Glob-a-log

Not everybody enjoys reading – reading books I mean. Tabloids, blogs and not-so-witty texts on coffee mugs & toilet walls don’t count. Not (and pardon me for yet another atrocious pun) in my book anyway, it doesn’t.

That’s why people, half-jokingly say, “I will wait for the movie”, when others ask them if they have or will read a certain book.

Now, I wouldn’t wish to come between a non-reader and some lousy movie adaptation but I do prefer books. Not all books. Wild horses or a stable full of nubile virgins could not drag me towards anything written by Dan Brown (but then I would boycot those movies as well, of course.)

Anyway, there are some good movie adaptations of (very good) books. ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, for instance, and ‘The Name of the Rose’. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, of course, and even ‘The Lord of the Rings’.

Religious books and stories, however, don’t translate so well into movies. Most are too respectful, too drab and twee. The Bible has some great stories in it but there really are a Hell of a lot of terrible movies out there, that were inspired by the Book.

‘The Ten Commandments’, for instance, with Charlton Heston or, God help us, that truly dreadful movie, ‘Jesus Christ Superstar.’

Not that the Bible is fun to read as a whole. Most of it is quite boring, in fact – though true believers might find each and every ’smote’ and ‘begat’ endlessly fascinating, of course. As an agnost I can’t really judge that.

Still, when it comes to religion, neither Books nor movies really do it for me.

No, for me, the best medium to discuss (and to truly enjoy) religion is that of the good, old cartoon – like this one…

… or this one…

… though this one ain’t bad either, of course.

And it’s time, time, time…)

Caught between work, the bar and bed, I realize time, this moment, is not a friend. You know how certain people are always waiting for you to fuck up. That’s time, when you’re not very careful: Not so much a fuck buddy as Buddy Holly’s last airplane ride.

Anyway, let’s talk time – and let’s start with Leonard again:

“It’s four in the morning, the end of december
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold, but I like where I’m living
There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

I hear that you’re building your little house deep in the desert
You’re living for nothing now, I hope you’re keeping some kind of record.”

Or, you can say, like Bowie, that

“Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth
You pull on your finger, then another finger, then your cigarette
The wall-to-wall is calling, it lingers, then you forget”

Still, maybe it is better to go with Jim Groce’s

“If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
Till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you”

(It’s only words…?)

I think most people would agree that Shakespeare had a way with words – but it has to be said that he did have a few strange ideas about names.

Take this following quote from Romeo and Juliet:

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet”

Of course, he also wrote the following lines in Hamlet:

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”

Which could be seen as his flowery way of admitting that he was often talking through his hat – or out of his Elizabethan arse, if you want to use a more Falstaffian phrase.

Some people would certainly think this latter quote and, perhaps, confession makes more sense than stating grandly that names don’t matter one fig, or one rose.

Good folks like Justin Case, Barb Dwyer and Stan Still would most definitely disagree with that ‘which we call a rose’ question – insisting, with Gertrude Stein, that a bloody rose is a bloody rose is a bloody rose.

If these people would quote Shakespeare, it would probably be this line from Hamlet:

“Give thy thoughts no tongue.”

Or, in a pinch, improve on that famous sentence, spoken by a rather exasperated Lady Macbeth:

“Out, damn’d sot! out, I say!”

Anyway, enough of the Bard bashing – but here’s why some folks would rather be called by any other name than the one their parents gave them:

What do you call some of the most unlucky people in Britain? Justin Case, Barb Dwyer and Stan Still. It sounds like a bad joke, but a study has revealed that there really are unfortunate people with those names in the UK. Joining them on the list are Terry Bull, Paige Turner, Mary Christmas and Anna Sasin. And just imagine having to introduce yourself to a crowd as Doug Hole or Hazel Nutt. The names were uncovered by researchers from parenting group TheBabyWebsite.com after trawling through online telephone records.

Have you ever noticed how we use words, without really considering their true meaning. I was thinking about just that when I was looking for my keys. Today, after a three-and-a-half months stay in Prague, I will return to Holland, to try and pick up my life again over there. Back to work and all of that. Anyway, I have two sets of keys: One for Prague and one for Holland and I now couldn’t remember where I had put my Dutch set.

I’m a neurotic, so I like to worry about stuff. So, instead of starting with the more obvious places, I went down the other route, first checking the most unlikely hiding spots and then working my way down – or up – that list. Of course, I did find the keys, in that last and, indeed, most likely place, working my way up to a state of self-induced panic and hysteria.

Ah well, I have never claimed that I am normal. Still, while I was searching for those keys, I was thinking about language – the word ‘key’ in particular. Also, I became freshly aware of how much of our identity is linked to those pieces of metal. When we carry them with us, they open the doors to our homes, our work place and vehicles. Without them, we are as lost as illegal, paperless immigrants at a well-guarded border.

