One of the things I notice about the Middle East is many people’s unwillingness to bring home the bacon. I refer to the markedly un-Herculean ethos which sees some workers – by no means all – confidently fluctuating between comatose coffee break and sempiternal chit-chat for the duration of their paid employment. This is not laziness; it’s just a different culture. Or something like that.
This lackadaisical disparity with my own cultural norms even manifests in quality control over clothing. They – and by They, I obviously mean men – positively quiver with a priapic certainty in the awe-inspiring effect of their appallingly obvious counterfeit knock-offs. What role can the EU play in combating this malaise?
Massive watches are rarely a force for good in your personal attire, particularly if they are fake. The consequence of faux couture is to draw attention to your specious sense of quality. I recently witnessed the letters ‘M’ and ‘P’ brightly emblazoned either side of an Emporio Armani logo on the back pocket of a man’s capaciously baggy jeans. Leaving aside the fact that Armani don’t make clown-trousers, and certainly leaving aside why I was looking at this poor fellow’s arse, you would hope that consumer preference, or indeed the risk of vomit, would have guided this tawdry addict away from a sartorial advert for dyslexia. The knuckles of his weedy right hand hanging limply from his weedy right forearm seemed to scrape along the floor under the gilded weight of what I tentatively identified as the heavy and expensive D&G Unisex Prime Time watch. Or was it?
In Jordan, real luxury items often fetch twice the UK price, as advertised by many British brands such as Mothercare and Body Shop who leave the price in GBP on their products – let us also leave aside why I know this. It is perfectly reasonable that many people here do not wear genuine brands, although I disagree with the solution of wrapping-up in a kaleidoscope of happy little sham-rags in a fairly pyrrhic attempt to impress the ladies, who generally dress much better.
If Jesus came back to the Middle East, he would go back up to heaven quicker than recent lighter sales in North Africa1.
A chief reason for the Messiah’s horror would be the unusual rate of tax levied against imported luxury goods. Automobiles vary between 110% and 310%. According to someone called infoprod.co.il, “Taxes on imports are the chief source of domestic revenue”. He continues, enigmatically, “Essential commodities and various raw materials attract relatively low rates of duty, while luxury goods attract high rates”. Richer Jordanians lap up their Mercedes, BMWs, Ray Bans, Breitling, Boss and buggery-knows what else, whilst the shouty majority parade about town in frighteningly inept imitations.
October, 2010 saw the signing of a new Action Plan between the EU and Jordan. It aims to reduce trade barriers and promote freedom of movement for goods and services. The prodigious mud-roll of slow EU-ery will gradually push away the protective carapace of punitive taxes in favour of promoting German cars, German trains, and (probably German) pharmaceuticals. Only then will Kalvin Klien become Kelvin Klein.
The EU: flooding your markets with our tat, not yours.
The EU: reducing the stupidity of your appearance
The EU: getting you laid.
__________________________
1 The News
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
General Malaise versus Iran
The 10th January, 2011 is the two thousand and sixtieth anniversary of Julius Caesar’s march across the Rubicon over northern Italy and into the inviolable territory of his beloved Rome. Torn between a life in exile – even worse, exile in France – and an almost matricidal act of defiance against his city in which he must conquer or face certain execution, the intrepid general set forth to defeat Pompey. "Alea jacta est" were his decisive words upon leading his troops on this invidious mission; words that would echo forth in history as exempla of courage and certitude; but words that would also herald his rise to Dictator Perpetuus and the fall of Rome from the height of its democratic political traditions into tyranny. Its consequence: an empire and a brutal murder.
October 25th, 1415 is a day that bears a similar testament. Outnumbered, with an army weakened by fatigue and dysentery, Henry V faced an overwhelming French cavalry force on their home turf at a narrow defile between the forests of Tramecourt and Agincourt. The French noblemen, eager for a victory over the tired English warriors, restlessly waited through the night while their opponents washed and slept. On the morning of the 25th, the English band of brothers let loose their fierce Yeomen upon the French, prevailing in a clash that set awry the course of European history and the Hundred Years War.
