Philoillogica

My penis, mea culpa

Ugh. Jude Law fucked his nanny, and leave it to the National Post to tell us how he couldn't help himself because he's a man. 

In a reprint from The Sunday Telegraph, the National Pest Post offers us the following byline:

So is Jude Law a saint or a sinner? His relationship with Sienna Miller was on the rocks last week after he admitted having an affair with his children's nanny. He has been branded a selfish philanderer. But was his infidelity justified, as he allegedly claims, by his fiancee's pursuit of her own acting career? Two writers give their judgments.

Now, one should expect from the juxtaposition of the two opposing terms "saint and sinner", as well as the distinct ideas of "selfish philanderer" and "justified infidelity" that these two writers "judging" Law would have similarly opposed perspectives.  One would be apologetic for the perfectly-coiffed, suspiciously pretty man whose best role was playing a male sex-bot in A.I., sounding the omnipresent claim that men can't help but shag anything soft and willing because evolution wants them too.  In contrast, readers will also be offered a furious condemnation of Law for his uncouth molesting of the hired help and making a pretty girl  so distraught she had to suck Orlando Bloom's face to feel better about herself.   

And sure enough, here's the evolutionary defense, from Jemima Lewis,' "He's Just a Man":

It is an unfortunate fact that evolution has not yet caught up with the sexual revolution. Try though they may to disguise it with hair gels and moisturizers and displays of hands-on parenting, most men remain cave dwellers at heart. Their synapses still crackle with neolithic urges: must hunt, must slay, must strew cave floor with old bones and dirty socks. And, of course, the most basic evolutionary impulse of all: must sleep around.

Naturally, women, in this (snort) "scientific" explanation, don't sleep around as an evolutionary imperative because we're too busy sweeping the cave floors and divesting ourselves in the multitudinous offspring that we are "given" by our alpha men.  Because, you see, children are the only reason women fuck at all, because sex is "icky," and then we'd just have to sweep the floors again.

Of course, given that most people know that it's been tens of thousands of years since we last lived in caves, and that everybody over the age of four understands the basic epistemological concepts of free will, society and, oh, JUSTICE, the author needs to offer a throwaway "of course, biology isn't destiny" type of line, just so she can promptly ignore it:

None of us is doomed to follow a Darwinian destiny. There are plenty of men who resist the urge to stray, just as there are women who show no interest in keeping a tidy cave or filling it with little hominids. But endless studies have shown that alpha males find it harder than most to resist the biological imperative. The higher they rise up the social hierarchy, the lower their standards of sexual fidelity.

I love those "endless studies" that prove that men can't help it when their dicks go wandering off spelunking past the "open to the public" signs.  I think they're funded by The Royal Society.

Anyway, Lewis prattles on in this vein for a bit more, ultimately deciding that the prettiest men that like the prettiest women are the most alpha and therefore most inclined to fuck around, and that this is how Sienna Miller got herself into this mess in the first place.

Oh yes, you heard correctly.  Got herself in this mess.  Because it is her fault (stupid, stupid girl) for not understanding the fucking science that governs male behaviour:

None of which is much consolation to Sienna, of course. But I'm afraid there is scant consolation to be had. Men are the way they are, and if you don't want to get too hurt by them, you have to grow up. That means you either choose sensibly -- avoid celebrities, footballers, plutocrats and other born philanderers -- or accept that keeping them away from the home help will be a full-time job. It may not be the romantic proposition that a giddy 23-year-old would hope for -- but neither, sadly, is human nature. 

Riiiiiiiiiiight. Because only celebrities, footballers, and plutocrats fuck around.  Oh, no wait, she added "philanderers" too - so that means that men who fuck around on their wives are to be avoided, because they'll probably fuck around on their wives.  Good to know.  Thank you, Jemima Lewis.

So that was the evolutionary defense of Jude Law, done in the "Men are dogs, but all men are dogs, so it's okay" vein.  Now we should be set up for some furious condemnation of his abuse of power and flagrant flouting of his very public engagement by Kathy Lette's "He's Just a Wolf.":

Jude Law is the sort of man who treats women as sequels, not equals.

