In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king

There was an absolutely fascinating article in Der Spiegel a couple of weeks ago about people who fall in love and want to have sex with objects. Computers, steam locomotives, the Berlin Wall, the World Trade Centre, you name it, there are people who want to sleep with it.

One man was described as seeing his Macintosh laptop as male, so he had to regard his relationship with it as a homosexual one.

The Swedish woman who was in love with the wall was devastated when the tide of history turned. The woman whose “lover” was “publicly executed” on September 11, 2001 has had a 1:1000 scale model built for both towers, complete with aluminum exterior so that she can take them with her to cuddle in the bathtub.

The 41-year-old man at left fell head-over-heels for a Hammond organ at the age of 12. He is now in a monogamous relationship with a model steam engine.

The article was in the Science section. It had quotes from the people depicted, from experts on why some people love things instead of other human beings, what they get out of it, and so on.

But that’s not what I want to focus on. What I do want to point out is that this article is being distorted in a blog beyond recognition, used as an example of how nasty the German media is. The blog post bears almost no relation to the thrust of the article. It merely uses it as fodder for the blog’s overall agenda, which is to illustrate the so-called biased and unfair treatment the Excited United States of America receives from German media across the board. It even provides a link to the Spiegel’s online edition for knee-jerk reactive types to email in their outrage.

Ignoring the other cases portrayed and conveniently snipping out the photo of the man with the choo-choo-train, all it says is, “It doesn’t matter that nearly 3000 people died in those buildings. Now it is apparently OK to exploit them for tasteless stories on people with sexual perversions.”

What he fails to mention is that the woman fell in love with the buildings when she was eight years old, long before the terrorist attacks. He also fails to mention that it is a sensitive piece without a shred of sensationalism or voyeurism, ending with the remark that these people are the way they are, they aren’t harming themselves or anyone else with their unusual desires, and who can say that of anyone?

I was going to ignore this post completely, because why draw attention to crap, but then again, if somebody is spewing right-wing bullshit about German media to an audience most of whom probably can’t even read the language of the media being attacked, someone has to set the record straight.

Quite frankly, I couldn’t care less if you’re a loony lefty from la-la-land, a foam-at-the-mouth right-winger with an arsenal of loaded guns in the basement or so undecided you straddle the fence keeping both ears to the ground waiting to see which way the wind blows, if you’ve got an axe to grind don’t lay out examples which have no basis in reality.

Unless of course you’re going for a Masters in Intellectual Dishonesty, in which case you’re headed for top of the class.

Berlin zoo: we’re into cute and cuddly, so who needs ‘em?

In a break with format Letters Home to You publishes the first issue of THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT THE DAILY NEWS, a regular feature of irregular happenings.

by Special correspondent Some guy we hauled in off the street
Berlin (DNDN) Officials at the Berlin Zoo say they fail to understand the uproar in the scientific community in the wake of plans to destroy a breeding pair of Aye-aye, a rare Lemur equipped with an unusually long middle finger it uses to dig for grubs and maggots.

“Look, we asked around, and pretty much everyone we talked to agreed that these things are just too ugly and have too many disgusting habits to keep them on display any longer,” said Dieter Doozer, executive director in charge of waste removal. “They have these buggy eyes, scraggly hair for fur, paddles for ears, long skinny fingers – and their breakfast! It makes you want to toss your cookies, I tell you.”

The animals were brought to the zoo three years ago as part of a conservation effort undertaken in cooperation with the government of Madagascar, where loss of habitat is threatening the animals with extinction. The Aye-aye (pronounced eye-eye) used to live in the eastern part of the island nation off southeast Africa. Excessive logging over the past two decades in addition to being stigmatised by the local population, who kill them because they are regarded as a harbinger of death, has added to their plight in the wild.

“Nobody wants to pay good money to see an animal as horrible to look at as this one,” said zoo director Helmut Askew. “We thought of playing up their mating habits and using that as a selling point,” he added, “because they hang upside-down from a tree branch and it takes an hour for them to finish copulating. But this being Berlin, you see that sort of thing all the time.”

Askew added that the zoo has made every effort to get the public to take an interest in the animals, and he’s left with no alternative. “It doesn’t help that they’re nocturnal, either. We used to set an alarm clock for noon every day to wake them up so they’d crawl out of their nests for everyone to get a good look, but that just pissed them off. They’re hard enough on the eye when they’re sedate. You should see them in a fit of screaming rage.”

Zoo officials say the animals will be carefully and humanely dispatched to Butt-Ugly Heaven to ensure they suffer no pain. Their pens are to be demolished to make room for the zoo’s latest addition, a polar bear cub named Knut the media and public just can’t seem to get enough of.

Officials played down any role the presence of the playful, small, white, loveable, cuddly ball of fur that just make you want to say “awwwwww” at the mere mention of his name may have had in their decision to say ix-nay to the Aye-aye.

“OK, let’s put it this way. It was a choice between spending additional resources to expand Knut’s area while keeping this repulsive creature around but out of sight, or just saying, ‘what the hell, nobody cares anyway, let’s save a few euros,’” Askew said. “You can’t blame us, really. it’s market forces, and besides, they fling their poo. It gets on your clothes and stinks like hell. My employees bitch about them all the time. Our cleaning bills are going through the roof.”

The zoo has been thronged with visitors since Knut was first shown to the public. A trashy newspaper has even offered 1000 euros for the best photo of Knut sent in by readers.

“Knut is just so plushy and cute, I want to take him home with me,” gushed zoo visitor Greta Lessa, an employee with the Berlin city government. “As soon as I read that they were going to show him, I called in sick — wait, that thing’s not on, is it? OK? Good. Anyway, let’s just say that I rushed down as fast as I could. I just love him.”