But great acts of military leaders are not limited to the history books. In January of 2010 (somewhere near the two thousand and fifty ninth anniversary of Caeser’s march on Rome) it seems that the commander in chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bitch-slapped President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is safe to say that the gay-hating, protestor-bashing bomb-weasel had it coming. What’s more, in the hungry power-pit of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, this humiliation must have been tantamount to a detailed PowerPoint presentation on the President’s ongoing erection problems. The assailant, like Caesar, was no angel, but still delivered this venerable whisterpoop for the world’s amusement.
In true Iranian style, Uncle Napolean appeared again: their response published on the Fars news website was to denounce this story as a conspiracy of the BBC, another subtle ruse in the litany of meddlesome British subterfuges to disrupt their glorious republic. This of course ignored the fairly immovable fact that the story was published by Der Spiegel, which has nothing to do with the BBC, and comes from the leaks (of the wiki variety) which the Iranian regime has denounced as a trick of the CIA, not the BBC – two organisations that are, let’s face it, fairly unlikely to collaborate these days. They would have been better off focusing on the fact that this is, at best, third hand information gossiped to the State Department by the army of rumour-hungry but ultimately ectopic “Iran watchers”, far from solid fact.
True or false, however, it is significant. If true, it is a certain demonstration of where power lies – or more precisely, doesn’t lie – in Iran. For the President to suffer what is basically a happy-slapping in front of the nation’s most prominent security folks is an emphatic example of his subservience to the IRGC, his former employer. If false, the rumour itself, which was partially corroborated by Iranian bloggers, is evocative of a willingness amongst Iranians – the rumour undoubtedly came from Iran – to regard Ahmadinejad as ridiculous, weak, merely a mouthy servant of more powerful players in the state.
The interesting question with all puppets is, well, whose hand is up their bum?
October 25th, 1415 is a day that bears a similar testament. Outnumbered, with an army weakened by fatigue and dysentery, Henry V faced an overwhelming French cavalry force on their home turf at a narrow defile between the forests of Tramecourt and Agincourt. The French noblemen, eager for a victory over the tired English warriors, restlessly waited through the night while their opponents washed and slept. On the morning of the 25th, the English band of brothers let loose their fierce Yeomen upon the French, prevailing in a clash that set awry the course of European history and the Hundred Years War.
But great acts of military leaders are not limited to the history books. In January of 2010 (somewhere near the two thousand and fifty ninth anniversary of Caeser’s march on Rome) it seems that the commander in chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bitch-slapped President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is safe to say that the gay-hating, protestor-bashing bomb-weasel had it coming. What’s more, in the hungry power-pit of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, this humiliation must have been tantamount to a detailed PowerPoint presentation on the President’s ongoing erection problems. The assailant, like Caesar, was no angel, but still delivered this venerable whisterpoop for the world’s amusement.
In true Iranian style, Uncle Napolean appeared again: their response published on the Fars news website was to denounce this story as a conspiracy of the BBC, another subtle ruse in the litany of meddlesome British subterfuges to disrupt their glorious republic. This of course ignored the fairly immovable fact that the story was published by Der Spiegel, which has nothing to do with the BBC, and comes from the leaks (of the wiki variety) which the Iranian regime has denounced as a trick of the CIA, not the BBC – two organisations that are, let’s face it, fairly unlikely to collaborate these days. They would have been better off focusing on the fact that this is, at best, third hand information gossiped to the State Department by the army of rumour-hungry but ultimately ectopic “Iran watchers”, far from solid fact.
True or false, however, it is significant. If true, it is a certain demonstration of where power lies – or more precisely, doesn’t lie – in Iran. For the President to suffer what is basically a happy-slapping in front of the nation’s most prominent security folks is an emphatic example of his subservience to the IRGC, his former employer. If false, the rumour itself, which was partially corroborated by Iranian bloggers, is evocative of a willingness amongst Iranians – the rumour undoubtedly came from Iran – to regard Ahmadinejad as ridiculous, weak, merely a mouthy servant of more powerful players in the state.
