Also, to stick with death related matters, there was a woman whose life wassaved by her size-D breast implants, one of which caught the bullet of a semi-automatic assault rifle.
Then there were those two guys in Mozambique who were caught shagging a goat, whose owner now demands they do the honourable thing and staying in Africa and staying on (sex) topic, there was this school dorm in South Africa that was closed after areported outbreak of lesbianism.
So, Jesus, death and sex are doing just fine in the world’s Sunday papers, which hardly comes as a big surprise, but right now I can’t be bothered to comment on any of these stories.
Well, there was this one thought that sprang to my mind while I was reading a story about a guy who had seen the hand of God and wanted to shake it when he discovered that a picture of Jesus was the only thing to surviveafter his house burnt down.
The thought being that it was rather strange to bestow the epitaph of ‘Saviour’ on Someone who is quite happy to survive while everything around Him burns to a crisp.
Enough of that and enough of all these stories that take the sapiens out of homo sapiens. Time to put this (non)column to bed and to start cutting up the vegetables & herbs for what will, hopefully, become a glorious fish soup.
I know: Not exactly Saturday Night Party material but if I could I would show it in every high school, all over the world.
You’re in luck though: I just saw I had another link going – or open, or whatever you call it. Something I’d started to watch yesterday and then forgot about.
Okay, first a short excerpt from the transcript of an old BBC 4 ‘Point of View’ programme, titled ‘The Golf Ball Potato Crisp’, written and read by Clive James:
“Shakespeare was only one of [Montaigne's] many readerswho caught fire at that idea. Shakespeare knew Montaigne’s writings inside out. They helped set the standard for the way our greatest playwright separated what he knew from what he didn’t know. But not even Shakespeare had an opinion about the golf-ball potato crisp, because it had not yet arrived in the world.”
James, in his typical Janusian way of looking at stuff in both a goofy and an intellectual way, links golf balls, dead French philosophers, Global Warming, Shakespeare and potato harvest machines with the importance of scepticism and still manages to weave a tightly knit and very pleasant little aural carpet (waving his knitting gear with the assured ease of an old composer/director but with a wide and slightly wicked grin on his face.)
The point he ultimately makes is a valid one, I think. Not many human beings are like Montaigne and probably none of us asks that question ‘What do I know?’ often enough.
The whole Global Warming discussion is a very good example of this. How many politicians, journalists, pub sages, bloggers or internet newspaper commentators who bombard us with their varying versions of the ‘I-am-right-and-I-am-righteous’ truth actually know anything about the science? How many scientists do?
Me, I have no axes to grind here. I declare myself a floating agnostic: Sometimes, I seem to tend to lean slightly into this direction, sometimes slightly into the other but always with that rock solid certainty at the core of my being that informs me that I truly don’t know shit about the whole subject. Dylan sang about not needing to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. I’m more like an old-fashioned weathervane, perched on top of his stone tower of doubt, not knowing which way to turn.
Still, I do read the papers and I try to follow these issues – and I admit that has led me to some pretty firm conclusions, which I am quite happy to share with you.
Here goes:
1) On the one hand, I truly would love it if that soi-disant vast majority of climate change experts were wrong. Firstly, for the simple reason that I wouldn’t like the earth to warm up that much, and that fast. A Tibetan monk may be able to keep his cool about that but if, like me, you live in Holland, of which about half lies under the sea level as it stands, you’d prefer the oceans not to rise by much more. Secondly though, I have to admit that I would simply love it if that self-important majority was wrong, because I will always root for the maverick minority view. Pit the might of the Roman Catholic Church against Galileo Galilei and I will wear my ‘E pur si muove!’T-shirt proudly. (Come to think of it, scientist Freeman Dyson would make a most wonderful Galilei…)
2) On the other hand, it would almost be worth it for my country to become a latter day Atlantis (even though that might inconvenience our coffee shop owners and clients somewhat) for the simple reason that so many of the very loudmouth Global Warming deniers are such ugly little oiks. Know nothing types who broadly fall into two categories: Right wing dingbats and conspiracy theory freaks. (Okay, maybe that’s just one category, after all.) Again, I’m not saying everyone who seriously doubts the reality of (a man-made) Global Warming belongs to that sick tribe but too many do – and too many of them, if forced to choose between the sure destruction of the earth and giving up a few luxuries, would close their eyes and ears and go “NA-NA-NA-CAN’T-HEAR-YOU!!!!!”, while driving their 4WD SUVs through the gates of a Global Hell.
