Burns Night (spectral) Analysis
For all those interested, here's a copy of my 'Toast To The
Lassies' at the research Club's Burns Night; one of the few bits of
anything approaching real stand-up I've done in ages. Went down ok,
though....
Burns Night - 2006 - Toast to the Lassies
Germaine Greer, the world-renowned feminist, once commented that men were such primitive creatures that they are incapable of buying their own underwear. With this in mind, I’d like to ask Sarah to ask me when I last bought my own underwear.
Sarah: “Iain, when was the last time you bought your own underwear?”
I have never bought my own underwear.
There is, however, a reason for this. I am a man, and I think like men think. And ladies, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but when we see you carrying around a bag from an underwear shop, like Ann Summers, La Senza, or Agent Provocateur, we are all mentally undressing you, picturing you in the saucy gear, and most likely marking you out of ten. Just so you know.
Incidentally, Ann Summers got themselves into the Burns Night business this year, urging their customers to celebrate 'Carpet Burns Night', with posters showing comely, lingerie-clad ladies sporting strips of elastoplast on various parts of their anatomy, hinting at abrasions sustained by energetic action on the axminster.
Fair play to the shop though, there was a literary aspect to the campaign: a 10% discount if you can quote a bit of Burns poetry: I recommend trying a line or two from the poem entitled, “Nine Inch Will Please a Lady”, which is a genuine Burns poem, which admittedly also does sound like a spam email for penis enlargement.
Therein lies the rub of my speech: men are starting to feel the pressures of conforming to a mythical “norm” just as much as women are nowadays. As an example, I found myself strolling down Buchanan St. some time ago, only to find myself confronted by some market-researcher freak with the sort of tousled mullet last seen when Limahl was top of the pops. He asked me the following question:
“What products do you use?”
“Oh, I dunno: pens, books… ball bearings. All sorts.”
He said, “No, I meant beauty products.”
"Well, you needed to be more specific, and less of a total arse."
I’ve since come across a bit of research (well, to be fair, a copy of The Sun), which stated that (and I quote) “the average man now moisturises daily.” Speaking as a man whose idea of sophisticated grooming involved dipping a sock in the toilet to swab my armpits in the morning, this came as a bit of a shock. I mean, where did that survey take place? The Kingdom of Nivea? The Sultanate of Olay? Nope, right here in Britain, apparently. And to prove it, the paper had gathered together a set of image-conscious males who blow far to much time and money on manicures, spray-on tans, diets, masochistic workout regimes, and even ‘pectoral implant surgery’ (which is a tit-job to you and me) to resemble an exalted male ideal.
Really, it feels rubbish being a man at the minute, assuming you base your self-perception on the images pouring out at you from the media.
Take adverts: I don’t recall attending the meeting where it was decided that all male characters in adverts would henceforth be portrayed as pitiful figures of fun, but that’s what’s happened: every other commercial on TV seems to feature a sassy female rolling her eyes in dismay at the buffoonish antics of an imbecilic male. In advert-land, boyfriends and husbands are routinely ditched, cheated on, or, in the most offensive case, literally traded in at a dedicated showroom for a sleeker model.
Of course, the implicit message is as patronising to women as it is to men - it’s saying:
“Hey! You’re a modern woman, yeah? You’re cleverer than most men, right? Brilliant! Now buy this. Go on, ya cow - Buy it!”
The thing is, the insidious nature of all the chap-dissing that’s going on nowadays is beginning to have an effect on us blokes: take baldness. There seems to be no length nowadays that Elton John-a-like baldies who are insecure about their image will not go. Surgical implants for hair are all the rage, and while I’ve found myself ridiculing slap-headed, shiny-bonced, skull-flaunting cueballs in the past, I can’t help but empathise with them now, because all of us men are feeling the pinch of image-consciousness. Most say their discomfort stems from society’s obsession with looks, youth and vigour - in other words, the problem women have had to put up with for years - the sole difference is that it’s currently de rigeur to mock men who don’t conform to a mythical hunky norm. There’s no reason why a man smearing hair-growth lotion on his scalp should be any sadder than a woman rubbing anti-ageing moisturiser on her crow’s-feet, but he is.