That's sounds about right.  But wait...what's this?

After seven years or so of marriage, couples can get itchy and some of them scratch. But to cheat during his engagement, while professing to be so profoundly and passionately in love, shows the emotional depth of a mud puddle.

Hang on a minute.  That seems precariously excusing.  His behaviour is only awful because it happened before they were married?  Afterwards, his cheating would've been just fine because "couples get itchy"???  Sounds a lot like the evolution argument again.

The worst of it is that Law has cultivated the image of being a sensitive, caring and sharing knight in shining Armani. Well groomed, designer clad, emotionally articulate, partial to doing Sensitive Things With Snow Peas -- we presumed he was in touch with his feminine side. We just hadn't realized that it was on another female.

The man is a wolf in sheep's clothing. At least with a straightforward misogynist, a woman knows where she stands. Or rather, lies. (It helps to remember that the Oxford English Dictionary actually excised the expression "New Man'' from its tome, having realized that no such creature exists. It would seem that men only call themselves "male feminists'' in the hope of getting a more intelligent bonk.)

Huh.  So Lette's just fine with men doggin' it up, because that's typical male behaviour. However, when a guy does something "sensitive", like bathe or talk purdy, he's engaging with his "feminine side" and is thus required to give up his wolfish ways.  Otherwise he's something much worse than an philanderer - he's a hypocrite! 

Lesson: if you want to be a good guy, always wear your sluttish sexual proclivities on your sleeve, and never wash.  That's how women know how to trust you.  Those lousy "male feminists" who know what dry-cleaning is?  Oh, they're just big fat liars trying to score smarter tail. 

So did you learn your lesson? Shall we move onto today's test?  Remember those GRE analytical questions? Here we go:

Saint : Sinner ::

a) Jude Law's Penis : Male Entitlement Complex
b) Evolution : Inane articles that hide behind bad science to justify untenable positions
c) Men : Feminism
d) National Post : Responsible journalism

Did everybody pick d ?  If you picked c, you need to read this.

Free beer!

Seriously.

A group of Danish students at Information Technology University in Copenhagen have decided to challenge proprietary beer (read: Carlsberg) and created open source beer, putting their recipe under a Creative Commons licence.

"You're free to change it," says Mr Nielsen. "But if you use our recipe as the basis for your beer, you have to be open with your recipe as well. That's the legal framework that follows the beer."

Vores Oel, Danish for "Our Beer", is apparently pretty thick stuff:

"It's the kind of beer that you feel afterwards that you've eaten a steak or something. I mean, it's not the kind of beer you'd want to be drinking for a bachelor party or something," says Mr Nielsen.

Excellent.  Just in time for the long weekend, too.

Parrish the thought of a woman speaking her mind

Once again, the Canadian media is whipping itself into a frenzy over Carolyn Parrish.

A sardonic news consumer might wonder whether reporters tail the woman with microphones, salivating for any juicy soundbite that will push their byline up above the fold for a 90-second, coffee-fueled, sheep-herding read.  One wonders whether there's some sort of collaborative mission statement ordering media to flog the dead horse that is Parrish's history of "talking out of turn" and not blending into the woodwork like a good backbencher.

Chuck Cadman had to DIE to get this kind of media coverage, for goodness' sake, but all Parrish has to do is say anything other than "hello" and "I love Americans" and the Globe and Mail issues an editorial.  Parrish's refusal to "keep sweet" like a good wife of Promisekeeper Paul famously saw her kicked out of the Liberal caucus after she supposedly went on a hate-filled, anti-American bender.

What did she say?  Well, she admitted to not liking the ABM defense strategy, for one thing.  When defense minister Bill Graham was dallying over whether or not Canada should take part in the scientifically-untenable, politically-dangerous, strategically-moronic, US-implemented platform, Parrish snorted that we should not join such a "coalition of idiots."

Yes, I see how anti-American it is to mock Bush's carefully constructed hyperbole designed to "shock and awe" with mottoes such as "axis of evil" and "coalition of the willing."     Terrible, terrible thing to do.  "Bad MP! No biscuit!  Yes, you still get the pension." 

