Glob-a-log

Okay, so, yesterday, I read in the Guardian that the BBC will broadcast an adaptation of Douglas Adams’s ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.’

Which is great news. I’m a big fan of Douglas Adams and, though I’m sure the vast majority of the Adams Appreciation Society will call it sacrilege, I rate his two Dirk Gently novels even higher than the five parts of his Hitchhiker’s trilogy. Five, yes, not six: Fuck off, Eoin Colfer.

Right, sorry about that. So, great news, only slightly – okay, wildly – spoilt by the announcement, in the same article, that said channel will also do an opera based on a dead Playboy model:

“BBC4 is to broadcast an opera based on the turbulent life of the former Playboy model, Anna Nicole Smith. Anna Nicole – The Opera will dramatise the life of Smith, who married oil tycoon J Howard Marshall, more than 60 years her senior, in 1994 and then after his death the following year was drawn into a lengthy legal battle over the settlement of his estate. Smith died of a prescription drugs overdose in 2007, aged 39.”

How nice.

By the way, the fact that the book of one of the most popular writers in his field (a field of one, most of his ardent fans would claim) was only mentioned as an aside in the above article, of which the leading photo and headline solely dealt with the late ‘model’, would probably have made Douglas Adams smile…

… and the following quote by BBC4 controller, Richard Klein, would have the wry bones of the creator of Arthur Dent et al rolling in his grave – with laughter:

“BBC4 is the channel that seeks to offer television to those parts of the brain that other television channels don’t reach.

Indeed.

‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning’ doesn’t quite have the same je ne sais quoi as ‘I love the smell of exhumed bunny meat’.

It would make for a great corporate slogan, though: ‘BBC Zombie4, going for those parts of the brain others don’t reach.’

A few days ago, I was in a slightly melancholic mood (plus, I was bored) so, I translated a Rilke poem from his ‘Sonette an Orpheus’ into English. Here goes:

Quiet friend of countless distances, feel

how your breath enlarges this room.

Ring through the wood of sombre belfries.

What drains you will sustain your strength.

Travel the roads that lead to transformation.

What is your most hurtful experience?

When your draught is bitter, become wine.

In this night be boundless magic

at the crossroads of your senses,

a strange meeting of mind.

And if the world forgets you,

say to the quiet earth: I run.

Say to the rapid stream: I am.

Now, or a few minutes ago, I read that yesterday it was Ray Bradbury’s birthday.

I’m good at missing birthdays.

Anyway, I’ve always loved Bradbury’s stories. Some were truly scary, lots were very funny. The books ‘Something wicked this way comes’ and ‘Dandelion wine’ are my favourites but he has written so much that’s perfectly wonderful.

‘Green shadows, white whale’, for instance, about the period he stayed in Ireland, where he wrestled with Melville and found out it wasn’t all that easy to be John Huston’s script writer.

Enough about that though – and back to Rilke, sort of. That is, in that poem, there’s talk of magic, crossroads, transformations and, yes, an almost pervasive sense of melancholy…

… and those are all themes that come back, again and again, in Bradbury’s stories.

Of course, Rilke didn’t have much of a sense of humour, so it would be wrong to let him set the tone of this birthday card.

So, thank you, mister Rilke, for getting this show on the road but I will now hand the microphone to someone else – someone a bit less into those sombre belfries.

A Hell of a lot less, in fact – but I’m sure the author of ‘A graveyard for lunatics’ and ‘Driving blind’ won’t mind.

Happy (yes, I know I’m late) birthday, mister Bradbury – and thank you again (and again and again) for all the stories, all those hours of (re)reading bliss. Here’s hoping for another decade of more of the same magic.

Take it away, Rachel…:



So, it would seem that the tourist towns on both side of the English Channel have, in the nick of time, survived a very close shave indeed:

“Beaches along the English Channel have been reopened to swimmers amid reports that a suspected crocodile sighted close to busy beaches was in fact a piece of wood.”

Of course, if they’d used Ockham’s Razor, no journalist would ever have assumed that the Channel had suddenly started to channel the Nile, with its crocs dressed up as trees routine.

On the other hand, not many journalists (especially during the summer) are on speaking terms with the famous Barber of Ockham, even though his basic idea that ‘entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity’ could be the motto of every tabloid that ever boasted a pendulous pair of Page Three paps.

Ockham’s Principle – in a Razor for Dummies version: That, if something looks like a tree, swims like a tree and quacks like a tree, it might not necessarily mean that, Global Warming or not, we suddenly deal with a bloody crocodile – is but a slightly better dressed & educated relative of the Sun or Daily Mail and its insistence that it is simply calling a spade a spade.

Crocodiles sell more papers than trees, though.

In the same way that, if you run a tabloid, tits are bigger than sequoias.

The Sun: Putting the tit back into Titian…)

Meet Joumana Haddad, my new heroine – someone I had not even heard of till I read an article about her in today’s Guardian.