And, by the way, just to show how ridiculous that is, here’s the text from an advert for a real ‘product’: Clinique’s Anti-Gravity Firming Lotion, which is marketed to women as preventing the inevitable downward effect of the ageing process:
“A lightweight oil-free formula helps firm up skin instantly and over time, to erase the look of lines as it tightens. Anti-Gravity Firming Lift Lotion by Clinique restores supple cushion to time-thinned skin.”
Of course it does.
There are some things generally known to science which do defy gravity: Planes, helicopters, hot-air balloons, missiles, space rockets.
Here are some examples of things which do not, generally speaking, defy gravity:
Magazines, biscuits, chocolates (not even Maltesers - sorry), and lotion.
Still, science has never been seen as a strong point of the lassies. They apparently rely on Jennifer Aniston to tell them when it’s coming.
They prefer to rely on their women’s intuition, which they have developed as an apparent rival to logical thought. Now, I know what you’re going to say, but I can back it up: we men may all be arrogant, war-mongerers, ruled by our trousers, but I’m willing to lay odds of 100-1 [lays 1p on table] that no man in the room has ever dialled up a premium-rate psychic phone-line. Furthermore, I have been of the receiving end of, but have never once tried to start or continue a conversation with any member of the opposite sex with the use of the following words:
“So… What’s your star-sign?”
Coward that I am, I always just replied ‘Leo’, but, in the back of my mind, there’s always been a little voice thinking, “She thinks the other planets in the solar system are actually Greek gods? Back away, Man, back away!”
The one time I actually did raise this with a girl, she became apoplectic: “Keep an open mind,” she said, “after all, all those planets and stars out there DO have force. They have gravity. Who’s to say that isn’t affecting us in some way?”
Fair enough, I thought, so the next time Venus rises in the house of Uranus, I suppose I might find myself innocently walking down the street when all of a sudden, thanks to the unavoidable gravitational pull of the stars, I’ll be forced to veer into a naughty video shop, or a casino, and then the effect of Mars on my arrogant, stubborn, Leonine competitive streak will find me sticking my hand in my wallet and throwing my student grant away on the roulette wheel. But when it inevitably comes up zero, it won’t be my fault. It was written in the stars.
Of course, astrology and mediums and psychics and all that jazz is wasted on me. I do have an open mind, but I leave it closed enough that my brain won’t fall out.
But if you’re not all new-age, how else do you appeal to the girls nowadays? Well, you could try being an Alpha-male. Leading female thinker, and author of feminist polemic “The Beauty Myth”, Naomi Wolf, was enlisted by Al Gore as an image consultant on the US Presidential Campaign in 2000. Her advice? Be more of an Alpha Male! Unleash the brooding sex panther within (this is Al Gore we’re talking about here)! John Kerry went duck-hunting on the same advice in 2004. At this rate, the States will be electing its leaders less on the basis of a debate than a fire-lit naked-wrestling competition. Still, they’ll probably make a better job of it that way.
As far as male-female relations go, though, being an Alpha-male is not without its drawbacks. Every moth drawn to the Alpha flame invariably gets burnt. They are generally successful boss-types, but they sprawl around like they’ve got two prickly hedgehogs instead of nether-regions, clearly consider murder when faced with promotion competitors, and intrinsically believe that all women are mere seconds away from dragging them off to the nearest cupboard for a quickie. At least you’ll still never catch them dialling up a premium-rate psychic phone-line.
So boys, what do we do? Do we continue down the same road, and join our female companions in the quest for lifestyle perfection? No way.
We need to save them from themselves; to steer the poor dears away from fashion-trends which are frankly insulting to womankind: example? “Yummy mummies.” The concept of saying the following to a new mum: “Don’t just lie there, it’s been two hours since you gave birth. Get on that treadmill now, or you’ll never ‘snap right back’ by the end of the frigging week.’ Society expects. Or rather, Women’s lifestyle magazines and celebrity-spotting shallowness expects. Ever read Heat magazine? Don’t, it’s vile: here’s a month’s worth of issues summed up in 4 sentences: “She’s too FAT. Wait, she’s too SKINNY! Or is she so utterly FANTASTIC it’s not true? No, she’s a SLAPPER. With SWEAT PATCHES.”
These magazines are to intelligent reportage what Posh and Becks’ wedding was to understated sophistication. And if only it was celebrities in the firing line. It’s not.
Because, they way things are going, even eating food is becoming too hard.
Here is some useful food advice: eat your greens or you’ll get big.