Last year, an open microphone caught Parrish muttering "Damn Americans ... I hate those bastards," outside the House of Commons following a debate over whether Canada should join the American-led "war" in Iraq.  Parrish had been known for her anti-war stance throughout the debate, doubtless polished during her 2-year tenure as Vice Chair for the International NATO Executive and positions as election observers for Ukraine, Bosnia and Palestine.   Impolitic, but not directed at the media nor an official statement. Later she clarified, apologizing for her conflation of the American people and American policy.  Still, this was enough to twist caucus panties just a bit tighter as Parrish made headlines again. 

Talking to the media after the US elections last November, she admitted to being "dumbfounded" that Bush won, saying that this result demonstrates the differences in values between Canada and the US.  "I guess it's a reflection of the profound psychological damage of 9/11," she said. "That country is completely out of step with most of the free world."

Hmmm.  Not so anti-American, more apologetic, bewildered and explanatory. But, she did speak about the election after being told by Uber-Paul not to, and was publicly reprimanded and expelled from the Liberal caucus.  "No more 24 Sussex dinner parties for you, Carolyn (not that you were invited before anyway, being a backbencher).  You have to eat out in the yard, and beg for scraps from Belinda Stronach on her way out."

A few weeks later Parrish mocked herself on This Hour has 22 Minutes, stomping on a G.W. Bush doll and poking pins into its head.  Typically, this was outrageous to nobody except for CNN, who invited Parrish (identified as "Paris") for an interview with the inane Tucker Carlson to discuss the "frosty" relationship that has developed between the US and Canada over issues such as softwood lumber and beef. 

In his typical, false bravado, Carlson announced that everybody in Canada is too busy dogsledding to care about what happens in the United States and then declared that "without the U.S., Canada is essentially Honduras, but colder and much less interesting."  Parrish parried his limp attempts to get a rise out of her quite well, eventually admitting, "you have to understand from this lowly backbencher that shouldn't even be on your show, I am of total insignificance within my own party and within the country, you're sure putting up a lot of fuss and putting a lot of attention on this. It shows a very weak ego, in my opinion. I think if you're as strong as you say you are, anything I have got to say can't hurt you."

Wise words indeed.  And yet here we are eight months later with more sensational "Not again, Carolyn! Bad dog, Carolyn!  Not to the media, Carolyn!  Off the couch, Carolyn!"-styled headlines, like "Parrish Continues attack on Hillier," because the MP had the nerve to criticize the language of Canada's top soldier in the same way the media has done to her for years:

True to form, Ms. Parrish couldn't resist a little demonstration of her outspokenness in yesterday's interview, criticizing Canada's new Chief of the Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, for some of his recent comments.

She called him "dangerous" and a "testosterone-filled general," and added that "somebody should put a clamp on his mouth."

Ms. Parrish, a self-described "peacenik," said she was particularly offended by Gen. Hillier's aggressive comments this month that the job of Canadian soldiers is "to be able to kill people."

He had been speaking to reporters about the Canadian troop deployment to Kandahar, where the troops will target terrorist "murderers and scumbags."

"They talk about me being outspoken," she said. "I'm speaking on my own behalf. This man is purporting to speak on behalf of the government, and I think he's dangerous.

"I'm totally offended by him. . . . We are also not a country that is going to easily throw away 100 years of peacekeeping reputation and noble reputation in the world by a testosterone-filled general, and I think somebody should put a clamp on his mouth."

But God forbid that the media try to muzzle a man in the same way they've tried to muzzle Parrish.  It's not like he's controlling an army or anything, not like his words have the power to injure in a very real, very profound way, as he speaks from the pulpit of the Government of Canada while both his boss and his boss' boss look in the other direction.  Bill Graham's too busy up in the Arctic sticking flags on things, while Martin's desperately trying to figure out how to bring the much-needed prodigal daughter Parrish to the Liberal fold, if only he can shut her mouth.