So, in today’s ‘Thought For The Day’ two of those, for the prize of one. Thank you, Haddad:

“”These backward-looking obscurantists” – Arab defenders of chastity – “are thieves. They are desecrators. They are murderers. And, on top of everything, they are stupid. And this is perhaps the cruellest blow.”

Indeed – and this one rings a familiar bell too:

””The Arab mind is in crisis. And because of this it wants everyone to be in crisis with it … The Arab mind cannot handle questions, because questions can hurt and upset the murky calm of the swamp.””

Irshad Manji

Richard Dawkins

John Gray (no, not that one!)

Ayaan Hirshi Ali

Christopher Hitchens

Philip Pullman…

… and now Joumana Haddad. Life can be good.

So, if you don’t mind, I’m off to see if I can order her books online.

O tempora, o mores – as Julius Caesar used to say each time his troops had been defeated by a village packed with doped-up Gauls:

“A new McDonald’s advert featuring Asterix enjoying a hamburger and fries has sparked outrage among French comic purists who claim the Gallic hero has surrendered to the American fast food chain.”

Is nothing sacred, then?

Will we see adverts featuring Mother Theresa playing a slot-machine in the latest Russian owned casino opening in Saint Tropez?

Will we have to grin and bear it through another televised UNICEF do, presented by a knickerless nitwit whose agent told her charity is the new sex tape?

Will we have to witness the Disney Company signing a contract with the Republican Party, offering to use the latest computer technology to slightly alter their old classic movies – so that we may see a sexily yet demurely drawn Sarah Palin as Snow White and a hagged-up Hilary offering her that famous poisoned apple?

What do you think?

What do I think?

Well, call me a cynical so-and-so but I’d say that the last paragraph of that article I quoted above gives us a pretty good idea where we are heading:

“[D]espite the country’s reputation as the birthplace of haute cuisine, the French have shown their love for the American chain with their stomachs: France is the company’s second-most profitable market after the United States. It is also the country where customers spend most money per visit.”

(How the mighty have fallen, indeed…)

This is for those who wonder where the expression ‘on a winning streak’ comes from:

“A British billionaire, Alki David, has offered $1 million to the first person who manages to streak naked in front of Barack Obama.”

For many though who want to strike it rich it’s a small step from lucky streak to tight squeeze:

“A suspected burglar was left dangling today when he got stuck as he tried to climb through a window. His legs were still dangling outside and it appeared his bottom had prevented the man from squeezing through completely.”

They say there are no atheists in foxholes. Christopher Hitchens might still disagree with that but loads of people, from serial streakers to bungling burglars, will, on occasion, have the urge to pray for divine intervention.

Though even that, these days, comes with more caveats than you have breakdancing angels on theological pins:

“An advert for an amulet which promised ‘divine protection’ has been banned by advertising bosses because the firm behind it could not prove that angels will protect those who wear it.”

In yesterday’s column I was a bit rude about people believing in virgin births, Gods with elephant heads, et cetera…

… but earlier today, under the shower, I was thinking it was perfectly understandable that people believe in Gods.

Not so much because of the usual argument – you know the one: About early man not having much in the way of concrete knowledge, so that it was easy for him to interpret natural phenomena as supernatural…

… or because man was afraid of the vast emptiness and ultimate meaninglessness of the universe and felt the need to fill it with his stories, his bogeymen and his Gods…

… or because mankind is so incredibly self-centered that it couldn’t fail to create an all-powerful God in its image.

Valid reasons all, I guess but perhaps a bit needlessly abstract and cumbersome.

Maybe man made God because we always tend to come up with stupid answers to even vaguely complex or potentially embarrassing questions.

For instance, I just did a quick wooden shoes Google search and found the two most popular answers parents give to their children when the latter ask where babies come from.

In second place came the somewhat counterintuitive explanation that babies came from cauliflowers.

Which might be some typically Dutch obsession but in first place came that more traditional and internationally accepted theory: That babies were brought to their parents by storks.

There’s not much you can say about the cauliflower theory. Like virgin births and angels carrying Prophets to Heaven, there’s only so much science can do before it has to take a handful of digestion pills and go lie down for a bit…

… but storks delivering babies? At least there you can take the average weight of a baby, the musculature of a stork’s wings and the structural integrity of its beak…

… and treat the whole misconceived theory with the massive contempt it deserves.

Which is what I would have done anyway – until I read about the following, improbably uplifting story, featuring another bird that was definitely punching (or carrying) above its weight:

“Medics in Taiwan had to use a crane to lift an obese woman out of her flat.”

Okay, so I was wrong about that stork – as I might have underestimated the cauliflower.

I still draw the line at Gods though…

(Some storks are more welcome than others, of course…)

The problem with authoritarians is that they think everything revolves around them. In that sense, there is no real difference between the late and unlamented Chairman Mao and a minor bureaucrat working in any Health & Safety junta: They like to have things their anally articulated way and tend to throw their Fatwas out of the pram when things & subjects don’t.