The interesting question with all puppets is, well, whose hand is up their bum?
Sunday, 17 October 2010
[Formerly Entitled 'Jordantics']
The predominance of agnate lineage combined with substantially blurred boundaries between social and political structures make for extravagant weddings, but imperfect politics.
This is the case in Jordan. Yesterday, I witnessed these two venerable Jordanian pastimes come together, unsuccessfully. Amman, 4th Circle – a roundabout to the normal-tongued – was the site of the unfortunate convergence between a large wedding cavalcade and some heavily-policed protesting. The traffic, it is needless to say, was bad.
At about 1730hrs a parade of Mercedes – the automotive equivalent of one’s Sunday best, I suppose – honked and hooted its molluscan way through a thicket of congested traffic, protesters, police and – obviously – double-parked squad-cars. Excited relatives leered from windows whilst one keen fellow protruded from the sunroof of the lead vehicle wielding a camera almost as long as his car. What baffled me, however, was that during the 15 minutes it took them to pass from one side of the gridlocked roundabout to the other, I did not see a single flash of anger from the delayed celebrants. Nuptial scheduling, it seems, is something of a Western preoccupation.
If it were my wedding day, I would not accept two miles per hour of forward motion from church to reception, witnessed by sweaty cameramen and their oversized photographic equipment. Admittedly, there would be nothing I could do about it besides tirelessly leaning on my horn – which is what they were doing – but at least I would get angry about it.
A short time before this I had seen a long-haired youth unhappily and inefficiently bundled into the back of a paddy wagon. The police, in unexpectedly obliging fashion, paused with their prisoner outside the vehicle and permitted a female reporter to speak with those involved – including the Guevaran renegade and his captors – before completing the detainment. Baffling though this behaviour might seem to anyone who has witnessed professionalised law enforcement dealing with protesters, I am not sure it represents something entirely unexpected in this environment.
It is clear to see why a protester would want to advertise his arrest as a symbol of his plight and advert for his cause. But the police? Perhaps it is because state activity is as much of a brand here as political parties are. The means of coercion and persuasion, as a Marxist historian would describe them, do not enjoy the more defined separations that they do in Europe. That is to say, the methods by which the state commands ideological assent (persuasion) and the organised violence deployed in assuring obedience to its laws (coercion) reside in the same institutions to a greater degree than one might see in, for example, London.
For many cultures, the police are a brand which stands for statist, pro-establishment ideology. In Jordan, assent or opposition to this brand is of real significance, whereas in the UK it is only important if you are in a job interview for the police. That is to say, assent with the pro-state brand is close to a means of coercion, because opposition to it has material and physical implications rather than purely ideological ones. It is this articulation between the persuasive and coercive which offers a powerful insight into why I will never protest in the Middle East. Moreover, it helps to energise the police and the state as a ‘brand’ concept, requiring ideological advertisement and public displays of justification as much as any political party. This need not even enter the minds of those involved, as it is culturally indoctrinated.
In ‘Over-Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East’, the late Nazih N. Ayubi proposes a model accounting for Middle Eastern politics in terms of the articulation between the means of production, coercion and persuasion. It seems I have stumbled across a concrete example of his theory: a rare stone indeed.
This is the case in Jordan. Yesterday, I witnessed these two venerable Jordanian pastimes come together, unsuccessfully. Amman, 4th Circle – a roundabout to the normal-tongued – was the site of the unfortunate convergence between a large wedding cavalcade and some heavily-policed protesting. The traffic, it is needless to say, was bad.
At about 1730hrs a parade of Mercedes – the automotive equivalent of one’s Sunday best, I suppose – honked and hooted its molluscan way through a thicket of congested traffic, protesters, police and – obviously – double-parked squad-cars. Excited relatives leered from windows whilst one keen fellow protruded from the sunroof of the lead vehicle wielding a camera almost as long as his car. What baffled me, however, was that during the 15 minutes it took them to pass from one side of the gridlocked roundabout to the other, I did not see a single flash of anger from the delayed celebrants. Nuptial scheduling, it seems, is something of a Western preoccupation.