3) On the other hand, yet again, I would also prefer the majority of these doom-selling scientists to be wrong, because so many of their lay followers are such terrible, terrible people. Don’t get me wrong: I still donate some money each month to Greenpeace. I may not always agree with all their ideas and I do find a lot of their campaigning material too calculatingly sentimental but I do think it is important to have strong environmental organisations, if only as a counterweight to industrial lobby groups. However, there is a type of fanatic eco-church member that is utterly insufferable. They’re like the warped mirror images of Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin – but without the charm. If you would give them a pair of God Buttons that, if pushed, would decide whether Global Warming would be real or not, they would push the self-destruct button without a minute’s thought. This bunch would rather have all of us die than to live in a world where people could drive their cars, eat fast food and fly Ryan Air with no real consequences to the health of the planet. Obviously, as it is with their opponents, not all environmental activists are like that at all but there are still way too many of those loathsome hair shirt types around and people like that never ever deserve to be right.
Ah well, but what do I know, after all? I’m that weathervane, remember?
Which, perhaps, is not such a bad position to be in. There is something restful in admitting that you simply don’t know enough about stuff to get caught up in this really ugly (and, by now, frankly rather boring and repetitive) debate.
Plus, if those sea levels would indeed happen to rise, any time soon, the top of a church tower would not be the worst place to find yourself when you’re in Holland.
(Dawkins and Auden: Truly great minds never think alike…)
Okay, so, today, I almost decided not to write my daily post - for the first time in nearly two years…
… because, yesterday, I had to leave both Prague and my lady, to return to boring, rain-soaked Holland…
… but I quickly came to the conclusion that that would, even for me, take grandiose, self-indulgent solipsism to unacceptably toxic levels.
Not that I feel like writing much, mind you – let alone reading newspapers – but I do have something else for you. I arrived back here in Utrecht early in the evening, yesterday, which gave me time to wallow in self-pity and, when that became too boring to sustain for another pitiful minute, I sought and found some solace listening to a few pod-casts.
I ended up spending more than two hours listening to interviews – or rather: conversations – Clive James held with a number of writers, actors and philosophers.
So, since I’ve been boring everyone here with my personal Country & Western stories, the last few days, I thought it would only be fair to give you the chance to recover from those self-centred laments by listening to two of these interviews yourself. (Not that you have to restrict yourselves to those two: You can read and watch and listen to tonnes of stuff on his web site, HERE.)
You could start with these two, though.
In the first one James is talking with Richard Dawkins, about evolution, and how our creative capabilities might simply be a function of that process. They talk about language, monsters and Gods – it’s all good stuff
The second one is a discussion Clive James held with John Clarke about the poet W.H. Auden, which is really much fun, with lots of artistic quarrels and gossip, some good poems being read aloud and how the first world war changed the way a new generation of poets could actually write poetry (and the way the horrific crimes of the Nazi regime led Auden to the conclusion that poetry ‘makes nothing happen’.)
Almost 12.00 here. I’m all packed to leave for Holland again. My lady is in the kitchen, waiting for me to cook us one last lunch, for now. I’ll be back in Prague, and back with her, round the end of april – but that seems like such a long time now.
It’s just a one hour flight from here to where I don’t want to be but it feels like oceans of time and mountains of stupid space to me.
Ah well, better to have loved and be inconvenienced by circumstance than never to have met my lady at all, and all of that – and if the plane doesn’t crash and my heart doesn’t give out in the meantime, I will see her again, in two months’ time…
… but enough of me moping up this place. See you around tomorrow.
Chances are that all of you who read this are pretty unhappy. That’s what the following article seems to suggest anyway.
So, unless you are of a certain, very particular age, you’d better start taking those happy pills now:
“Seventy-four year-olds are the mostcontented people in the population, according to new research. Fewer responsibilities, financial worries and more time to yourself leads to contentment previously unknown in earlier life.”
Mind you, they do have a point – though I’d have to say that there are enough people out there who are so tedious, dull-witted and pain-in-the neckerish that I doubt they would enjoy ‘more time to themselves’. I mean, think about it: everybody has met his or her share of party bores. So, imagine how it must be to live on the inside of those skulls…
Anyway, I’m not quite sureabout those ‘fewer financial worries’, to be honest. Certainly, most of the baby boomers seem to have done alright for themselves but there are still enough pensioners eating catfood and spending many a miserable winter day being cold to the bone, ’cause they can’t afford the cost of heating their homes properly.
Still, there’s something to say for that ‘fewer responsibilities’ argument. That, plus the fact that they will never, ever have to deal with – or even see – their former colleagues again.