If only it stopped there. The current fad is for food advice spouted by people like ‘Dr.’ Gillian McKeith, who are turning healthy eating into the kind of mammoth task that would make Hercules say, “Sod that for a game of soldiers.” And anyway, most of these nutritional so-called doctors, Dr. Gillian included, received their Ph.D.s from the Quacky-Duck University, Land of Make-Believe, and so are about as real doctors as Dr. Dre or Dr. Fox.
Dr. Fox isn’t even a real fox.
So are you going to take her advice when, like the poor saps on her show, she puts you on a crash diet of organic brown rice, lentils, steamed carrots, tofu, twigs, bracken, soil and mulch? Are you going to take her seriously when she tells you that you must be an unhealthy eater because [NEWSFLASH] your poo smells bad? Of course not. I mean, what does hers smell like, pine-fresh? Probably, cos she’s been eating pine cones.
A look at Dr. Gillian’s official website and books reveals two things:
1) She is incapable of smiling naturally. She has a rictus-grimace that makes her look like she’s trying to poo out a pine-cone.
2) She has her own range of holier-than-thou health-food snacks, including (I kid you not) a “Living Food Love Bar”, which is designed to ‘nourish libido energy and feed love organs.’ Yes, feed love organs. I’m not sure whether or not you’re supposed to put it in your mouth. Especially after I saw the list of ingredients: potency-wood root, sprouted daikon seeds, ho shou wu leaves, wu wei zi berries, and catuaba bark. MM-mmm!
All these people should be stopped. If there truly is a battle of the sexes, then Gillian McKeith and her ilk are mercenary arms dealers milking the profits on the sidelines, content to humiliate both sides.
The thing is, boys, life would be utterly unbearable if we didn’t have our vices, be they ciggies, alcohol, chocolate biscuits, or whatever. And ok, astrology too. They all provide a brief respite from the trudging monotony of existence. Is that such a bad thing? Of course not. Bad habits are fun. So let’s not let the killjoys of the world get between us and the lassies, especially when we really all just want to have fun together. So let’s take a vow to avoid the unfair comparisons that lead to all this madness, and maybe the lassies’ll do the same to us… after taking a few well-earned centuries of revenge.
Until then, whenever you see an Ann Summers bag: it shall be your duty to immediately think “10 out of 10.” If only for effort.
To their continued, very good, and perfect-enough health:
Gentlemen: the Lassies!
Burns Night - 2006 - Toast to the Lassies
Germaine Greer, the world-renowned feminist, once commented that men were such primitive creatures that they are incapable of buying their own underwear. With this in mind, I’d like to ask Sarah to ask me when I last bought my own underwear.
Sarah: “Iain, when was the last time you bought your own underwear?”
I have never bought my own underwear.
There is, however, a reason for this. I am a man, and I think like men think. And ladies, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but when we see you carrying around a bag from an underwear shop, like Ann Summers, La Senza, or Agent Provocateur, we are all mentally undressing you, picturing you in the saucy gear, and most likely marking you out of ten. Just so you know.
Incidentally, Ann Summers got themselves into the Burns Night business this year, urging their customers to celebrate 'Carpet Burns Night', with posters showing comely, lingerie-clad ladies sporting strips of elastoplast on various parts of their anatomy, hinting at abrasions sustained by energetic action on the axminster.
Fair play to the shop though, there was a literary aspect to the campaign: a 10% discount if you can quote a bit of Burns poetry: I recommend trying a line or two from the poem entitled, “Nine Inch Will Please a Lady”, which is a genuine Burns poem, which admittedly also does sound like a spam email for penis enlargement.
Therein lies the rub of my speech: men are starting to feel the pressures of conforming to a mythical “norm” just as much as women are nowadays. As an example, I found myself strolling down Buchanan St. some time ago, only to find myself confronted by some market-researcher freak with the sort of tousled mullet last seen when Limahl was top of the pops. He asked me the following question:
“What products do you use?”
“Oh, I dunno: pens, books… ball bearings. All sorts.”
He said, “No, I meant beauty products.”
"Well, you needed to be more specific, and less of a total arse."
I’ve since come across a bit of research (well, to be fair, a copy of The Sun), which stated that (and I quote) “the average man now moisturises daily.” Speaking as a man whose idea of sophisticated grooming involved dipping a sock in the toilet to swab my armpits in the morning, this came as a bit of a shock. I mean, where did that survey take place? The Kingdom of Nivea? The Sultanate of Olay? Nope, right here in Britain, apparently. And to prove it, the paper had gathered together a set of image-conscious males who blow far to much time and money on manicures, spray-on tans, diets, masochistic workout regimes, and even ‘pectoral implant surgery’ (which is a tit-job to you and me) to resemble an exalted male ideal.