If it were my wedding day, I would not accept two miles per hour of forward motion from church to reception, witnessed by sweaty cameramen and their oversized photographic equipment. Admittedly, there would be nothing I could do about it besides tirelessly leaning on my horn – which is what they were doing – but at least I would get angry about it.
A short time before this I had seen a long-haired youth unhappily and inefficiently bundled into the back of a paddy wagon. The police, in unexpectedly obliging fashion, paused with their prisoner outside the vehicle and permitted a female reporter to speak with those involved – including the Guevaran renegade and his captors – before completing the detainment. Baffling though this behaviour might seem to anyone who has witnessed professionalised law enforcement dealing with protesters, I am not sure it represents something entirely unexpected in this environment.
It is clear to see why a protester would want to advertise his arrest as a symbol of his plight and advert for his cause. But the police? Perhaps it is because state activity is as much of a brand here as political parties are. The means of coercion and persuasion, as a Marxist historian would describe them, do not enjoy the more defined separations that they do in Europe. That is to say, the methods by which the state commands ideological assent (persuasion) and the organised violence deployed in assuring obedience to its laws (coercion) reside in the same institutions to a greater degree than one might see in, for example, London.
For many cultures, the police are a brand which stands for statist, pro-establishment ideology. In Jordan, assent or opposition to this brand is of real significance, whereas in the UK it is only important if you are in a job interview for the police. That is to say, assent with the pro-state brand is close to a means of coercion, because opposition to it has material and physical implications rather than purely ideological ones. It is this articulation between the persuasive and coercive which offers a powerful insight into why I will never protest in the Middle East. Moreover, it helps to energise the police and the state as a ‘brand’ concept, requiring ideological advertisement and public displays of justification as much as any political party. This need not even enter the minds of those involved, as it is culturally indoctrinated.
In ‘Over-Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East’, the late Nazih N. Ayubi proposes a model accounting for Middle Eastern politics in terms of the articulation between the means of production, coercion and persuasion. It seems I have stumbled across a concrete example of his theory: a rare stone indeed.
Monday, 8 February 2010
Salty Nightmares
The German culinary experience, like the natural state of mankind or sex with Jack Bauer, is nasty, brutish and short. Clichés are the main ingredient, closely followed by acute myocardial infarction. Assuming you survive Hans the Ripper being your waiter.
Fortunately god invented Immigration to save us from their Himalayan mounds of salt which lumber stupidly amongst inappropriate seas of salad cream. There are many vibrant alternatives to the cadaverous vegetables which limp moribundly across your plate in an impossible identity parade of crimes against cuisine. But, everyone knows about food from Turkey, Italy, France, North Africa and the Middle East (the order of excellence in any German town), so I will carry on complaining.
Such is the prevalence of good foreign food – in fact, of foreign food in general, because it’s all better than the pointless gruel which Germans angina-ishly call their own – that most locals don’t bother with the national clichés… sorry, I mean dishes.
For the long-haired artistes of fashionable Kreuzberg, irrigating their opinionated pallets with coffee from Krakatoa and vino from Vallhalla, a truly German meal is as pertly alien as a ferret floating in their super-slim mocha-fopiattoes.
Under very enlightened E.U. law it is now fully illegal to feed your child a diet consisting solely of freakishly processed sausages, ridiculously vinegary cabbage, and salt. There is always so much salt. The penalty for any individual found guilty of this Teutonic crime is to spend five years in Italy learning how not to be a culinary retard.
