Flight of the Conchords: Foux de Fa Fa

And last and not least tenuous, it's the Conchord Boys...



If all goes according to plan I should be flying home tomorrow. God, that was quick. I hope it's stopped raining.

Scott Walker: Song of Jacky

OK. This is getting tenuous: it's an English language cover version of a Belgian song, but even so...

Serge Gainsbourg: Le Poinconneur de Lilas

This one is atypical of the Serge Gainsbourg oeuvre - it's from 1958 - but I chose it because my (French) mother likes to sing it, and so I love it.

Charles Trenet: Boum!

Going back in time, and back into French, with this one...

Vanessa Paradis: Be My Baby

This one's in English as well. I love Vanessa in her Lenny Kravitz phase.

Soko: I Will Never Love You More

Just love this track. It is helpfully in English. But she is French.

Goodbye Rain Hello France

It rained so much yesterday that even with a towel under my front door my doormat is still soaked through. ENOUGH. It is JULY. I am going to France. It had better not rain in France.

In order to celebrate me being in France, I am leaving you with a series of French-themed songs for every day until I get back. Yes. I am nice like that.

Here's the first: Brigitte Bardot with Tu Veux, Tu Veux Pas. Note the umbrella-furling at the start. Also the great 1960s interpretive dancing.

The Great Crush Gallery: And The Gents

Rather more competition for the title of best male first crush, beginning with my own nomination, pre-trailed here - Adam Ant. Let's just get another look at him.



Oh, Adam. Ridicule is nothing to be scared of.

Up next is Lisa Gee's first love, who is a drawing. A drawing of a musketeer, but nevertheless a drawing. Bonjour, d'Artagnan!



Time is our enemy, so let's crash on. Baroness Black was a young admirer of Aha, and Jessica of Morten Harket, and I'm hoping the Baroness will allow Morten to stand in for his bandmates for the purposes of this scientific study:



You know, this poll is putting me in a really good mood.

Annabel Gaskell's heart beat only for David Cassidy:



Who looks, and this will not go down well in certain sectors, like a cross between my brother and one of my sisters.

Whereas Jane Henry was torn between David McCullum:



Okaaaaay... and Bob Geldof:



That's a very generous choice of image for Mr Geldof and it took me some time to find. But he does spend so much time and effort helping the poor kiddies of Africa.

Calistro was also a fickle mistress, vacillating between Buck Rogers -



and Shakin' Stevens, the Elvis of Wales:



Interesting. Bar the outfits, they are basically identical.

Staying in the popzone, how about Jaywalker's beloved Mark Shaw, then of Then Jerico?



Or even Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, who captured Raye S's heart?



That's... an interesting choice, Raye.

Quick, to Miss B's object of adoration, Jared Leto as he appeared in My So Called Life:



Is anybody noticing a certain big eyes, long hair type theme going on here? They all look like baby fauns. I think we need some leather, TCJM:



Thank heavens for that. This manly specimen is Avon from Blakes 7, portrayed by Paul Darrow.

Charles Lambert prefered the charms of Dave Clark of the Dave Clark Five:



While Laura, as a toddler, could not get enough of Rick Astley:



(Evil Pixie liked Rick too, but ONLY his voice. She is VERY clear about this.)

A more grown-up Laura, at the lofty age of 10, graduated to an obsession with Robbie Williams. Now, it was very important to me to pick an image of Take That era Robbie Williams, otherwise it Would Not Have Been Fair. So here you are (Robbie, helpfully, is circled):



Mmmm. Sexy.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is our lot. So if you would be kind enough to cast your votes:

poll by twiigs.com

poll by twiigs.com

The Great Crush Gallery: Ladies First

And so, the Rogues Gallery of first crushes of YOU, the reading public. Please excuse use of very small pictures here, I am merely thinking of my poor sister in Mozambique whose computer will crash if I make them any bigger. You can probably click on them to enlarge, should you want a closer look. I think some of you might well want a closer look at certain of these ladies, but let's not anticipate.

First up, nominated by both Scott and Johnny Nexus: East German gymnast Maxi Gnauck.



She is the one who is having her tits stared at, not the one who is staring at the tits.

