Army of Lovers

If only Haddaway had read Die Liebe und wie sich Leidenschaft Erklart by Bas Kast, a German journalist that tries to explain everything that science knows about Love. It's a fascinating book, in that it manages to strip away all the layers of poetry and anecdotal evidence to prove that it is a horrible debilitating mental illness.

MRI scans show the same kind of activity in the brain as starving people and drug addicts have. I can't find a good picture, but trust me it looks like those "your brain on drugs" T-shirts from the late eighties. After casually mentioning bizarre subjects like biological warfare between sperm themselves, he moves on to what is the central idea; Love is pretty much the same as any other form of madness. A mix of evolutionary pressures, behavioral psychological quirks and brain chemistry imbalances.

The U.S. army apparently considered it as a weapon quite recently. The Idea was that an irresistible homosexual attraction among enemy soldiers would be a blow to morale. How the times have changed. The Theban commander Gorgidas created "the army of lovers" a.k.a. the Theban Band in 378 b.c., expecting them to be better fighters than the average because of their love for each other.
Like these guys, but less camp.



Love is a destructive force. It turns you into a gibbering idiot, more than willing to trade your dignity and freedom for snippets of attention from a fantasy figure that only exists in your own brain anyway. You can live a long and healthy life with a pet as well.

There's no reason to expect that your fulfillment as a human being depends on anybody else. The whole notion of Romantic Love is aggressively marketed as the solution to all your problems. When was the last time you saw a film or TV show or read a book that didn't have it as at least a subplot? A cynic might even say that it's the new opiate of the masses. I wouldn't say that, of course, but then I'm a Romantic.

Disposable Pigs

Feminism's fundaments are shaking a bit. The ridiculous infighting that's been going on for years still hasn't lead anywhere or proved anything. Christian women have been claiming that women are happier as housewives. New scientific research is looking into the bizarre new field of gender differences. Looks like men really are better at reading maps.



There really is a fundamental difference between men's brains and women's. Marianne Legato claims that the testosterone bombardment that male fetuses endure in the womb changes the set-up of their brains irrevocably and is responsible for not wanting to talk about relationships, never asking for directions, leaving the toilet seat up and all the other old chestnuts female comedians are so fond of. Her book sounds like a 'hilarious' tip from Oprah's book club, but is actually quite interesting.

Oddly enough, this whole field of study also has an explanation for why there are so few female geniuses. Various tests have proven that women score better on intelligence tests than men, on average.But this is mainly because almost every women in the class scored a little above or below the average result, with very little variation at all. The male students scored in the entire possible range, with a lot more students with perfect scores and a lot more students with the lowest possible score.

That weird Y-chromosome is the only possible culprit. It's mostly filled with crap, which is why there are more men in jail, and more male Nobel prize winners. In evolutionary terms men are useless after sex and they are perfect for all kinds of weird genes that would only get in the way of taking care of babies. Desmond Morris, of Naked Ape fame, even believes that the male lifestyle is perfect for Nobel prize winners. The borderline autism needed to become the best in a given subject and then destroy it and rebuild it from the ground up doesn't go well with being a responsible adult, it seems.

Men seem tragically doomed in every way. There really is no need for them to do any of the things they do. The fact that inventing a printing press also incidentally helps the survival of genes is a testament to Nature's monomaniacal dedication to a single principle.

Late-breaking news; Men are useful for something besides pickle jars. Scientists have been stumped about human longevity for years. Human lifespans are longer than those of other mammals, even taking our cushy lifestyle into consideration. All the other Mammals have a so-called 'wall of death' after female menopause. Human societies, based primarily on the transfer of information from one generation to the next, have a long history of pairing older men with younger women. This is a bizarre tactic for most other animals, for whom the elderly are far from viable. This self-imposed selection process has bred longevity into the human race, ensuring the survival of human beings of both sexes well after the female menopause. So dirty old men are the key element to their own survival. You've got to love Nature, every time you think you know what culture is, it stretches the boundaries again.

War paint

Last month, most of the Dutch magazines had labels on all of their photos that had been manipulated with Photoshop. This was part of a campaign to make people aware of the unrealistic beauty ideal portrayed in the media. It started with a documentary by Sunny Bergman and has now moved towards suing the cosmetics and fashion industry.

What exactly they hope to achieve with this is unclear. A kind of perpetually sexless society where everyone just wears burlap sacks? A realistic beauty ideal? What the hell does that even mean? Aren't ideals quintessentially unrealistic? Isn't the whole beauty ideal a sham anyway? Look at the enormous range of porn available. Call it fetish or niche, but it proves that there is no uniform taste.

Except for one thing; fertility. That's actually what make-up is all about. Apparently, it's a way to fake fertility cues in the face, like red, full lips, dewy doe-eyes, etc. The perfect camouflage for a woman who doesn't want to be out of step with a world full of fertile women in magazines. Long legs, big breasts and long, lustrous hair, all useful attributes for a potential mate; Fast, plenty of food for offspring, good diet and grooming.

Women are the ones who insist on unrealistic representations. Any woman can and will give you an accurate rating of all the other women she knows. Women spend a lot of time criticising each other and now the system of criticism they built. Fashion magazines are filled with beautiful women, yet men seem remarkably reluctant to read them. "10 ways to throw up without your man noticing." might have something to do with it.


Men don't notice the difference when you've gained five pounds, they're hard pressed to notice you've gained ten. Or lost that amount, for that matter. So, is it the industry's fault for marketing to women's fears and insecurities? Maybe, but mostly it's women's own fault for caring so much about other people's opinions, especially if they're coming from an advertisement.