Really, it feels rubbish being a man at the minute, assuming you base your self-perception on the images pouring out at you from the media.
Take adverts: I don’t recall attending the meeting where it was decided that all male characters in adverts would henceforth be portrayed as pitiful figures of fun, but that’s what’s happened: every other commercial on TV seems to feature a sassy female rolling her eyes in dismay at the buffoonish antics of an imbecilic male. In advert-land, boyfriends and husbands are routinely ditched, cheated on, or, in the most offensive case, literally traded in at a dedicated showroom for a sleeker model.
Of course, the implicit message is as patronising to women as it is to men - it’s saying:
“Hey! You’re a modern woman, yeah? You’re cleverer than most men, right? Brilliant! Now buy this. Go on, ya cow - Buy it!”
The thing is, the insidious nature of all the chap-dissing that’s going on nowadays is beginning to have an effect on us blokes: take baldness. There seems to be no length nowadays that Elton John-a-like baldies who are insecure about their image will not go. Surgical implants for hair are all the rage, and while I’ve found myself ridiculing slap-headed, shiny-bonced, skull-flaunting cueballs in the past, I can’t help but empathise with them now, because all of us men are feeling the pinch of image-consciousness. Most say their discomfort stems from society’s obsession with looks, youth and vigour - in other words, the problem women have had to put up with for years - the sole difference is that it’s currently de rigeur to mock men who don’t conform to a mythical hunky norm. There’s no reason why a man smearing hair-growth lotion on his scalp should be any sadder than a woman rubbing anti-ageing moisturiser on her crow’s-feet, but he is.
And, by the way, just to show how ridiculous that is, here’s the text from an advert for a real ‘product’: Clinique’s Anti-Gravity Firming Lotion, which is marketed to women as preventing the inevitable downward effect of the ageing process:
“A lightweight oil-free formula helps firm up skin instantly and over time, to erase the look of lines as it tightens. Anti-Gravity Firming Lift Lotion by Clinique restores supple cushion to time-thinned skin.”
Of course it does.
There are some things generally known to science which do defy gravity: Planes, helicopters, hot-air balloons, missiles, space rockets.
Here are some examples of things which do not, generally speaking, defy gravity:
Magazines, biscuits, chocolates (not even Maltesers - sorry), and lotion.
Still, science has never been seen as a strong point of the lassies. They apparently rely on Jennifer Aniston to tell them when it’s coming.
They prefer to rely on their women’s intuition, which they have developed as an apparent rival to logical thought. Now, I know what you’re going to say, but I can back it up: we men may all be arrogant, war-mongerers, ruled by our trousers, but I’m willing to lay odds of 100-1 [lays 1p on table] that no man in the room has ever dialled up a premium-rate psychic phone-line. Furthermore, I have been of the receiving end of, but have never once tried to start or continue a conversation with any member of the opposite sex with the use of the following words:
“So… What’s your star-sign?”
Coward that I am, I always just replied ‘Leo’, but, in the back of my mind, there’s always been a little voice thinking, “She thinks the other planets in the solar system are actually Greek gods? Back away, Man, back away!”
The one time I actually did raise this with a girl, she became apoplectic: “Keep an open mind,” she said, “after all, all those planets and stars out there DO have force. They have gravity. Who’s to say that isn’t affecting us in some way?”
Fair enough, I thought, so the next time Venus rises in the house of Uranus, I suppose I might find myself innocently walking down the street when all of a sudden, thanks to the unavoidable gravitational pull of the stars, I’ll be forced to veer into a naughty video shop, or a casino, and then the effect of Mars on my arrogant, stubborn, Leonine competitive streak will find me sticking my hand in my wallet and throwing my student grant away on the roulette wheel. But when it inevitably comes up zero, it won’t be my fault. It was written in the stars.
Of course, astrology and mediums and psychics and all that jazz is wasted on me. I do have an open mind, but I leave it closed enough that my brain won’t fall out.
