On Animal Noises and Eighties Divas. (BSDA #4)

I discovered two awesome things today; both are characterised by their lunacy, which is at the same time brilliance, as the two concepts are extremely close together. As Oscar Levant famously said: "There's a fine line between genius and madness."

So, to Awesome Thing #1. Beatles songs done with animal noises.

Animals sing the Beatles. (There's a pun there too.)
Youtube channel of the BeatlesBarkers.

I love this album for its utter absurdity, and the way that, while most of the lyrics are delivered by dogs, timely-placed sounds from different animals can bring the house down. Also it's ironic that the Beatles themselves used animal noises in Good Morning Good Morning on Sgt Peppers, so I like to think that John is looking down on the Barkers with approval.

Awesome Thing #2.

This has been on the internet for two years, or in online time about four and a half millennia. Nonetheless it's worth sharing. Bonnie Tyler's surreal video for Total Eclipse of the Heart is given the literal treatment. And given it well.

Aside from a noticeable drop in quality in the middle third, this video does what most literals fail to: satirise the content while retaining the spirit of the original. As a result it is really terribly funny.

That is all for today. Join me again tomorrow for another episode of Animals Do The Funniest Things. Or something.

Well. I hope you all enjoyed that very much. Maybe you should follow. I mean really.

Dream School?

British people will no doubt be aware that chef-cum-Superman Jamie Oliver, who in earlier series has saved us all from the evil Twizzlers of Turkeia, who zoomed down from outer space to defile our children and destroy the nation's health, only to be vanquished by the Crepe Crusader, has recently turned his attention to the failing education system, and has taken to trying, in his own inimicable way, to solve its problems.

Oliver's plan basically rests on the idea that celebrities can teach subjects they claim to know about far better than so-called professionals. Predictably, however, most of them were catastrophic failures - David Starkey alienated the entire section of the population that Oliver had earlier tried unsuccessfully to humiliate and segregate by calling a boy "fat", and then proceeded to carry on with the ensuing argument for so long that I had to check he wasn't actually one of the children. After all, as Connor reminded us, he is "only four foot tall". Alastair Campbell gave splendid advice as to how to follow in his footsteps: to become a lying, sycophantic apologist for a war criminal, and, rather imaginatively, simultaneously aroused the homophobic sentiments of some of the class, leading to an outright brawl of words of the kind not seen on Channel 4 since Brookside was cancelled.

As far as I can tell, the kids seem about as interested in this scheme as Nick Clegg is in listening to the electorate, judging by the amount of time they spend on their gadgets, hiding away from doing any work and wearing the now-patented gormless hangdog look that has become so associated with Clegg over the last year. This whole programme seems like a propaganda exercise for Michael Gove's Free Schools project. No, you don't need specialist or trained teachers, any old C-list celebrity will do! I can only imagine the sequels:

Jamie's Dream Hospital, where Hugh Laurie carries out emergency heart surgery while Ducky Mallard sets 80% of the commissioning budget...

Jamie's Dream Forestry Commission, where TV's Robin Hood Jonas Armstrong carries out the demanding task of keeping ramblers off land that is rightfully theirs while Bear Grylls and Ray Mears show us all the proper way to tend to 5% of our national area...

Jamie's Dream Foreign Policy Crisis Unit, where Ross Kemp solves the Libyan problem by having a mealy-mouthed shouting match with Gaddafi from the top of a Chinook while Jack Osbourne tells the search-and-rescue operatives of the day how to correctly throw yourself out of a plane at thirty thousand feet.

(Although in that case I still might consider them over William Hague.)

There is a real issue here. We seem to have been sucked into the vacuum of assuming that "celebrity" equates to "worthy", that fame and fortune and everything that goes with it are substitutes for training, hard work and a real focus on doing your job properly. In their continuing war against the state and what it stands for, the coalition government seem to be following a very dangerous paradigm that suggests that anyone who actually does a job for money (in the capitalist tradition) is some kind of scrounger off the state - hence why we apparently need to cut all the real staff at libraries and post offices and run the bleedin' things ourselves, in our spare time. I'm not sure whether this is stupidity or arrogance, because the two are never too far apart within the Tory party.

It seems that in this age of 24-hour news and instant gratification, we only want stories that can be tied up neatly into bundles. No-one wants to hear about the teachers who work day-in, day-out to slowly improve the standards of less talented kids in their schools - we'd all much rather some televisual superhuman waltzed in at the eleventh hour and saved the day with moments to spare. So this is the real message of Dream School for me, and I hope the producers will be honourable enough to make this their ultimate conclusion too. Very little outside the goggle box happens in a scripted order, with climaxes before the ad breaks and a neat conclusion at the end. Life is messy and inconsiderate, and so our TV companies, and, more importantly, our elected representatives, must stop looking for elegant and quick solutions to our nation's woes and concentrate on what really matters - helping people to live their lives in a better, fairer and more understanding society.

CREDITS: The idea for this comes from Charlie Brooker's Guardian column and commentators thereon. It's alright.

Pretentious philosophical post

The insoluble problem of human existence is defining its goal, its direction, its purpose. The great minds of our species sparked with electric impulses, neural pathways connecting in hitherto unnoticed ways, as their owners wrestled with their membership of this elite caste called humanity, and the consequences of such an association for the activity of the independent brain.