Next, the first of our Doctor Who nominations, Wendy Padbury aka Zoe, championed by Brian Clegg:



Doctor Who is a popular source, also providing MediumRob's offering of Nicola Bryant, who played Peri:



Nope. Can't see what would appeal to a young boy there.

MediumRob also suggests Soolin of Blakes 7, another show which has done sterling work providing subjects for crushes for the impressionable children of the UK:



Believe me, it was not possible to get a picture of Soolin not looking gormless. Not possible.

Last up from MediumRob is Hadyn Gwynne. I couldn't find any pictures from Drop the Dead Donkey, honest, so I went with -



What a feeling.

Providing stiff competition to the ladies above is Oliver's nomination, Megan Follows from Anne of Green Gables:



Hmm.

And finally, and this picture has been specially chosen because it's the exact poster which was the last thing little Ben Johncock saw before he fell asleep at night, and the first thing he saw when he woke up in the morning, Rebekah Elmaloglou, aka Sophie from Home and Away:



So, to the polls!

poll by twiigs.com

poll by twiigs.com

Animal Magic

Taking some time out from the first crushes - we will go back to them.

Meanwhile, there's no way around it, this is a blog post about animals masturbating.

It's a response to this (scholarly, and safe for work) piece on the Slate website, which, I promise you, raises interesting questions above and beyond the fantastic line: "some moose can ejaculate simply by rubbing their antlers on bits of vegetation".

Putting aside the prurience and the comedy factor, the premise of the article is intriguing because of the large amount of time that it spends looking at the evolutionary advantages of sperm competition theory, and the almost no time at all it spends considering whether and why animals might have an urge to pleasure themselves in general. I realise that's the point of the piece - that masturbation is not just for fun, but also conveys an evolutionary advantage - and it is very interesting. But it fails to consider that the ability to have fun itself conveys an evolutionary advantage.

I would interpret the data about animal masturbation as follows: it is evidence of the widespread capacity of pleasure in animals, and of how animals will use fairly sophisticated means to seek it out. So the piece says that "both male and female porcupines manipulate their genitals with inanimate objects"; this is tool use, and tool use is the kind of thing that evolutionary biologists wet themselves over because of it being a marker of intelligence and sophistication. If a monkey uses a stick to get itself something to eat, that's front page news. So sexual pleasure is hugely important: porcupines using dildos is a big deal and not just because it's funny; animals don't bother with tools unless it's for something that matters. But because masturbation is about sexual pleasure, the work on it can be reductionist: sexual pleasure must be about sex. I think it's broader than that: orgasm is a visible marker of enjoyment. Similarly, you can explain domestic cats eating themselves into obesity by saying "they evolved as wild animals who didn't know where their next meal was coming from so they eat as much as they can when they can" or by saying "cats enjoy eating". Animals do things they enjoy. (Eating too much and wanking. Sound familiar?) It's all about the joy.

So if we accept that both the purpose and driving force of evolution is survival, we can look at the evolution of pleasure as a mechanism to help us to survive. We know what we need to do to survive because it is pleasant: food, sex, warmth, loving our offspring etc. We know what to avoid because it is unpleasant: hunger, pain, cold, loneliness. The story of evolution is thus the story of pleasure. Pleasure is how we learn what is right for us. A joyful animal is a successful animal. A miserable animal is two steps off freezing to death, starving, or dying without offspring.

Masturbation isn't just about healthy sperm, it's the direct result of evolution working, it's the embodiment of the message that evolution has created: do what feels good. The piece is perplexed on what advantage female masturbation might have, given that females don't have sperm, as if the author can't imagine why it might be to a female animal's advantage to experience pleasure. This may be symptomatic of the writer's inability to link sexual pleasure with any other kind of pleasure. Female animals masturbate because it is important in evolutionary terms to do the things that feel good, because if you don't, you'll die. A clever animal will seek pleasure and practice pleasure, because the appreciation of pleasure conveys an evolutionary advantage in itself. So masturbating reminds you that you enjoy sex and it might be an idea to have sex more often. But not only that, masturbation is a marker of an animal's ability to seek out pleasure for itself, and this is a useful thing to be able to do.

Or to put it another way, masturbation is the meaning of life and a sign of highly sophisticated intelligence.

Enjoy!