Deadwood

100% true: in a recent episode of Jedward's Big Adventure on CBBC the following dialogue took place between the Jedward monkeys:

Jedward 1: "Yo bro, you're goin' down like the sunrise!"

Jedward 2: "Oh yeah? Well the sun ain't even out today 'cos it's too cloudy!"

It's saying something when even my 6 year old son turns to me and proclaims, "Word up, pater, but I swear to God the British Broadcasting Corporation is dumbing down kid's television."

And it got me to thinking that perhaps the Jedward twins are like a viral idiocy genome that is slowly spreading across the UK via HD cable signals, deliberately targeting and infecting our kids and corrupting their synapses so that in a mere generation's time George W Bush will be seen via the readjusted lens of History as a politician of Einsteinian proportions. The Jedwards are a virus. A virus with the big-eyed baby seal look of a stranded three-legged puppy dog and the asexual physiognomy of a Ken Barbie doll. They appear to be so harmless we just don't bother to defend ourselves. They are the perfect storm.

The only effective vaccine is a potentially lethal dose of cynicism. It's either cure society or kill yourself. Compared to the alternative that has to be a win-win.

Preamble over, onto the main thrust of this post. What if the Jedward virus started to manifest itself in other entertainment settings? Movies and the like?

Imagine The Twilight Saga (and I accept I may have lost most of my readership right here) with Bella Swan perpetually mooning over Jedward Cullen and his inability to consummate their relationship. I say "inability" not "refusal" out of some half-assed outdated Christian belief system where having sex out of wedlock leads to eternal damnation (and the production of children whose innocent state is revered in Christianity as a virtue worth emulating). No. The Jedwards can't have sex because (a) they are not sexually mature enough (both physically and mentally) and (b) they can't stay focused long enough to maintain even a half-mast erection.

Jedward 1: "Oh Bella, you make me feel all tingly down below, girlfriend."

Jedward 2: "Me too, boyfriend. She's a hottie, ain't she?"

Jedward 1: "Oh she is boyfriend. But who's gonna go first because if we both do it at the same time it'll be like doing it with ourselves and it'll all be gross and stuff and our mammy said we shouldn't do that again because it'll be like masturbating with ourselves but worse 'cos it'll be like you doing it to me as me and me doing it to you as you and I'll end up with all your warts and hairy palms like joke monster gloves."

Jedward 2: "Ooh I just love joke monster gloves. Let's go get some! We could play a joke on Bella and pretend we're wolves or something and then pounce on her in the forest and really screw with her already questionable emotional state..."

Or what about Jedward Scissorhands: our poor Jedward twins are artificially created in a weird Walt Disney Frankenstein experiment out in the American sticks but their creator dies before he can finish making their hands (and their brains). So our hapless boys fashion hands for themselves out of scissors and knives and other equipment they find lying around in a gentleman's barbershop and become known as Jedward Scissorhands. Unfortunately they are so stupid they can't even get jobs as letter-openers in a Home For Paraplegics and so starve to death because I really don't want to mess with my fragile psyche by thinking up a happy ending for them.

Or finally ('cos I'm already scraping the barrel here) they morph into a weird living dichotomy of Edward Woodward and become Jedward Woodward, The Equalizer. They decided to live a life helping the little people (you and me, as opposed to Leprechauns) and with that in mind put an advert in the local paper: "Odds against you? Need help? Call the Equalizer. 212 555 4200". Only the newspaper they put the advert in is The Bet and they soon find themselves receiving death threats from all the irate gamblers who have lost fortunes based on the boys' sage advice to bet against "the sun rising tomorrow 'cos it's just too damned cloudy."

And breathe.

Bile vented.

Thank you for listening.

No Risk Natalie Portman

What does that even mean? No risk Natalie Portman? As a subject line for a spam email, I have to say, it has tempted me several times now to click on its innocent looking little icon to see what it’s all about – even at the risk of finding a huge viral payload thrusting itself into my computer’s unsuspecting orifice. But then again it does say “no risk” so maybe the senders are being genuinely open-handed and there is no virus...? Just a take-it or leave-it sales pitch which I can take advantage of or bin as I see fit.

As a hook it certainly works better than the other emails I get, the ones whose subject line is “Dear ,”. Yes, you read that right. They can’t even be arsed to extrapolate my real actual name which is probably invisibly appended to all my email data somehow anyway without me knowing. They just address me as Dear comma. How insulting. Such emails get maliciously deleted without my interest being pricked even in the slightest.

But no risk Natalie Portman...

Now that is tempting.

But what does it mean?

Are they offering me unfettered access to Natalie Portman without danger of her security gurus ventilating me with their full metal jacket slugs or tasering my testicles to the point where I ejaculate DC current? And if that is indeed the case what are the precise parameters of the access? Am I being permitted access to her undoubtedly beautiful mind and intellect or just her naked, ripe, physically-pulsing-with-vitality body?

Because much as a platonic discussion about the acting profession over a Costa latte would undoubtedly be edifying for us both I’ll take the body.

I’m a red blooded male after all. What do you expect?