 

Men are still clueless, study shows

Usually, you can count on the more idiotic news sources to prattle on about this kind of garbage, but this morning brings us the following from the CBC:

Researchers in Britain tested a series of scenarios in a model courtship game. They aimed to find the best way to impress a female mate.

Because, apparently, women are the limiting factor in all sexual relations, and damn if science can't figure out some neato efficient way to make us spread our legs just a little more often. 

And guess what the study showed?

Wining and dining a woman is the best way to win her hand, according to a mathematical model that defines what makes an effective gift during courtship.

Among humans, offers of expensive gifts show a man is committed but he risks being exploited by gold-diggers, the team said. Another factor to consider is females won't be impressed by cheap gifts.

No.  We like expensive gifts, like silver platters with men's heads on them, or penises dipped in chocolate and served with Dom Perignon.  Oh, and being called gold-diggers.  That really gets us a-breedin'. 

"By offering expensive but worthless gifts, such as dinner and theatre trips, the male pays no cost if the invitation isn't accepted," said Peter Sozou of University College London's Centre for Mathematics and Physics in Life Science.

Women who aren't interested will likely turn down the invitation.

Good call, Mr. Science!  Does this have something to do with the male entitlement complex that views "dinner = sex", do you figure?

Females are generally drawn to attractive males who will help raise the children. An unattractive male who literally leaves her holding the baby alone is the worst-case scenario, the researchers noted.

Actually, I'd say the worst-case scenario would be systemic belittlement of our gender's sexual, emotional and evolutionary needs by bad science determined to enforce patriarchal values. 

The team also modeled courtship in species where the males do not help with raising young.

In that case, the main factor for a female is whether she's in a sexually receptive state and the male looks healthy. Gifts are one way the male can signal this condition, according to the researchers.

So let me get this straight: there is a correlative factor between men not sticking around and women who are "sexually receptive" and accept gifts.  "She made me leave, your honour!  After I slept with her, I offered her a cigarette, and SHE TOOK IT!  Everybody knows what that means!"

Thank you ever so much, The Royal Society.   Perhaps now you can do a study on how to enable men to better succeed at autofellatio.

Monday Miscellany

Did you know...

...that US veterans are OUTRAGED at that Wedding Crashers movie, because Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson pretend to have Purple Hearts in order to attract women? Apparently veterans find the idea offensive because it detracts from their ability to woo hot young poon-tang: "Somebody else wearing a medal and they didn't earn it — that's defrauding people who've earned it," said George Sakato, 84, who received the medal for his acts of bravery during the Second World War. I guess there's just not enough for veterans to be outraged against lately, not like there's a war on or anything...

...that cats can't taste sweet things...

...that in an effort to combat eating disorders, Israel is passing a law to make models adhere to a minimum BMI:

This Sunday, a committee of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, will decide whether to proceed with a bill to compel model agencies to monitor the health and body mass index (the ratio of height to weight) of models. Models would have to undergo regular medical tests to ensure their body mass index (BMI) is 19 or above. The most serious anorexics can have a BMI as low as seven.

If the Knesset passes the bill, Barkan hopes the effect will be two-fold. First, agencies will be forced to confront a problem they have for long ignored and, second, only "healthy" models will be seen on television, in magazines and on billboards...

...that my crush on Bruce Campbell is still alive and thriving...

..that artistic tradition still insists that a woman's pregnant body is more interesting as a symbol of conspiracy than as a natural process of creation...

...that Stonehenge has never been comprehensively studied by archaeologists...

...that a prehistoric stone phallus has just been unearthed in Germany.  Appropriately enough, it is extremely well-polished...

...that an Indian yoga teacher is hoping to get in the record books by swallowing fish and blowing them out of his nose...

...that apparently if you're not smart enough, Americans won't kill you...

Well, now you do.

Now THAT's uptight...

Montgomery County Steps Closer to Banning Urination

Creative use of scarves, and channeling the second wave

Sarah: "Well, what do you think?"

Sandor: "It's interesting.  Kinda bondage-y, though."

Sarah: "Well, I just didn't feel like putting a bra on, and I thought - "

Sandor: "You wanted more support?"

Sarah: "Nah.  I'm a feminist.  I don't need any support."