So, it’s no wonder that we use the word ‘key’ as something that describes the singular importance of this, that and the other – as in: ‘This is key to…’ Most of the time, of course, we tend to use these kinds of words without really thinking about them. Looking for stuff in, as I said, an ever growing state of self-induced panic, helps to concentrate on the meaning of certain things.

Anyway, all of the above was just to say that I, like most other people, am quite good at creating my own problems. Almost all of humankind’s troubles and miseries are, in one way or the other, self-induced. From war to famine, from addictions to heartbreak: We do insist to afflict these and other wounds on ourselves.

All of which suits us very well, of course, because if there is one thing that we humans like, it is to complain about stuff. It can be the weather, the food, the government, our family, our Gods or our employers but all of these things and more are fodder to our complaining mills.

As the following story shows.

Work is what we love to hate and to complain about. Sometimes, with good reason but we tend to do it as a matter of principle. I mean, most men who do not work at the British Board of Film Classification would consider the following more as an enviable perk than a reason for complaint. The actual staff, however, are complaining, rather excitedly, about their lot:

“Staff at the British Board of Film Classification are not easily shocked, but they are in revolt over a management plan that would require them to watch hardcore pornographic films alone in a bid to save money. Examiners say films that are refused an R18 certificate often include scenes that many find disturbing, including sadomasochism and sexual violence. Some are concerned that viewing pornographic content alone will increase the chances of being sexually aroused by the material.”

(Whatever feeds our greedy, needy hearts…)

Life has its funny and often weirdly serendipitous moments. In yesterday’s column I linked to W.B. Auden’s ‘O tell me the truth about love’ poem but now I feel I must render it in full, thanks to a story I just read in one of the English tabloids.

First the story, I think:

“American grandmother Linda Wolfe has become “the most married woman in the world” after walking down the aisle 23 times, and is now “on the lookout for number 24″. Mrs Wolfe, 68, is included in the Guinness Book of World Records for the dubious honour of being wed more times than anyone else alive. She has said that she is “addicted to the romance” of getting married.

Born Linda Lou Taylor, the American first married in 1957 aged 16, to a 31-year-old called George Scott. The union lasted for seven years, the longest and happiest of any of her marriages. Since then things have tended to go downhill. Over the subsequent decades she married a one-eyed convict, a preacher, barmen, plumbers and musicians. Two turned out to be homosexual, two were homeless and one beat her. Another put a padlock on her fridge. One marriage lasted just 36 hours because “the love wasn’t there”.”

As I said, it’s a funny story, although it’s also kind of desperate.

The human heart is like the motor of an old, American car – a Lincoln Zephyr, if you like. It runs on the kind of fossil fuels that are both strangely uneconomical and damaging to the immediate & future environment.

I am sure that there are many social, psychological and evolutionary reasons why we’ve developed this ‘crazy, little thing called love’, to explain and accompany our mating habits but humans are quite complicated animals and we tend to overdo things.

Which, at times, results in Columbine type shootings, bungee jumping, sending armies to Afghanistan, eating record numbers of pies or, indeed, marrying 23 times because you are ‘addicted to romance’.

Which is, come to think of it, more sad than funny, really but that’s humans for you.

Like the motors of those old cars I mentioned, the human heart feeds a most greedy and ostentatious machine that’s not very good at turning corners.

Anyway, here’s that old Auden poem, in full:

O Tell Me The Truth About Love

Some say love’s a little boy,
And some say it’s a bird,
Some say it makes the world go around,
Some say that’s absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn’t do.

Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.

Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It’s quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I’ve found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn’t over there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton’s bracing air.
I don’t know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn’t in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.

When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I’m picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

(Strange rebirth…)

There has been a fair amount of articles about racism lately, in the various international newspapers. From Republican politicians sending out ‘magic negro’ CDs, to British princes calling people their ‘Paki mates’; from the New York Post and its Obama Apegate, to the Pope’s (somewhat unsurprising) love affair with Holocaust deniers. All in all, it has been a less than delightful smorgasbord of more or less random nastiness and I have to admit that I am heartily sick of it.

Reading all that stuff can make the brain turn on itself, with bits on the right side snarling at and taking bites of bits on the left hand side and vice versa, till you become so stupid with frustrated and angry boredom that you start to foam round the mouth and shout at your computer screen.

It also makes me entertain quite violent thoughts about all types of racists. That it would be nice, for instance, if they could simply go back to where they came from, evolutionary speaking. That is, swinging from trees – or, failing that, to be hung from them.

Not nice, I know but the world would be a much better place if people like that would, as that old song has it, become ’strange fruit.’