And apparently it’s no risk. So I’m presuming she’s going to handle the contraception side of things and is also as clean as a whistle down there at the interactive, fully immersive, game playing end. And I take it there’ll be no unpleasant comeback either (no, that isn’t a euphemism – dirty!) – no public criticisms of my performance or selling my bedroom secrets to some scurrilous tabloid. We’re going to have a contract and everything; be nice to each other and then be nice to each other in the post-coital niceness stage as well. No mugging each other in the press. No exposés. The wife need never know. Nor my mother. Nor you. Just me and Nat sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g.

All safe as houses.

Except there must be some risk, mustn’t there? If you stop and think about it. I can’t be the only person getting this scintillating offer of unbridled passionate access to Natalie Portman. I bet they’ve sent hundreds of those emails out. Thousands. God. It’s no wonder we haven’t seen Ms Portman in a film for ages – she’s permanently entertaining email recipients who want to enjoy no risk adult fun with her. Well, all that no risk adult fun greatly increases the chances of risk, doesn’t it? It’s like a pyramid scheme of jeopardy. Stands to reason. Even if she showered after every rendezvous that’s a lot of, you know, bacterial risk build-up.

But maybe that’s the marketing scam behind the email? Some commercial deal with an industrial condom manufacturer? Or penicillin?

Hmm. Suddenly my pleasant evening in a love hotel with the brunette starlet is looking less attractive. The odds are suddenly stacking up away from no risk and into considerable risk. And that’s before we get into the increased chances of bumping into one or two of the other no-risk-love-jockeys either on their way to or on their way from their own private Natalie Portman assignation. That would be awkward. What if one of them was your dad? Or your boss? Your excuse of being off work with flu would hardly be validated by that experience. So now, not only are you risking an STD but also the sack. Great. Cheers, Nat. You’d have to be out of this bloody world to risk all that.

You know what? The more I think about all this the more I think this whole offer is a load of absolute rubbish. No risk? They can’t possibly substantiate that.

I think I’ll stick with the wife.

I’m not even going to think about the No Risk Oprah Winfrey email.

Survival Of The Fittest

So are we still evolving?

This was the question posed by the BBC’s Horizon on Tuesday night (apologies to my non-UK readers). I don’t often watch Horizon but I did this week because, as you will have surmised by the many posts on this subject that I have published on this ‘ere blog, our evolution as a species is a subject that regularly keeps me awake at night and had nothing at all whatsoever to do with the fact that this week’s show was presented by flame-haired, curvy, science ingénue, Alice Roberts who, according to my wife, I have a “thing” for.

Ha! As if. Ahem.

So are we still evolving?

Well, then we look at the behaviour exhibited by Wayne Rooney, Colonel Gaddafi and Bible bashers in the mid-west of the USA, it would be fair to assume that no, we are not. If anything we have entered an evolutionary cul-de-sac or, quite possibly, are returning to single celled amoebas one brain cell at a time.

But this, of course, is just the cynical blog writer in me talking and isn’t factually true. The gorgeously honey-voiced, Dr Alice said so. More or less.

We are still evolving as a species. In fact we are changing completely as a species. Us folk today are technically a different form of human being than our ancestors were a thousand years ago.

With the amazing advances in technology that have revolutionized our existence and affected the existence of practically every other living thing on the planet some have posited the theory that natural selection as a process is dead. It has stopped. We have somehow removed ourselves from its melting pot.

This is not true. Natural selection is still occurring – just perhaps not at the life or death, cutting edge of evolution that it once inhabited. Our species is no longer being shaped by the “survival of the fittest”. The weak not only survive in our society now but also survive long enough and ably enough to pass on their genes to the next generation. We also, through our grasp of genetics and embryo manipulation, can select the traits of our future generations ourselves and not leave it up to the good old fashioned Darwinian process we’ve all come to know and love.

But this does not mean that evolution has stopped or that we have freed ourselves from its reins. Evolution is driven by the dialogue all species unconsciously have with their environment and each other. Sure we have changed our own environment, made it more comfortable and almost dove-tailed it to our needs – mauled it almost into an image of our own likeness – but that does not mean that the environment is still not working on us in ways that we cannot yet perceive.

And also, perhaps more pertinently, we have the evolution of other life forms on this planet to consider. They impinge on us very directly sometimes and the effects of this may well drive our own evolution in ways that could be sudden, drastic and unimaginable in their end results. Viruses evolve a lot quicker than we do. No sooner do we come up with a vaccine against them than they evolve in response and we find ourselves dealing with a virus that has suddenly become highly resistant to human control.

It is not beyond the bounds of reason that a particularly nasty pandemic could one day make a good stab at wiping us all out. But as the programme posits, should such an event occur, there may well be some survivors. Some survivors whose genetic make-up contains a previously useless and overlooked genetic anomaly which suddenly renders them immune from the new virus. It is these survivors whose genetic code would be carried forth into the future generations of our species and change its course forever. The evolutionary process – the survival of the fittest – would once again claim ascendency over our arrogant attempts to control our own destiny.

So. In short: we are all of us still evolving. Even Wayne Rooney.

And that single fact just blows my mind.

Just like Dr Alice.