(Above: Ruben Bolling on boingboing sounding more sensible than Paul Sheehan on the matter of Charlie Sheen. Who could have thunk it? Click to enlarge, or find original here).
Lately the pond has been dancing towards delirium, a condition usually associated with too much reading of commentariat columnists, but not helped by the ignominy of being rear ended and picking up a virus, all in the same space time continuum.
And these days anti-biotics aren't the super drug they used to be, or we'd be using them all the time against infections from the commentariat ...
(For mature or sheltered readers who don't know how Twitter works, it's basically another way of sending group emails.)
Until he concludes with this:
In the same way that a home video of Paris Hilton having sex in thigh-high boots made her a superstar instead of ending her career, Charlie Sheen's brand just got much bigger via the medium of brutal honesty.
Still, Monday is an important day, as we lurch from our bed to assert "eine Sprache, ein Gesetz, einer Kultur."
Others might know this as Paul Sheehan's resounding instruction "one language, one law, one culture", as laid out in Loose lips on sunken ships expose cultural disharmony, but frankly it sounds so much better in the language my family stopped speaking because someone mentioned the war.
We were inspired to celebrate these words once again by Nick Possum's Paul Sheehan and Scott Morrison: dog-whistling in the gutter.
Nick seemed to think that the language evoked memories of Vienna, and the pan-Germans before the war, but we've become quite attached to the phrases, stomping about in jackboots, and adding such quaint variations as "eine Zeitgung" and "ein Kolumnist", and even "Kolumnist einter Zeitung," when not demanding "eine Meinung", "ein Volk", "einen Blick", "ein Gedanke", and "eine Weltanschauung."
Indeedy, thanks to Google translate, you can 'ein' or 'eine' in front of a word, and have your very own handy phrase to mindlessly parrot until kingdom come (no warranty is offered that the kingdom may indeed come).
But what happens when you type in "television star" to the Google machine? Eek, it comes out "TV-Star".
Quick, have another go, type in "one television star". Phew, that's better, it comes out "einen Fernsehere Sterne" ... which sounds much more pure and German.
By golly you can see why Berlin Interior Minister Eckart Werthebach set up a debate about how the mighty German language was being ruined by a flood of English words, and needed actual legislation to save its purity and perfection. (it's here at Spiegel Online, helped along by the Google translator as Beautiful German by law!).
And after you see how Google does over German on its way to English, you too will be seeking ethnic purity and purity of language and ... well perhaps just virginal purity generally ... because the last thing we need are signs of the decline and fall of western civilisation, like that television star Charlie Sheen ...
Oops, did we get that wrong.
Naturally Captain Grumpy, nee Captain Perversity, nee Captain "what have you got so I can be agin it" Sheehan is right behind Charlie Sheen, and so it comes to pass in his Straight talk from a good-time Charlie (warning: forced television commercial viewing attached to story, courtesy of those crypto-fascist bastards at Fairfax, whereby if you don't actively stop it, it plays).
Yep, it seems that Charlie isn't just an addled rambler, but a straight talker, and so it seems we've all missed the Charlie Sheen point:
Sheen has been questioned, quoted and milked by a news media which has portrayed him as a narcissist on a kamikaze dive into self-absorbed self-humiliation.
That may or may not be true but it misses a larger point. People respond to brutal honesty, especially when wrapped in eccentric monomania.
That may or may not be true but it misses a larger point. People respond to brutal honesty, especially when wrapped in eccentric monomania.
Brutal honesty? Which goes together with eccentric monomania. Which is to say, it seems, brutal eccentric monomaniacal honesty, and never mind what the fuck it means ....
Can we therefore say that Sheehan is being brutally stupid? In a healthy, eccentric, monomaniacal way. And does brutal honest monomaniacal stupidity trump mere brutal honesty?
Like some hapless groupie writhing in the pleasures of eccentric monomania, Sheehan celebrates the way Charlie has tweeted his way to over a million followers in just a very short time. And then he ladles out a doozy:
Um, for mature or sheltered readers who don't know how the intertubes twitter thingie works, and rely on Paul Sheehan for technical advice, how can we put this in a delicate, sensitive way ... basically you're fucked ...
Couldn't Sheehan at least have mentioned SMS if he wanted a tortured analogy? Or just referred people to the twitter wiki page, here, instead of seeking to sounding like a smart arse simpleton?
Meanwhile, Sheehan constructs the rest of his column by the simple expedient of quoting a lot of Charlie Sheen's recent interview, and detailing recent events surrounding Sheen. Fish monger say hello to gossip monger.
It's about as slack as Alan Ramsey in the good old days, and it gives Sheehan a kind of ersatz sense of seeming to know what he's talking about when it comes to television star Kultur ...
In the same way that a home video of Paris Hilton having sex in thigh-high boots made her a superstar instead of ending her career, Charlie Sheen's brand just got much bigger via the medium of brutal honesty.
Paris Hilton a superstar? In what alternate universe? Does turning up in a couple of telemovies or burning down the studio while making House of Wax help brand a superstar? Has the English language now become so debased, so impure, so abused by by the misuses of the likes of Sheehan that we must now use Andy Warholisms as if they actually contain meaning? (yes, Mary Woronov was once hailed by Warhol as a superstar, here for more).
We much prefer descriptors like socialite, or celebrity, or media personality, or hapless twit, or gormless git.
As for Charlie Sheen's brand of brutal honesty, it's about time Sheehan caught up with what a blown brain looks and sounds like. No harm in any of that, if that happens to be your kind of poison - after all we love the Dude in The Big Lebowski - but the way Sheehan celebrates Sheen's recent outings, it's as if Sheen was caught in an impressive rapping truth machine, laying honesty out there ...
As a result, it's hard to work out who's more deluded, Sheen or Sheehan, as Captain Perversity once more swims against the tide, just so he can show he be down wit it, and wit Charlie ...
What we would like to see is Sheehan transformed into a second or third AD for the day, and given the job of dragging Sheen out of his trailer and on to set to do an honest day's work, if you can imagine a couple of squillion as honest reward for being a dickhead in a sitcom ...
Still, it's changed our world view at the pond. Today when visiting the doctor we're going to demand "ein Medikament", "ein Heilmittel" (cure), and "eine Philosophie" ... which is to say "eine Philosophie für die Ewigkeit".
And there is an upside.
If Sheehan can manage to sound like a goose while scribbling about Charlie Sheehan (or did I mean Paul Sheen, or is there some strange cross-bred creature now lurching across the tabloids known as Herr Glanz, because a Sheen is also a sheen), it surely shows how he can manage to sound like a goose on any subject, be it a single culture, a single language, or a single law. Or a single TV star ...
It's called the law of "brutaler Ehrlichkeit", which to be brutally honest, means once a dickhead always a dickhead, or as we like to say in German - remembering that if you type in 'dickhead' all the impure German translator will offer you is 'dickhead' - einmal ein Schwachkopf immer ein Arschloch ....
Now by golly, if that hasn't upstaged Charlie Sheen for a rambling rant ... with absolutely no meaning to extract ... then the pond and Paul Sheehan have failed in their duty.
Excuse me, time to get back on the meds ... but not before a special mention of the reader who delivered this bon mot:
What a sad loser!
And Charlie Sheen's not much better...
And Charlie Sheen's not much better...
Sob, the entire loon post above shortened to two sweet lines with zinger. Ka boom. Must get back to the meds ... and zen Koans ...
(Below: eine Karikature).
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