Zero to badass in 20 minutes

I first came to the conclusion that my little sister was cooler than me sometime in the late 1980s.  I wandered past her bedroom hovel and found her happily engaged in an elaborate dance routine with a stuffed animal that involved jumping from her bed to her bedside table to her bookshelf to her desk and back again, all the while singing tunelessly about a duck.  She had contrived an elaborate turban for herself out of a silver scarf, and left a little tail at the back that fluttered behind her like a jetstream as she jumped about. 

Thus began Ashley pushing the boundaries of fashion as her older sister stood in the doorway, leading from silver turbans to dog collars to barbed wire to straight jackets to pleather pants. 

Bemused, I watched these developments with interest until there came a point where Ashley's fashion sense started to include poking more holes in herself than I had poked in myself at that age.  This is when our parents started to think of me as the conservative one, the uptight child of their loins whose odd body modification habits ended with pink hair and dressing like a lumberjack when visiting grandma.  I was slovenly and a mite odd, but nowhere near as odd as my sis, and the extended family started to invest more apprehension while approaching her looks than mine, especially as I seemed to eventually "grow out of it" and learned to wear pantyhose in very limited situations.  Ashley, to her credit, did not, piercing and tattooing things with wild abandon while wearing assorted colours of black.

So it is to noone's surprise that my sister decided to get her third tattoo last week, an elaborate black and blue tribal star on the inside of her left wrist to celebrate her 20th birthday.  What made our mother nearly swallow her wine glass, however, was the fact that I too succumbed to the draw of ink and let a strange man pierce my dear flesh repeatedly with a needle.

"REALLY? A tattoo? YOU? A tattoo? YOU?  YOU don't get tattoos?!? Not YOU!?!"

Yes, me.  After hemming and hawing about imprinting something on my body for eternity and fretting, like a good adult, about wrinkles and turning eighty and job interviews and my future children (who, it should be admitted, would scorn anything I'd do to my body anyway, because that's what children are for), and fretting about the sort of thing to stick on, and where it would go and what I would think about it next week or next year or when I was abducted by aliens sometime in 2030, I just went ahead and picked something and did it.  It was surprisingly easy.

Of course, I had to follow my sister's excellent idea and imprint my own wrist too, like a copycat, leading to the two of us looking like a botched double suicide attempt:

And what sort of thing would an aspiring young print historian and bibliographer press on her body for eternity? Well, a fleuron, of course: a small, decorative printer's ornament used to break up a block of text or signify a start or finish.  Appropriately enough, it ends my arm and begins my writing hand, a slight, stylized piece of ivy, the symbol of poets, faith, and bacchanalia.

I haven't told my mother that part.  She's already scandalized enough as it is.

There, there, Ralph. There's a perfect man for everyone. You just have to clean yourself up a bit, and he'll find you

Klein frustrated over gay marriage

If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

The chestnut trees are fruiting, and it seems devilishly early for this sort of thing.  It'll just be another three weeks or so before the squirrels'll go manic and conkers'll and shells will be everywhere, littering the pavement and crushed between the sewer grates.

Two weeks ago it was the mulberries staining the sidewalks and making the pigeons and starlings fight beak-on-beak for the juicy things, sending shiny green leaves and feathers into the subway as harried commuters avoided the dropping fruit.

As I write this, a squirrel convention is bickering over Bush's supreme court nomination, overpowering the sound of a Bloor Street morning less than 100 yards away.

What, does a resolute city-dweller waxing about nature surprise you?  Shouldn't I be off littering or polluting something?

In their usual hysteria privileging the ubermensch "Nature" by denigrating us urban folk, people always seem to forget that the organic elements in our concrete jungles are made more visible in their sharp relief from the greyish norm.   It's just too easy to knock us city-dwellers who enjoy our patios and subways and 24-hour drugstores instead of grasslands and hiking trails, who breathe smog and carbon monoxide instead of dew and campfire smoke, and who listen to the cacophony of sirens and other people moving day in and day out instead of frog mating and birdsong.

