and I’m a sex addict

9) I know a good dentist

10) Foreplay is for fucking wankers

(Something’s really bugging me…)

There’s that old comforting lie that women have been telling their male partners forever. You know the one: That size doesn’t matter.

Well, at times it does, at times it doesn’t, I suppose – but I was thinking of size when I read the story about the latest entrance in the Collins dictionary, which made me reflect on another story that made the news, at the start of this year.

First, that much older story:

They included some of the largest and most powerful creatures to ever roam the earth, but the downfall of the dinosaurs may be attributable to nothing more fearsome than the humble biting insect. Disease spread by mosquitoes, ticks and mites could have been a major factor in the demise of the ancient reptiles, according to a new theory.

Talk about a David and Goliath scenario – and a highly embarrassing way to go, if you’re a dinosaur.

I mean, when you have the street cred that comes with a name like ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex’, it’s more or less okay to be killed in a drive by meteor incident. Getting wiped out by a gnat is not really good for any decent monster’s rep.

Anyway, so, yes, size does matter, occasionally. Not that small always equals embarrassment, in bed or in Bedrock. No, small can also be beautiful, joyful and absolutely spot on, as the following story shows:

“Meh” started out in the US and Canada as an interjection signifying mediocrity or indifference and has evolved, via the internet and an episode of The Simpsons, into a common adjective meaning boring, apathetic or unimpressive in British English. The word was chosen over hundreds of others nominated by the public for inclusion in the 30th anniversary edition of the Collins English dictionary, to be published next year.

I know it’s not really cool to express a deep love for a word that has been overused, from time to time. Familiarity breeds contempt – or so they say. Still, I think it’s such a perfect little word and I’m very happy it has made it into one of the respectable dictionaries.

I love dictionaries. They’re full of the very mundane, day to day vocabulary we use without ever really noticing but there are also all those quaint old words that no-one really uses anymore.

Dictionaries are like those second hand stores, where useless but sometimes mysterious looking old tat sits next to cardboard boxes, filled with ugly cutlery and where old, moulding paperbacks no-one will ever open again are vying for space with discarded, old ladies’ underwear, all sorts of dodgy but colourful costume jewelry and the occasional true gem.

Like ‘meh’.

So, yes, here’s the list of the top 10, most naked and most desirable celebrities. We’ll show you who – and we’ll tell you why they made it on our list

1) Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes fame

Pros:
a) He’s got a great fantasy life
b) He’s (always) going places
c) He’s single

Cons:
a) He still lives with his parents
b) He’s got this strange doll fetish

2) Flipper, a true TV celebrity

Pros:
a) He’s smooth to the point of slick
b) He’s got a lovely smile
c) He follows instructions

Con:
a) He comes with this really annoying, red-haired kid

3) Wile E. Coyote, fastest villain in the West

Pros:
a) He’s tenacious
b) He’s inventive
c) He’s optimistic

Cons:
a) He gets blown up quite a bit
b) He will ruin your no claim record

4) Taz, the original handsome Devil

Pros:
a) He’s very cuddly
b) He has great moves
c) Your mother will hate him

Cons:
a) He’s quite insane
b) He doesn’t shave

5) Tinkerbell, most famous celebrity prop

Pros:
a) He is already house-broken
b) It’s easy to take him places
c) He won’t be all over you, at once

Cons:
a) He has terrible dress sense
b) He’s used to a high maintenance life style
c) He has very annoying friends

6) Garfield, the original mister cool

Pros:
a) He knows what he wants
b) He can express his emotions
c) He has simple tastes

Cons:
a) He’s quite egocentric
b) He’ s incredibly narcissistic
c) Instead of green fingers he has green teeth

7) The Pink Panther, the ultimate polished diamond

Pros:
a) He’s hip
b) He likes to live the good life
c) He loves travelling

Cons:
a) He’s quite stupid
b) He is pink

8) Tweetie Pie, the archetypal bird next door

Pros:
a) He’s cute
b) He’s a good singer
c) He is very easy maintenance

Con:
a) He’s a real pussy fiend

9) Dino, now there’s a pet

Pros:
a) He’s loyal
b) He loves hugging
c) He is enthusiastic

Cons:
a) He’s a bit messy
b) He is extinct

10) Grover, pure doll

Pros)
1) He’s good with children
2) He’s easy to manipulate
3) He won’t walk out on you

Cons:
1) He’s clingy as a glove
2) He’s got a lot of very weird friends

(Compassionate Christianity)

Sometimes, it’s hard to feel anything but despair when you read the words of all those well-meaning but woolly-thinking believers:

The practice of compassion is central to every one of the major world religions – but sometimes you would never know it. Instead, religion is associated with violence, intolerance and seems more preoccupied by dogmatic or sexual orthodoxy.

Or, as they say in less academic circles: Duh.

The reason that religion is associated with violence, intolerance etcetera is because that has been the staple food that the main organized religions, from their very conception, have been force-feeding to the various populations they ’serve’.

The idea that compassion – let alone the practice of same – is central to these world religions is absurd, to the point of becoming obscene.

