Western civilization reeks of rot:

Chantelle apparently slept with many boys near the time of conception. A war of single parents is developing, each proudly claiming paternity by their teen sons.

Well, what can one say? Things like that always seem to happen to girls with crappy names like "Chantelle". Had her parents named her, for example, Elizabeth Rose or Fiona none of this would have happened.

Hat tip: MND.
Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

One of those questions life is sometimes asking

If one searches for "Sessel" (chair or easy chair in German) within the antiques section at Ebay Germany one gets the most amazing hits.


I am asking myself: WHO is buying anything like that? When I am frequently complaining about my fellow Germans' bad taste I do not mean THAT sort of bad taste, but quality bad taste. Boring, reliable, lower-middle class stuff, that's what they buy, and...

... if it's not boring, reliable and lower-middleclass...

... it's boring, reliable and pretentious upper-middleclass. And always new and "matched", of course. Bad taste comes in suites.

I am not putting up any links here or naming names, because I find it unfair to be negative about some probably very hard-working people's businesses just because I dislike their stuff.

The first one of the two pictures above is by the Swiss advertising agency Jung von Matt from a study about the archetypical German, Swiss and Austrian living rooms. HERE is a Flash-presentation they put together. Have a look! It's self-explaining and fun.

But back to those chairs. While they are not cheap, they are certainly not prohibitively expensive either. They have been at Ebay for years, too, so there must be people who buy them. But again: who? Maybe the one with the faux leopard cover has a redeeming quality and may serve under certain circumstances as a statement or conversation piece, but the other ones? Can they be described by anything else but ugly, ugly and ugly? They are not even particularly well-made, either, and won't fit into either type of archetypical German sitting room above. What is their purpose? I have asked a similar question at my entry Robert Mugabe Yard Sale.

A partial answer to the question may lie in the fact that it are mainly chairs that come as such execrabilities, and I wonder whether there may be a certain craving for "elevated" sitting. Designer Socialism. A throne for everybody!

Carnal Commentary

Our recent musings on the appearances of politicians and their spouses (here and here) were unabashedly shallow. But hey, even serious political blogs do it and even in a much more carnal way. What makes it even more interesting is that both of the shirtless guys on the left were part of our musings about what makes a gentleman and what makes it even more interesting again is the fact that those pictures prove that both of the shirtless guys, whatever their looks may be, ARE no gentlemen or they wouldn't have given the press the opportunity to take such photos. But at least Obama spared himself and us the ultimate embarrassment and refrained from sporting a medaillon.

But back to the carnal comment, and although I think it is a bit over-rigorous as far as Obama's physique is concerned, it certainly makes an interesting and not unfunny point and hits, in effect, the nail on the head:

...Drudge Report is running a poll. On the Drudge main page, there's a picture of Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama shirtless. Readers are being asked to vote for the man they think looks better. So far, Putin's beating Obama 66% to 33 percent. I wondered why, so I conducted a little informal poll of my own by asking women I know why the "messiah" is losing so badly. In a nutshell, most of the women thought that while Putin looked like a macho man, Obama's shirtless picture was more reminiscent of an effete male model or homosexual out cruising.

My lady friends also commented that although Putin looked pretty good, they weren't crazy about his "Rambo look."

I take it that the "lady friends" who disliked the "Rambo look" are mostly American, who like their men notoriously tame, halter-broken and biddable, which let me marvel at the fact that they, quite illogically, preferred Putin over Obama at all, and I have a hunch that the pro-Putin votes at the Drudge Report poll came from just those men, voting for what they'd like to be and not what they are expected, or better allowed, to be.