Whilst we are here, let us talk about these famous sausages. Not one brand of sausage in Germany comes close to Chorizo. Nothing advances on the Andouillette. They cannot even touch the Cumberland. Yes, you can buy good sausages – but, surprise, they are all foreign! They don’t seem to understand that processed meat is unquestionably a source of evil. No one feels the slightest shade of doubt about their weird, unnatural, smooth substrate full of water, rusk and funny nitrates. In fact, if I sat down and thought about it beyond the point where I found something better to do, I would decide that this is their greatest crime: simply missing the huge culinary memo which states that meat should not be pushed through a blender complete with ears, eyes, claws and bollocks, before being pressed into a happy little bag to fill the most appalling sausage. Making cold cuts is not Auschwitz, it’s art. And ears do not belong in art – as Van Gogh decreed.
Then there are the bread roles which these monstrosities are served in. For reasons which are unfathomable to me at this point in time, there are literally only two sorts of bread roll in Germany. I don’t mean two brands, I mean literally two formats, moulds, versions. I can only imagine that there is a small town somewhere which has yet to hear of the fall of the third Reich – the town which Hitler ordered to make all bread rolls for the Fatherland. To this day, their two weary machines are unwillingly churning out thousands of these wrinkled little scrotums for their tongue-dead comrades and their horrendous sausages.
One day, customer preference, or good taste, or common sense, or maybe just nuclear desolation will come to brighten up the this terrible cultural desert, but until then, steer well clear of its food.
Fortunately god invented Immigration to save us from their Himalayan mounds of salt which lumber stupidly amongst inappropriate seas of salad cream. There are many vibrant alternatives to the cadaverous vegetables which limp moribundly across your plate in an impossible identity parade of crimes against cuisine. But, everyone knows about food from Turkey, Italy, France, North Africa and the Middle East (the order of excellence in any German town), so I will carry on complaining.
Such is the prevalence of good foreign food – in fact, of foreign food in general, because it’s all better than the pointless gruel which Germans angina-ishly call their own – that most locals don’t bother with the national clichés… sorry, I mean dishes.
For the long-haired artistes of fashionable Kreuzberg, irrigating their opinionated pallets with coffee from Krakatoa and vino from Vallhalla, a truly German meal is as pertly alien as a ferret floating in their super-slim mocha-fopiattoes.
Under very enlightened E.U. law it is now fully illegal to feed your child a diet consisting solely of freakishly processed sausages, ridiculously vinegary cabbage, and salt. There is always so much salt. The penalty for any individual found guilty of this Teutonic crime is to spend five years in Italy learning how not to be a culinary retard.
Whilst we are here, let us talk about these famous sausages. Not one brand of sausage in Germany comes close to Chorizo. Nothing advances on the Andouillette. They cannot even touch the Cumberland. Yes, you can buy good sausages – but, surprise, they are all foreign! They don’t seem to understand that processed meat is unquestionably a source of evil. No one feels the slightest shade of doubt about their weird, unnatural, smooth substrate full of water, rusk and funny nitrates. In fact, if I sat down and thought about it beyond the point where I found something better to do, I would decide that this is their greatest crime: simply missing the huge culinary memo which states that meat should not be pushed through a blender complete with ears, eyes, claws and bollocks, before being pressed into a happy little bag to fill the most appalling sausage. Making cold cuts is not Auschwitz, it’s art. And ears do not belong in art – as Van Gogh decreed.
Then there are the bread roles which these monstrosities are served in. For reasons which are unfathomable to me at this point in time, there are literally only two sorts of bread roll in Germany. I don’t mean two brands, I mean literally two formats, moulds, versions. I can only imagine that there is a small town somewhere which has yet to hear of the fall of the third Reich – the town which Hitler ordered to make all bread rolls for the Fatherland. To this day, their two weary machines are unwillingly churning out thousands of these wrinkled little scrotums for their tongue-dead comrades and their horrendous sausages.
One day, customer preference, or good taste, or common sense, or maybe just nuclear desolation will come to brighten up the this terrible cultural desert, but until then, steer well clear of its food.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Jürgen Habermas 1: Simon Cowell 0
There are few phrases more nauseating than “the online community”. Like Susan Boyle’s eyebrows, it is impenetrable, woolly, and ill-thought out. Yet for commentators with both low and high brows, it is stretchered around the disaster area of internet analysis without anyone actually examining it, and is therefore left to its own, thought-terminating devices. Luckily, I am here with wax, razor and chainsaw to chew away this thicket, even at the expense of the head, neck, and any other component that get in my way.