Anyway, you know the story of king Canute, of course. That is, most people think they do. The story is often told as one about the arrogance of kings.

Which is rather a pity, because the king was actually trying to demonstrate to his sycophant courtiers that not even God-blessed monarchs could order the tides to behave as they saw fit.

Which won’t stop some modern despots from trying, of course, as the following story shows:

“Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates have announced the bans on some functions of the Blackberry mobile phone, claiming security concerns.”

It would be nice if we had more Canutes around to teach the facts of life to those who think omnipotence comes with power the way manual labour comes with calluses.

Louis LlV, of France, would have agreed with these power junkies but then he wasn’t called the Sun King for nothing. In his mind he was the source of all radiance and all space was his space, allowing only for satellites, attracted and kept in place by his might & whim.

Which would probably – but without the wig – be a reasonably accurate description of Apple’s Worm King, Steve Jobs…

… who is fighting against a tide much more powerful than the one King Kanute was wrongly accused of challenging:

“Erotic fiction titles mysteriously disappeared from the iPad book chart yesterday after Apple became aware that pornographic novellas were dominating its bestseller list. Blonde and Wet, the Complete Story was ranked first in its e-book chart yesterday morning in a top ten that included three other erotic titles.”

Ah yes, Steve Jobs and his War on Porn. Cute but doomed…

… as are all efforts by the children of man to harness the powers of the sun and remake themselves in its glorious image…

… as the following story shows – sort of:

“Academics funded by the Medical Research Council say their findings explain why certain people find it difficult to get an even, consistent tan. The main problem, it seems, is people’s bottoms, which take a lot longer to go brown than other parts of their anatomy.”

Oh well, it was nice while it lasted:

“Twelve years after she converted from atheism, author of Interview with the Vampire abandons Christianity over its attitude to birth control, homosexuality and science.”

Now, I don’t want to carp but you know – well, where to start, really?

I mean, she wasn’t born an atheist. Okay, technically she was. Most of the newly born don’t confuse the business end of the birth canal with a couple of very bloody & slow-moving cathedral doors and a baby should have to be as quick-witted as an Einstein (MC) squared to appreciate that the ‘bit-of-wet’ hitting it in the face was just God’s way of saying, ‘Hi there!’

So yeah, babies are atheists till someone sells them a time-share in one of the world’s religions (or smaller sects.)

However, Ann Rice was raised Roman Catholic, before she became a born-again atheist, so to speak. What I mean is, she must have had some reason to do so, which, most probably, went a bit deeper than the dress sense of her local priest or the taste of the Host and the cheap plonk he served with it.

Anyway, so, she fell off the atheist wagon – as one does – but then it takes her another twelve years to think, ‘Hang on but wasn’t there something about this religion that I didn’t like?’

Oh yes! That was it: Birth control…!

… and homosexuality…!!

… and science!!!

Truly, is Anne Rice the only one who didn’t know the story about Galileo – or forgot about it, twice?!

Did she, more than once, think that all those men in their frocks, waving incense and chanting merrily, were like the best gay party she’d ever attended…

… and, more unlikely even: Did she never see – or worse: forgot she saw – that brilliant Monty Python song, in their ‘Meaning of Life’ movie?

Be that as it may or may not, this whole questionable and puzzling affair does leave us with one question that’s probably harder to answer than the one about the break-dancing angels on top of that pin, to wit:

Does the Pope rejoice more about this second straying than Richard Dawkins frowns upon the return of this prodigal lamb to the atheist fold?

(Beats ‘Transvestite mounts dog’ big time, baby…!)

It takes all sorts to make the world go round’, is a well-meaning but rather vacuous cliché.

Whatever wiped the dinosaurs off the face of the earth did, I’m afraid, not cause the slightest of wobbles in the earth’s rotation – and it would take more than a few handfuls of Dr. Strangelove specials to make a blind bit of difference too.

Still, it’s a nice sentiment. Very New Testament-ish – and, in a way, a close relation to that famous Matthew quotation, “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

On the other hand, there’s motes and then there’s motes – or, more precisely, moats…:

“A transvestite had sex with a dog in the moat of an English Heritage castle. The cross-dressing man was caught with the animal in the dry moat of King Henry VIII’s Pendennis Castle overlooking Falmouth Bay in Cornwall. The 33-year-old mounted the pet after it chased him out of sight of its woman owner.”

Not exactly a sight for sore eyes, perhaps – and one that could make quite a lot of more Biblically inclined viewers almost nostalgic for those motes & beams.

Happily, a spokesman for English Heritage was soon rustled up to assure the public that this “was a very rare incident.”

Quite – though you can’t help but wonder if this kind of entertainment might not attract more snap-happy sightseers than yet another royal castle.

Yea and verily, the Internet teaches us that humps trump lumps of stone any day of the week, by a billion hits or so.

(To be honest, I don’t think the guy even asked…)