Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Mad rogues and Chinamen
Scientists from two European universities have postulated that the human brain can’t get any cleverer without driving its owner nuts. Too much grey matter in the skull, they say, overloads the emotional circuits and produces a personality that veers between the obsessive and the diabolical. That’s why modern humans are no smarter, on average, than Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.
This theory clearly has grains of truth. All the super-villains James Bond had to deal with were fiendishly intelligent and mad as hatters. Take Goldfinger, for example. He had 007 just where he wanted him, shackled to a worktop with his legs apart and a laser beam closing in on his groin. Everyone thought Bond’s testicles were toast, but Goldfinger spared him at the last minute and revealed the details of his insidious master-plan. He then allowed Bond to connive with his dolly-birds and turn the tables on him, to the point where he got sucked out of his own aircraft. The fat git was plainly bonkers.
When I mentioned this scientific conjecture to the manager of the safari camp, he made the following sceptical observation:
“If it’s really true, how come clever races like the Chinese don’t have an unusually high proportion of evil geniuses?”
He had a point, but not an unanswerable one.
“Obviously, there are cultural factors at play,” I said. “The Chinese are into feng shui and yoga, which bring about a natural balance between the yin and yang. If you discipline your mind with these oriental techniques, it’s not so easy to go off your rocker.”
“I don’t believe in all that stuff,” he replied. “The Chinese have their own unique brand of madness. Just look at Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. You don’t make noises and faces like that if you’re sound of mind.”
This inspired me to do my own research on the Mad Chinaman syndrome. The first case that caught my eye involves a man who does headstands on a metal spike. His name is Li Xin and he’s a former kung fu master who evidently got bored of giving people flying kicks. He then spent years perfecting his new stunt, which created an abominable hole at the top of his skull. His behaviour seems amazingly barmy on the face of it, but then I noticed that each headstand only lasts for ten seconds. This suggests it’s a party trick rather than a lifestyle choice, and he’s probably quite normal when he’s not upside down. Could there be health benefits too? I wouldn’t rule it out.
Then I came across a young fellow called Peter Chao, who lives in Vancouver and posts video clips of himself on You Tube. Chao is clearly very angry about a lot of things, but is he technically insane? I don’t think the ranting alone is sufficient evidence. However, he does have a habit of taking his shirt off for no reason, revealing the most hairless chest I’ve ever seen on a male primate. If that isn’t a sign of lunacy, I don’t know what is.
Labels: Chinamen, Goldfinger, human brain, madness
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Barking up the wrong tree
How disappointing to hear that an American Mom got sent to the loony bin for impersonating her 15-year-old daughter. This continual blurring of the line between madness and eccentricity will cast a blight over human society. All the 34-year-old woman did was go back to school so she could become a cheerleader. There’s nothing remotely potty about that and I can’t see how she was inconveniencing anyone. On the contrary, I bet her bodily gyrations inspired the beefy footballers far more than the usual girlie whirling. In a heavy contact sport you need the curvy flesh of a mature woman to encourage the home team to get stuck in.
I never call anyone mad unless their urges have a self-destructive edge. A good example of a real nutter was that German fellow who agreed to let a cannibal eat him. After dining together on his severed penis (no more than an appetiser, one would assume), the cannibal killed him and feasted on his body. So apart from the penis hors d’oeuvre, the victim was plainly unable to enjoy whatever pleasure there was in the act. That put the seal on his condition as far as I was concerned. A lunatic in his right mind would have demanded that the cannibal eat him alive.
People often assume that the tyrants of human history were mad, but I reckon this was rarely the case. A lot of them, like Caligula, were just plain bad, and a few others had some physical illness that made them act strangely. Take King George III of England for example. He’s known as the mad king, but he actually had a rare disease that turned his urine blue. I know for a fact that passing blue water makes humans cantankerous, because I once had dealings with an old gypsy woman who briefly suffered from this condition. She was a prickly character from the start to be honest, but once her piss turned blue she started cackling like a demented witch. Fortunately I managed to resolve my differences with her peacefully.
If you enjoy listening to poppycock, the most entertaining mental disorder is paranoia. I remember sitting alone in Dr Whipsnade’s lounge when I was joined by his houseguest, an antique dealer by trade.
“Rainy weather,” I said, making polite conversation.
“I like the rain,” he replied, “it gives me the chance to stock up on fresh water.”
“Isn’t your house connected to the mains supply?” I asked.
He then gave me a vehement sermon on the dangers of drinking tap water. He said that it was doped with chemicals to make men infertile and women insatiable. This allowed select breeding males, most of them freemasons, to impregnate women at their leisure and populate the next generation with their offspring. “Have you ever seen a freemason drink tap water?” he asked rhetorically. “They all buy the bottled stuff from Tesco.”
I thought it best not to argue with him. These delusional types have a rebuttal for every critique and I didn’t want him to accuse me of being a freemason.
“I am both fascinated and disturbed by your discourse,” I said truthfully. “If you don’t mind, I would now like to watch a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon on TV.”
“If you’re turning on that contraption I’m off to the conservatory,” he said. “People who watch television don’t realise that the television is also watching them.”
This assertion made me feel like Foghorn Leghorn – that rooster was always dealing with creatures crazier than himself.
Labels: cannibals, cheerleaders, Foghorn Leghorn, madness