Rage Against the Machine, who are presumably angry because no one has cut their hair since 1965, have leapt Guevara-ishly to number one in the UK Christmas chart. In so doing they have displaced the terrible Cowell dynasty with beards, baggy trousers, and SHOUTING. Mostly, it is the SHOUTING which seems to grab attention. This is what commentators sagaciously call a campaign amongst “the online community”.
People on the internet are no more a community than people using farm tools. OK, so they have things in common – people on the internet must have a certain amount of income, and if someone spends all day leaving inane comments on the BBC website then you can make some fairly basic judgements about their social lives – just as people using farm tools must all have limbs and funny hats. This is not a community. If this were a community, then I, who wear pullovers and talk about paintings, am in a community with Brian Sewell, and we would both hate that.
It is as meaningless to talk about the online community as it is to talk about the cheese-eating community. You could certainly talk about the cheese expert community – they share one expertise, hold common events, read the same journals, and if someone dies I expect they would all see an obituary and feel a bit sad. The “online community” share no such things: if common expertise were the basis for this “community” than the band of half-witted luddites hammering ill-educatedly on their groaning keyboards are a paradox, filling, as they do, the BBC “have your say” pages with drivel as rampant as it is inexpert. There is no way to say that the internet commonly experiences events, publications, and so on, in a singular fashion: by its very nature the possibilities are so endless and multiple and diverse that the online experience will be radically different for anyone with a mouse and RSI. It is more like a myriad of different communities which reflect and complicate pre-existing divisions as well as creating new and unexpected ones as well.
The online community is something like the public sphere described by Jürgen Habermas as a “discursive space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment”. This quote actually overeggs the element of intentionality in the case of the net: most people couldn’t give a Jedwood if public opinion is formed, as long as they can gas off about the amount of immigrants in their garden or the loss of British identity or anything else that crosses their dim-witted viewpoint. The only question that remains, therefore, is do I need to point out the irony?
Rage Against the Machine, who are presumably angry because no one has cut their hair since 1965, have leapt Guevara-ishly to number one in the UK Christmas chart. In so doing they have displaced the terrible Cowell dynasty with beards, baggy trousers, and SHOUTING. Mostly, it is the SHOUTING which seems to grab attention. This is what commentators sagaciously call a campaign amongst “the online community”.
People on the internet are no more a community than people using farm tools. OK, so they have things in common – people on the internet must have a certain amount of income, and if someone spends all day leaving inane comments on the BBC website then you can make some fairly basic judgements about their social lives – just as people using farm tools must all have limbs and funny hats. This is not a community. If this were a community, then I, who wear pullovers and talk about paintings, am in a community with Brian Sewell, and we would both hate that.
It is as meaningless to talk about the online community as it is to talk about the cheese-eating community. You could certainly talk about the cheese expert community – they share one expertise, hold common events, read the same journals, and if someone dies I expect they would all see an obituary and feel a bit sad. The “online community” share no such things: if common expertise were the basis for this “community” than the band of half-witted luddites hammering ill-educatedly on their groaning keyboards are a paradox, filling, as they do, the BBC “have your say” pages with drivel as rampant as it is inexpert. There is no way to say that the internet commonly experiences events, publications, and so on, in a singular fashion: by its very nature the possibilities are so endless and multiple and diverse that the online experience will be radically different for anyone with a mouse and RSI. It is more like a myriad of different communities which reflect and complicate pre-existing divisions as well as creating new and unexpected ones as well.
The online community is something like the public sphere described by Jürgen Habermas as a “discursive space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment”. This quote actually overeggs the element of intentionality in the case of the net: most people couldn’t give a Jedwood if public opinion is formed, as long as they can gas off about the amount of immigrants in their garden or the loss of British identity or anything else that crosses their dim-witted viewpoint. The only question that remains, therefore, is do I need to point out the irony?