What separates our cognitive biology, in tissue terms, from that of the so-called lower animals, is well known to our psychologists. We have a larger brain in proportion to body size. This, from a purely biological perspective, tells one all there is to know about the mystery of human consciousness. Darwin tells us in The Descent Of Man that “No one, I presume, doubts that the large proportion which the size of man's brain bears to his body, compared to the same proportion in the gorilla or orang, is closely connected with his mental powers.” That, then, may well describe why we have intelligence. We are even beginning to learn from which segments of the brain certain actions and ideas are controlled; the prefrontal cortex, to take a simple example, governs the prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and complex decision making, it is hypothesized. These are known as executive functions: an ironic title, given that they seem all too frequently absent from our senior businessmen and political leaders.

Nevertheless, there is much we do not, and, many would say, cannot, know about the human consciousness. What is inbuilt, what comes from the environment outside – are we at source as bees in a hive or the empty hard drive of a shiny MacBook? Whence comes compassion, whence hatred, whence love? In what sense is there a target for our existence – service to a higher conscience, devotion to an ideal or ideology, or the elimination of worldsuck, perhaps? These questions can be assessed, say the scientists, by their emotionless, empirical method. But there is, it seems, a deeper meaning under the purely measurable, further complexities that underpin the human psyche. Here exists the difference between merely electrocuting flesh and bones, and creating what Mary Shelley’s tale calls “the modern Prometheus”.

A newly created true Man, were such possible, would have more than cells, tissues, blood and mucus – as hidden within the physical cage sits the metaphysical other, the unknowable soul, the undistillable essence of humanity.  Such a concept cannot be understood by a rock, or a table, or a pencil, for precisely the reason that such objects lack a soul of their very own. Without any way of attesting that one lives, one cannot live. Cogito ergo sum, it would seem. When the writers of the Enlightened Age told us that the new extra-human science could explain away superstitious notions of love, God, spirit, they gave up understanding what life means to those that live it. Our goal must be to die without wasting the brief span of breaths and heartbeats on impossibilities; to drive forward the boundaries of understanding, yes, but always to understand that at the centre of our humanity lies a thing, an idea, an essence, that elevates us into sentience, and, as far is it is possible to tell, into a position of free will, of power over our biological instincts, and of liberty to live as beings, and as thinkings, within this universe of our own minds.

NOTE: I am not a psychologist, nor in fact any kind of academic. If the science is wrong, so be it; the philosophy is mine and mine alone.

The monarchy, part one

It is a common misconception, among non-British people, that we're all fascinated by, and in love with, the monarchy. Many (by which I mean a very small number, because my internationalism is something that I need to work on) non-British people have said to me something along the lines of "do you go and drink tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace? Have you seen the Crown jewels? Isn't it a fairytale?" The answers to these questions, by the way, in reverse order, are, "no, not really", "yes", and "of course not, you blithering fool". (It's worth pointing out that this is actually made up, but go with it. I'm going somewhere, you'll see.) However, to a great extent this is cultural assumption and stereotype, and so there isn't really anything significant to read into it. Furthermore, the extent to which this is meaningful is very little - to most foreigners, the importance of the monarchy as a concept stretches about as far as tourism and some dollars and yen for the Exchequer.

On the other hand, it is rather more disturbing when the great British people seem to be wilfully rejecting any kind of rational debate into the issue of whether having a monarchy is actually appropriate, democratic or even legitimate. Three facets of this debate infuriate me. Let's deal with them in turn, by the process of male-dominant primogeniture if you insist.

Firstly, it came to my attention this week that it is actually forbidden to criticise the royals or their institution in Parliament. Now, OK, this takes some getting used to. There's this building, right, where people go and discuss matters of great urgency to the nation in order to get their political views into legislation. Excellent idea! One of the few things we Brits can be proud of is the exportation of democracy to the rest of the civilised world. But there's an issue. This week in Parliament, former Foreign Office minister Chris Bryant MP asked whether the disgraceful conduct of the Duke of York (porcine bloke, arrogant, loudmouth, altogether an arse) would be grounds for calling for his resignation as the UK's Special Trade Representative, a job which involves going round the world buttering up diplomats and politicians so we can flog stuff at them. Perfectly legitimate question. I'll let you guess what happened next, based on the normal rules of parliamentary procedure.

a) The Speaker took note of his comment and promised to arrange a debate on the subject
b) The Speaker took note of his comment and promised to deliver Bryant's concerns on the matter to the relevant minister.
c) The Speaker took note of his comment and promised to allow other hon. Members to talk on the issue.

Taken your guess?

No, you're all wrong! It's actually d) The Speaker took issue with his comment and forcibly told him that all references to the royals in the house should be "brief, sparing and respectful" and refused to let debate continue. I'll let you digest that.

This is a democratic house where people discuss social issues. Check. Free speech is a right in a civilised society. Check. People are elected to try to make the world a better place. Check.

So why in the name of all that's liberal can't we even debate this issue in a democratic house! This is a national disgrace - all that talk of liberty and equality is just arse-gas, it seems - us poor plebs should know our place and not question our betters, gawd bless 'er Majesty.

Good Christ! (Let's not forget that the established church is headed by the Queen herself. It doesn't take an Archbishop to work out the problems that causes...)

So. We have this situation, where 20% of the British people are unable to express their concerns about the monarchy in the elected House of Commons. OK, so. Where next? Yeah, the media.

In part two of this angry rant, we consider the role of the newspapers and telly in this national shitpile. Until then, keep warm, keep happy and keep well.