These religions are all about exclusivity – and the exclusion of the ‘other’. They all deal in various forms of ‘cake later’ promises to the faithful, following the old carrot and stick approach of, “Be good or else.”

As the Good Book says, ‘For the wages of sin is death.’

Far from offering compassion, there are uncompromising rules to follow, a jealous God to fear and corrupt church leaders who demand the devotion, respect and total obedience of their flock.

(Compassionate Judaism)

That’s just for starters, of course: Simply the dos and don’ts for internal use. For if these religions are not all that compassionate to straying members, they reserve their worst examples of intolerance and their total loathing for the ‘other’: the heretics, apostates and heathens.

Because all these monotheistic religions come with an Adversary, a Satan – and those who are not of the select belong to the Devil’s realm. So, there’s God and there’s Satan; the sheep and the goats; Heaven and Hell. In other words, the old sadistic dualism, designed to breed fear, intolerance & oppression.

Despite all the post-Sixties bleating of the ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ generation of Christians, moderate Muslims and liberal Jews, nothing has changed about the core of their holy books, or the structure of their organizations.

As I said, exclusivity and exclusion are much more basic to organized religion than a compassion that’s never been more than a few sentimental tunes to accompany the centuries’ old sermons of these blood-drenched churches & their jealous God, in order to make the latter a bit more palatable to their captive audiences.

(Compassionate Islam)

(Click on pic for transsubstantiation)

Of course, by now you will have heard that the country of Peru has offered president elect Barack Obama the use and pleasure of a Peruvian hairless dog. I will deal with the whole First Pet business later – but, if you allow me, I will, at first, digress a bit.

So, I read this piece in the Washington Post, in which Eugene Robinson explained why comedians have no reason to love Obama. The introduction went like this:

Barack Obama’s election victory may have been good for the country, but it’s been awful for comedians. Just ask poor Don Rickles. He was absolutely killing the audience on David Letterman’s show the other night with his trademark scorched-earth put-downs. Rickles seemed at the top of his game — until he tried to tell a joke about the new president-elect. Not even a well-timed rimshot from the band could have saved him.

Robinson is quite right, of course. Unlike the World Wide Sewer, a.k.a. the Internet, the mainstream media and their uncrowned kings, the comedians and cartoonists, will have trouble finding the right tone to deal with a first black president.

Take cartoonists – and take the last two presidents. George Bush was regularly depicted as an extremely dumb zealot. That worked, because he was a born again Christian. If he’d been a Muslim, those jokes would not have been made as casually and as cruelly. Same with the jokes about his rich friends and backers and his love of oil. Again, quite okay to draw those cartoons when the subject is a WASP – but if he’d been Jewish? I think not.

Think about Clinton, forever being portrayed in cartoons as a fat and slothful oaf, a greedy and slightly dim buffoon. Would that have happened if Clinton truly would have been, as Toni Morrison so famously put it, the first black American president? Again, I rather doubt it.

Comedians and cartoonists, working in the more polite sections of the newspaper and entertainment industry, will have to be a bit more careful, a bit less lazy too, when it comes to making fun of the 44th president – and here, I think, president elect Barack Obama could reach out to these fine professionals and lend them a helping hand.

He still has not decided on a First Pet, to bring to the White House. Since one of his daughters seems to suffer from the kind of allergy that makes finding the right type of dog a bit of a problem, maybe the Obamas should forget about yet another First Canine. Same for a First Felix. Like dogs, cats have been done before.

I’m not saying dogs or cats would not make perfect pets – well, I would say that about those stupid, slobbering, sycophantic stick-chasers, of course but not about cats – but they do make for quite predictable cartoons.

So, if Obama wants to be the comedians’ & cartoonists’ president as well, he should pick a pet that would make their work a little bit easier, especially during these first, transitory months.

Obviously, it should look both cuddly and cool. The president’s young daughters must love it, his wife must be able to tolerate it and the Man himself must feel comfortable enough with it to pose with the pet in front of the world’s cameras.

Me, I know what kind of animal I would take if I were Obama. It would be the perfect choice for this historic occasion and, in a slightly weird but engaging way, both a very hip and a relaxed choice of First Pet for the first biracial president – and how the press, and especially the comedians and cartoonists, would love it when Obama presented the world with the First Guinea Pig.

I bet that the worldwide joy generated by the collective, democratic process of finding the perfect name for it, would take all people’s minds off the worldwide economic crisis for long enough to send it off in a sulk. Which wouldn’t be a bad first trick for the first First Family’s Guinea Pig.

(BAT: Buying A Toupee…)

I just noticed that there’s another one of those fluff pieces in The Times, titled, “Top 10 beards from Karl Marx to ZZ Top”.

As top 10 lists go, this one didn’t really do it for me but you can understand why people write these things, from time to time. Some days, you just can’t be bothered with reporting or reflecting on the usual news stories and then it’s nice to fall back on the old routines. Like:

1) Cat columns
2) Celeb stories or a
3) Top 10 of this, that or the other

I’ve done all of those myself, often enough. In fact, the moment I finish this sentence, I will do another top 10, right here, as today’s column.