But if you’re not all new-age, how else do you appeal to the girls nowadays? Well, you could try being an Alpha-male. Leading female thinker, and author of feminist polemic “The Beauty Myth”, Naomi Wolf, was enlisted by Al Gore as an image consultant on the US Presidential Campaign in 2000. Her advice? Be more of an Alpha Male! Unleash the brooding sex panther within (this is Al Gore we’re talking about here)! John Kerry went duck-hunting on the same advice in 2004. At this rate, the States will be electing its leaders less on the basis of a debate than a fire-lit naked-wrestling competition. Still, they’ll probably make a better job of it that way.
As far as male-female relations go, though, being an Alpha-male is not without its drawbacks. Every moth drawn to the Alpha flame invariably gets burnt. They are generally successful boss-types, but they sprawl around like they’ve got two prickly hedgehogs instead of nether-regions, clearly consider murder when faced with promotion competitors, and intrinsically believe that all women are mere seconds away from dragging them off to the nearest cupboard for a quickie. At least you’ll still never catch them dialling up a premium-rate psychic phone-line.
So boys, what do we do? Do we continue down the same road, and join our female companions in the quest for lifestyle perfection? No way.
We need to save them from themselves; to steer the poor dears away from fashion-trends which are frankly insulting to womankind: example? “Yummy mummies.” The concept of saying the following to a new mum: “Don’t just lie there, it’s been two hours since you gave birth. Get on that treadmill now, or you’ll never ‘snap right back’ by the end of the frigging week.’ Society expects. Or rather, Women’s lifestyle magazines and celebrity-spotting shallowness expects. Ever read Heat magazine? Don’t, it’s vile: here’s a month’s worth of issues summed up in 4 sentences: “She’s too FAT. Wait, she’s too SKINNY! Or is she so utterly FANTASTIC it’s not true? No, she’s a SLAPPER. With SWEAT PATCHES.”
These magazines are to intelligent reportage what Posh and Becks’ wedding was to understated sophistication. And if only it was celebrities in the firing line. It’s not.
Because, they way things are going, even eating food is becoming too hard.
Here is some useful food advice: eat your greens or you’ll get big.
If only it stopped there. The current fad is for food advice spouted by people like ‘Dr.’ Gillian McKeith, who are turning healthy eating into the kind of mammoth task that would make Hercules say, “Sod that for a game of soldiers.” And anyway, most of these nutritional so-called doctors, Dr. Gillian included, received their Ph.D.s from the Quacky-Duck University, Land of Make-Believe, and so are about as real doctors as Dr. Dre or Dr. Fox.
Dr. Fox isn’t even a real fox.
So are you going to take her advice when, like the poor saps on her show, she puts you on a crash diet of organic brown rice, lentils, steamed carrots, tofu, twigs, bracken, soil and mulch? Are you going to take her seriously when she tells you that you must be an unhealthy eater because [NEWSFLASH] your poo smells bad? Of course not. I mean, what does hers smell like, pine-fresh? Probably, cos she’s been eating pine cones.
A look at Dr. Gillian’s official website and books reveals two things:
1) She is incapable of smiling naturally. She has a rictus-grimace that makes her look like she’s trying to poo out a pine-cone.
2) She has her own range of holier-than-thou health-food snacks, including (I kid you not) a “Living Food Love Bar”, which is designed to ‘nourish libido energy and feed love organs.’ Yes, feed love organs. I’m not sure whether or not you’re supposed to put it in your mouth. Especially after I saw the list of ingredients: potency-wood root, sprouted daikon seeds, ho shou wu leaves, wu wei zi berries, and catuaba bark. MM-mmm!
All these people should be stopped. If there truly is a battle of the sexes, then Gillian McKeith and her ilk are mercenary arms dealers milking the profits on the sidelines, content to humiliate both sides.
The thing is, boys, life would be utterly unbearable if we didn’t have our vices, be they ciggies, alcohol, chocolate biscuits, or whatever. And ok, astrology too. They all provide a brief respite from the trudging monotony of existence. Is that such a bad thing? Of course not. Bad habits are fun. So let’s not let the killjoys of the world get between us and the lassies, especially when we really all just want to have fun together. So let’s take a vow to avoid the unfair comparisons that lead to all this madness, and maybe the lassies’ll do the same to us… after taking a few well-earned centuries of revenge.
Until then, whenever you see an Ann Summers bag: it shall be your duty to immediately think “10 out of 10.” If only for effort.
To their continued, very good, and perfect-enough health:
Gentlemen: the Lassies!