If you keep your ear to the asphalt, we're the big baddies, us urban folk.  It's us who are responsible for the fourth-grader who says "I like to play inside because that's where the electrical outlets are," us who are responsible for children's Nature Deficit Disorder, us responsible for letting people just plug in and tune out.  We're the ones removed from nature, separated like Mephistopheles from God, and we're not supposed to care about green things unless they're organic and served on china with a light vinaigrette.

Of course, it's not an overt condemnation - it never really is.  We need our cities, and even the staunchest environmentalist will admit that it makes much more sense for humans to live at high densities than spread out over the countrysides, suckling at the breadbasket's teat.  We can't all be hunters and gatherers - just the wealthier ones with that kind of leisure time or the disposable income to have somebody else bring in the wild blueberries they buy at Whole Foods.  The rest of us just have to make do.

No, what we get instead is a tacit assumption that kids who grow up in cities are necessarily deficient in something crucial, something involving going to school on a proper school bus and being able to have bullies rub your face in mud instead of the gutter.  The general idea is that you're not really playing outside unless you're doing something involving a field guide, turning over rocks and splashing through ponds in an obviously adult-approved acceptable manner of exploration.  You need a magnifying glass for this, of course, and periodically you need to burst through a screen door clutching an insect that you've never seen before, just so you can validate your parents' need to condescend to you.  THAT, my friends, is the way kids are supposed to play outside.

Especially according to Richard Louv, coiner of the inane, damaging and thoroughly untested term "Nature Deficit Disorder." According to Louv, children's high levels of stress, obesity and depression can be directly linked to the amount of time they spend outdoors, and kids suffering from ADD would just calm right down if they'd only take up baseball or something.  Of course, he has no hard evidence for any of this - just the odd anecdote, such as his favourite by the fourth-grader who likes electronics that he seems to trot out in every interview.  (Oh the horror!) 

Louv's book Last Child in the Woods has created quite a buzz for itself in its capitalization on parental guilt, suggesting yet another reason for parents to feel ashamed about their parenting choices involving Playstations and books on the rain forest.  Clearly, what they're doing is interfering with their child's sense of wonder.  The bastards.

Implicit in all these discussions is the classic post-lapsarian whine of the middle-aged, yowling about how "kids today" are somehow more inferior or more helpless than ever before, as if this latest generation of children are the last in a long line of parental disappointments because they can't identify Solidago virgaurea from Solidago rigida.

Leslie R. Walker, a pediatrician who runs an adolescent clinic at Georgetown University, said she rarely sees patients who have unstructured outside playtime.

"A lot of kids are living their lives on the Internet. I think the isolation that comes with sitting at a computer can hurt social skills, and if somebody's at risk for depression, that isolation can't be helpful," she says.

Requisite false dichotomy between nature and electricity/computers?  Check. 

Here's another, from Canadian Living:

"Your child's grandfather might have overturned rocks looking for grass snakes and built secret forts out of tree branches, but its not so common for today's children to be on intimate terms with nature. In fact, these days kids may have an easier time defending a fort in a video game than building one in real life."

Yes, just in case you'd forgot, computers are EVIL and responsible for all BADNESS in children. They follow kids around and make them stop piling the couch cushions into a fort under the dining room table, and lash their hands to the keyboard with little electronic pulses lest they slip away for the moment for some unstructured play.

Thank goodness Louv's got a better solution, one that's not complicated by a property complex utterly at odds with the idea of sublimity or a false sense of control, no sir:

Growing up was different for Mr. Louv, who was raised near Kansas City, Mo. His home backed up to fields and woods. "I spent lots of hours with my collie in those woods. I had a sense of ownership over them," he recalls.

But he knew nothing about the Amazon rain forest. Today, he says, children know all about the rain forests but little or nothing about the ecosystem outside their door.

"Their relationship with nature is scholastic. Mine was in my heart."

Hmph. Well, I guess I can't compete with that.  I'm just too keyed up with my intimate knowledge of the two-toed sloth's defecation habits to pay attention to the trees.

Guess they're not worth looking at unless they're part of a forest anyway.

*title quotation by Jack Handy