It would be even better, of course, if you could do real magic and change each and every boring, brain-dead bigot into a love poem. One firm hit over the head with a magic wand (or cudgel) and, let’s say, that bishop that claims that there were no gas chambers in the German concentration camps was reborn or remade into this lovely Jane Hirshfield poem…:

“See how the roads are strewn
white,
as if your hand, traveling my body,
came to be that flock of blossoms,
scent of February in the dark.
See how my hips eclipse your hips,
how the moon, huge as a grain-barge, passes by.
And promises do not hold,
certainties do not hold,
the risen cries fall and fail to hold,
but my body, confusion of crossings, I give you
broadcast, to move with your hand,
where nothing is saved but breaks out in a thousand directions,
armful of wild plum, weeds.”

… and what better way to deal with the Pope who gives his blessing to Holocaust deniers than to remake him in the image of Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet LXXXl:

“And now you’re mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.
Love and pain and work should all sleep, now.
The night turns on its invisible wheels,
and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.

No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,
we will go together, over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.

Your hands have already opened their delicate fists
and let their soft drifting signs drop away;
your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move

after, following the folding water you carry, that carries
me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny.
Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.”

Yes, as make-over shows go, turning hateful trolls into love poems takes some beating – and we could even expand the field, by including politicians and other perverse pests.

Wouldn’t it have been fun if we could have changed George Bush in T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock…’

or Tony Blair into Frederico García Lorca’s ‘Before The Dawn…’

or Robert Mugabe into W.H. Auden’s ‘O Tell MeThe Truth About Love…’

or Vladimir Putin into Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘To Say Before Going To Sleep...’

and all the world’s bankers and hedge funds managers into Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover beach…?‘

Plus, as a last and most impressive magic trick, we would change the whole damn, European Commission, the UN’s Human Rights Commission, the British parliament, the US Senate & Congress and, just for fun, the British Cricket Board, Pamela Anderson’s fake tits and all ABBA songs and Dan Brown novels into this one short, yet hauntingly beautiful Robert Graves poem:

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

(I need a man…!)

There is this old feminist saying, “A woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle.”

Now, even Freud admitted that he didn’t know what women wanted, so I’m definitely not trying to go there, even in an enquiring capacity, however well meant.

Problem is, however miniscule my knowledge of women is, I know even less about the inner workings of fishes. Sure, I know how to fry most of them, or steam them, or eat them sushi style but that’s not quite the same as truly understanding the piscine principle.

(Unless you buy the argument and/or best-selling book by a cannibal on an Oprah Winfrey Show who says that he is really that into women.)

Anyway, about those women and their bicycles – no, sorry, about those bicycling fish, I mean…:

“The Guinness promotion went along the lines of “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” in big white characters on a black background. Several images followed which didn’t exactly support the argument; then came the conclusion “not everything in black and white makes sense”, which was followed by the fish cycling across the screen. In black and white, naturally.”

(Graham Bell would be so proud…)

G.K. Chesteron wrote a long series of short stories that featured a Roman Catholic priest as an amateur detective; the famous Father Brown.

There’s one story, called ‘The confession of Father Brown‘, in which the priest reveals his most important trade secret, which is that he can imagine having committed all these crimes himself.

Anyway, the opposable thumb seems to have been instrumental to changing us from ape to human – but empathy is the only thing that can transform us from a clever, grasping beast to something that can come at least somewhat nearer to a failed angel status.

So, you could say that our main goal in life should be to become a bit more like Father Brown and to be able to see the capacity of the worst and the best that mankind has to offer in ourselves.

Obviously, that’s not always an easy task. I’m not sure I could ever be able to understand how it would feel to walk in the shoes of Robert Mugabe, or suffer the hairdos of Amy Whitehouse – or try to imagine myself to be as self-deluded as George Bush, or as vain & preposterous as Bono.

All of which aimless musings were inspired by a nonsensical bit of news that I just read in the San Francisco Chronicle…

So (and yes, we’re slowly getting to some kind of point) it is often suggested that you are only as old as you feel.

Which, very probably, is not much comfort for people with a severe hangover – or if you are a  86-year-old woman who gets accused of sex-obsessed, teenage type behaviour.

Or, possibly even worse, if you are that woman’s dead husband, whose (non-existing) credit card was, allegedly, used to feed this habit:

“The family of an 86-year-old woman who was billed for over $1,000 in phone sex calls suspects identify theft. Arlene Hald recently received a credit card bill addressed to her husband, Sylvester, who died nearly 20 years ago. Hald said they never had a credit card, yet an account in his name was charged.”

You know, I just don’t get phone sex. Pictures of naked women, or movies: Yes, that obviously works. Same with erotic stories on paper; there, your mind can do all the necessary picturing.

Phone sex, though, is just plain weird – unless you are speaking to a lover, of course. I mean, maybe it’s me but while you were listening to someone grunting & sighing on the other end of the line, it would be too easy to imagine some bored housewife doing the ironing while she dealt with you, or some 86-year-old widow who was knitting while whisper-moaning “Yes, yes, yes…!”