(Inserting a pause here, to give me time to make another pot of tea and think of a suitable Top 10 subject… BRB, as they say in the post-literate texting community.)

Right, so, here we go. My own top 10 of freshly minted acronyms:

1) ABBA: Abortion By Bloody Amateurs

2) BATMAN: Buying A Toupee Makes Anyone Nervous

3) BUSH: Buy Used Shit Here

4) IRAQ: Interesting Ruins And Quagmires

5) JAWS: Japanese Astrologists Worship Santa

6) KORAN: Kamikaze Oprah Revellers Anger Neighbourhood

7) NATO: Not Afraid To Overreach

8) OBAMA: Official Black American Muslim Association

9) PALIN: Parading A Leper In Nylons

10) PARIS (HILTON): Paranoid Apes Revolt in Senate (Hillary Is Likely To Outfox Newt)

(Mountstuart Elphinstone)

“We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood,” the old man said. “But we will never be content with a master.”

That was an Afghan tribal elder speaking, 200 years ago, to the first British diplomat to be sent to that country, Mountstuart Elphinstone.

The above quote comes from an excellent article in the Times, by Ben Macintyre. Go read the whole of it when you’re done here.

Another quote; this time the words of Elphinstone himself:

“Afghanistan, he wrote, could be understood only through its kaleidoscopic tribal structures. “The societies into which the nation is divided possess within themselves a principle of repulsion and disunion too strong to be overcome,” he noted. When the British marched into Afghanistan to bring about regime-change a few years later, Elphinstone, now in retirement, advised that the venture was hopeless. Sure enough, in 1842, 16,000 British soldiers and camp-followers were slaughtered during the retreat from Kabul, the worst military disaster the Raj had suffered.”

As they say, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…”

You know how some women keep picking the same type of abusive partners – and how this very vicious cycle can only be broken after these women come to terms with whatever happened to them in the past, after all kinds of harsh lessons have been learned.

The same thing seems to happen to humans on a broader scale – on that much larger canvas that we call ‘history’.

Hence, that old cliché about ‘history repeating itself.’

Of course, we really shouldn’t be surprised about this at all – but what should concern us is that we, as a species, seem to be even less inclined to learn from our past than those abused women do, who go for these same type of violent men, and violent messes, time after time after time.

(Getting high on Jesus in every possible way…)

I can’t say that I am a big fan of the “lock-em up and throw away the key” crowd. Prison is not the best cure for all of society’s crimes – and ills; and I would argue that most drugs crimes fall under the latter category.

It would be more sensible for countries to deal with the fact that drugs are here to stay. So, legalize all recreational drugs and control drug use instead of trying to combat it. When drugs are illegal, the market is controlled by criminals. Which leads to the sad fact that, bar a few millionaire pop stars and their ilk, every junkie needs to steal to feed his or her habit.

Legalizing drugs would not solve all of our societal problems with crime – or, of course, addiction – but official US crime figures show it could cut the figures for burglary alone by almost 40%.

It might also, in the UK, make quite ridiculous stories like the one reported here below a less frequent presence in the ‘weird news’ section of the world’s papers:

A Salvation Army drugs counsellor, who went on a burglary spree to fund his crack cocaine addiction, has avoided prison. David Marks, 47, admitted burgling two homes, stealing two cars and asked for a further 19 burglaries to be taken into consideration.

Judge John Lafferty jailed the drug addict for 65 weeks, but suspended the sentence for two years. The judge told Lafferty, who has 42 previous convictions for 92 house break-ins: “You have been given a chance. If you don’t take this chance, you and I will meet again.”

As I said earlier, throwing junkies into prison isn’t the best way to deal with drugs related crimes. Still, giving someone with 42 convictions for 92 house break-ins a suspended sentence is slightly weird – and more than a bit hypocritical.

If the guy hadn’t been connected to the Salvation Army, he would not have walked, of course. I don’t think many people would doubt that our addict would have been sent to jail if he had professed to be a member of a Satanic cult, instead.

Which is a bit weird. If he had been a Satanist, a life of crime would have been a logical career choice. From drugs induced naked orgies in the woods, to the occasional offering of babies, the sacrificing of domestic animals and virgins: all of that could be seen as ‘All in a day’s work’ for a Satanist – and something a sympathetic judge would take into account before sentencing one of those true believers.

Salvation Army officers, on the other hand, are supposed to follow the strange diktats of Christ, which means that they should treat their bodies as their temple, should refrain from coveting stuff, should give Caesar his due and, of course, should not go breaking into 92 houses to steal money to feed a crack cocaine habit…

So, if you insist on the criminalization of drugs use, and treating junkies like criminals, a Salvation Army officer who becomes one of those unfortunates, should be treated with much greater severity than, for instance, a Satanist. To deliver the supposedly devout from the consequences of their crimes is, as I already stated, not just hypocritical, it’s also illogical.

(Not your average crack addict: Satanism for beginners)