Friday, 18 December 2009
Berlin: Nature's Faulty Parachute
Like most Britons, my head loosely resembles a balloon full of porridge. Not mighty like a Greek’s, nor chiselled like a Norwegian’s, nor weasley like a Slav’s. Formless, wobbly, and grey, evolution’s answer to female rape.
The disadvantages are obvious. Romance begins like Stephen Hawking wanks: difficultly. Women rarely gush quite so Cockermouthishly for me as they do for men with labour-camp quads and normal heads. In consequence, I will never squeeze Paula Abdul’s breasts (with consent).
There are, however, advantages. I am a clear favourite in Germaine Greer lookalike competitions. Women admire my clearheaded approach to grammar. And then there is the smorgasbord of Uncomfortable Romantic Situations (henceforward URS) which make life so entertaining, if not ejaculatory.
I’m on the u-bahn when a woman touches my leg. My thoughts are as follows.
Well, this is a surprise. Finally, my first train romance! I am the kind of guy you can fall in love with at first sight after all! Acceptance, social status, how glorious you feel…
I stare back into her eyes, lovingly. A second passes, and so does all separation between us, between man and woman. Yet stands the clock at ten to three, I think, as another second passes. But why is she looking at me so coldly, I wonder, innocently. A third second.
Aha. No, this is not romance. It is not even friendliness.
I have my feet up on the seat opposite. She is German, and therefore considers my minor slouchiness as a grave moral error, which, furthermore, it is her place – and failing that the place of the state – to correct.
A fourth second. On the fifth, I remove my knee from her once-tender grasp. How cruel the hand of a woman. By the sixth second I was stifling petulant laughter like a scrotum-tickled monkey.
If you too want to know what it is like to laugh like a scrotum-tickled monkey, you have two options. Travel the tube of Berlin in some radical way – that is to say, not bolt-upright in perfect rank and file – until a feeble old gas-bag, desperate for the tiniest touch of power, clutches you in her last mad grasp for control in a life otherwise devoid of meaning. Alternatively, hand out feather dusters to your neighbours and sit naked in the trees.
The disadvantages are obvious. Romance begins like Stephen Hawking wanks: difficultly. Women rarely gush quite so Cockermouthishly for me as they do for men with labour-camp quads and normal heads. In consequence, I will never squeeze Paula Abdul’s breasts (with consent).
There are, however, advantages. I am a clear favourite in Germaine Greer lookalike competitions. Women admire my clearheaded approach to grammar. And then there is the smorgasbord of Uncomfortable Romantic Situations (henceforward URS) which make life so entertaining, if not ejaculatory.
I’m on the u-bahn when a woman touches my leg. My thoughts are as follows.
Well, this is a surprise. Finally, my first train romance! I am the kind of guy you can fall in love with at first sight after all! Acceptance, social status, how glorious you feel…
I stare back into her eyes, lovingly. A second passes, and so does all separation between us, between man and woman. Yet stands the clock at ten to three, I think, as another second passes. But why is she looking at me so coldly, I wonder, innocently. A third second.
Aha. No, this is not romance. It is not even friendliness.
I have my feet up on the seat opposite. She is German, and therefore considers my minor slouchiness as a grave moral error, which, furthermore, it is her place – and failing that the place of the state – to correct.
A fourth second. On the fifth, I remove my knee from her once-tender grasp. How cruel the hand of a woman. By the sixth second I was stifling petulant laughter like a scrotum-tickled monkey.
If you too want to know what it is like to laugh like a scrotum-tickled monkey, you have two options. Travel the tube of Berlin in some radical way – that is to say, not bolt-upright in perfect rank and file – until a feeble old gas-bag, desperate for the tiniest touch of power, clutches you in her last mad grasp for control in a life otherwise devoid of meaning. Alternatively, hand out feather dusters to your neighbours and sit naked in the trees.
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