(There are things far worse than shooting an Archduke…)

Today’s topical question comes to you, thanks to an article in the online Times – to wit: Could there be a TV show more tedious than the Eurovision Song Contest?

Yes, that same old, same old Eurovision Contest: That pathetic love-to-hate child of a gay Sweeney Todd (“The demon hairdresser of Amy W. Street”) and an anorexic, croaking, Croatian she-goat.

I’m not sure who ever thought it was a good idea to have the nations of Europe search their various asylums for the insane to find the least talented nitwits in the land and hand them a microphone and a ticket to one of Europe’s capitals.

One could argue that sending these severely mentally and vocally challenged persons to invade foreign capitals is a step up from Europe’s old tradition of sending out armies to sack and burn same cities but, as step ups go, it’s hardly in Neil Armstrong’s “A small step for man” territory.

I can imagine that some capitals might prefer the Mongol hordes over yet another ABBA type infestation. You can say what you want about those Khan boys but at least they didn’t sing at their victims – and even if they had done, it could not have been as disagreeable as the mighty warbling of 99% of all Eurovision participants.

Still, though I think that this damn show has all the charm of a Big Brother House pajama party, the artistic taste of Jerry Springer’s mouthwash and all the suspense of Prime Minister’s Question Time, I have to admit that I couldn’t suppress a delighted giggle when I read the following news story:

“Georgia has chosen a song that mocks Vladimir Putin as its entry for this year’s Eurovision contest in Moscow. “We Don’t Wanna Put In” includes a play on the Russia Prime Minister’s name in a Seventies-style performance that is unlikely to get Russian organisers of the contest dancing in the aisles. It also features the line “Gonna try to shoot in/some disco tonight” – at which the trio of women in the group mimed being shot in the head during their performance on Georgia’s public television last night.”

I am quite sure that Putin, like queen Victoria, was not amused when he heard about this.

Not that I care much about old Vlad’s feelings. Hell, he is a former KGB apparatchik, so I’m not sure he has much in the way of feelings – apart from the almost obligatory Russian sense of grievance and paranoia.

When I look at Putin I can see (apart from Dobby, the house elf, that is) a more or less grown-up version of Charlie Brown. Still friendless, still complaining and whining, still delusional and incompetent but now with a toy box filled with Uzis, bombs and various clever poisons. A Charlie Brown turned Charlie Manson, if you like.

Still, the article also served as a not so tacit warning against the whole idea of broadcasting bad music to innocent but excitable bystanders:

“Georgia has a patchy record of disco diplomacy. President Saakashvili staged a Boney M concert in a village on the front-line with South Ossetia in October 2007 in an attempt to ease tensions. He said then that he hoped the sound of the group’s 1970s hits such as Rasputin and Daddy Cool would “lure people out from their trenches”. War broke out ten months later.”

Truly, I can sympathize with those South Ossetians here. When it comes to that famous ‘casus belli’ thing, shooting an Archduke or bombing Pearl Harbour is nothing compared to Boney bloody M.

Same goes for that stupid Eurovision Song Contest, of course. If some alien fleet will eventually come and microwave planet earth like a dubious pizza, it will, no doubt, be because one alien civilisation or the other got fed up with picking up signals of that dismal show.

(LHC: Large Hadron Chocolates, anyone…?)

Now, here’s a bit of baffling news…:

“Tom Hanks, the actor and star of Forrest Gump, will turn on the Large Hadron Collider, designed to recreate the ‘Big Bang’, when it is finally repaired. Hanks was approached about the move while filming his latest film Angels and Demons in which he plays a Harvard University academic investigating a plot to annihilate the Vatican with 0.25 grams of antimatter stolen from Cern.”

I’m not sure what to make of this.

Did the LHC people choose Hanks simply because he played a scientist in one movie? That would be slightly moronic – which, in itself, would be quite appropriate, when you consider the history of the LHC, which is the Forrest Gump of all scientific endeavours (minus the box of chocolates.)

Or did they select him because they liked the idea of wiping out the Vatican, as a kind of belated revenge on Rome, perhaps, for its treatment of Galileo?

The mind boggles. Normally, I am a huge fan of scientists and I’m always willing to celebrate even the most obscure bit of research but I really don’t get this star struck behaviour, vis-à-vis one of the most tedious thespians Hollywood ever spawned.

Still, I might be doing the LHC scientists injustice. Maybe they have the same kind of loathing for Tom Hanks (and Dan Brown projects) that all decent people surely must have.

So, perhaps they suspect that something will, again, go disastrously wrong when they try to switch on the machine – and maybe these scientists reasoned that if, in a worst case scenario, the Collider did explode, it would, at least, take Tom Hanks with it.

Which would, arguably, be worth the cost of another £20 million or so.