As the following article shows, happiness is not having to go through the daily, soul-vacuuming ritual of the office tea ceremony:
“A report shows that women make morethan three times as many cups of tea as men in the workplace. Two-thirds of men told a study they invented bogus reasons for not making hot drinks, while one in four sneaked off to make one just for themselves. The study of 3,000 workers by Cafedirect revealed that men also moan more about having to make drinks for their colleagues. Recruitment consultants – the UK’s biggest tea drinkers – generally spend almost as long moaning about tea (four minutes) as making it (five minutes).”
Monday now. Just two more days to go, here in Prague. The New And Official Love Of My Life (Du Jour Et Je Pense Pour Toujours) is in the shower house.
When she’s done getting perfectly clean & beautiful again (and I’ve stopped moping & waxing sentimentally in front of this computer) we’ll go out and take one of our long walks through Prague.
In terms of beauty I can’t compete with my lady, or this town, but both are generous enough to tolerate my presence and ignore my many flaws.
For all that I’m truly sad to say goodbye to Prague and my NAOLOML(DJEJPPT) I also feel very blessed that they are so very much a part of my life.
So, no news stories today?
No – but there’s this, from Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker, who’s writing about the press. Go read the whole thing, when you’re done here.
My lady just walked by, naked and beautiful and still a bit damp. So, it’s goodbye from me, for today, though I will leave you in the safe hands of mister Brooker.
Enjoy:
“When did public displays of contrition become the norm? More to the point, who actually appreciates them? Sitting through any public apology is mortifying. It just feels wrong. And unless the poor sod in question is saying sorry for something as momentous as a war crime, it’s entirely unnecessary. The public don’t need to hear it, because the public isn’t as psychotically, self-regardingly deranged as the press. Consequently, these apologies are aimed not at the public, not at the fans or the listeners, but the press. The press demands apologies on its own behalf, regardless of the will of the people. And it does this because it is insane, truly Caligula-level insane.”
It’s funny. A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to write a bit more about one of my passions: cooking (and the various cuisines of the world – and the state of eating out in the Czech republic.)
I haven’t followed up on that, really but ever since I said I wanted to talk about food, there’ve been various news stories about food that caught my fancy.
So, yesterday there was this article about cat food – and that same day I came upon this one:
“Health and Safety officers have issued a warningto the curry houses of Birmingham after a spate of injuries caused by exploding tandoori ovens. A number of restaurant workers have been severely burned because the modern gas tandoors, used to cook chicken tikka and nan bread, were not properly maintained.”
Which isn’t particularly nice for the victims but I could not help giggling a bit at my first and rather insensitive reaction to this story. To wit:
I know that eating Indian food will give lots of non-Indians high levels of stomach acid but you have to admit that food is seriously spicy when it even will give heartburns to the ovens in which it is prepared.
I once ate a goat’s eye. I can’t say I enjoyed the experience but it was a local delicacy and I was the honoured guest in someone’s home, so I could not really refuse to eat the damn thing.
Eyes are so much bigger when they are lying on your plate, by the way – but I don’t want to spend more memory time on that particular meal.
What I wanted to say is that if you are okay with eating meat, it’s kind of silly to get all worked up about other people’s eating habits.
I mean, I can see why Jeffrey Dahmer’s diet upset his neighbours (and sold a lot of newspapers too) but the following story about another food-based uproar is plain silly:
“A top Italian food writer has been suspendedindefinitely from the country’s version of the television programme Ready Steady Cook for recommending stewed cat to viewers as a “succulent dish”.RAI, the public broadcasting network, said that it had dropped Beppe Bigazzi, 77, for offering the recipe on La Prova del Cuoco, which is broadcast at midday on the main channel. Its switchboard was inundated with complaints from viewers and animal rights groups.”
Surely, if it’s okay to eat Bambi, or Donald Duck’s children, or all those fishy friends of little Nemo, it should be cool to skin a few cats.
People can get so stupidly sentimental about all kinds of stuff. So, while I would understand how a vegetarian who loves cats not merely for their bodies could be a bit upset when a TV chef talks about this kind of cat food, the rest of the viewers should just grow up a little.
In a world where it is accepted that millions of chickens are tortured and butchered, each and every day, it’s a bit rich to reach these righteous fury levels, when someone merely talks about a cat casserole.
Some days are just not good. This is one of them. I’ve got five days left here, in Prague and my lady has just left for work and won’t be back till tomorrow afternoon.
Ah well, when in existential doubt, there’s always Jacques Brel:
