YouTube Digger

I hope you have enjoyed this month’s focus on human madness. We’ve looked at various insanity symptoms, famous nutters and ways to make yourself utterly mad. But no look at madness would be complete without looking at Madness — the British pop band, best known for the 1980’s hit “Our House”. (Although I see from Wikipedia that their musical genres include ska, New Wave (which really should be renamed after all this time) and 2 Tone.)

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In our month-long look at madness, perhaps you didn’t want to kow about symptoms, treatment or a look at the famously insane and how they are depicted in movies. Perhaps you want tips on how you, too, can become a stark raving nuttter. There are two ways to do it — become an alcoholic and then go off the drink or fall deeply in love with someone you can never possibly talk to, let alone sleep with.

There are several adavantages to the second method, that of unrequited love. First of all, it’s free. Being an alcoholic takes a hell of a lot of money or learning how to shop lift and not get caught. And then you haveto drink like a fish for years in order to make conditions just right for the DTs. That takes way too much effort for those dedicated to the path of pereptual insanity.

With unrequited love, you don’t have anything to lose except your tiny little mind. Falling hopelessly in love happens instantaneously, so there are no skills to learn. It’s a lot like being hit by lightning, except an ambulance ride is usually not involved.

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Our month-long look at madness marches on, looking now at what many feel is the biggest cause of insanity — the psychiatric profession. Granted, here’s the problem — people who are truly insane do not realize that they are insane and are a danger not only to themselves, but to others. Many claim that the psychiatric profession only strives to make people addicted to prescription drugs. However, one of the ways you know antidepressants or mood stabilizers are working as when you feel as if you don’t need to take them anymore. But many claim that “mad” people are merely differrent and should be left alone.

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Last time on YouTube Digger, we began to look at history’s most notorious insane asylum, Bethlehem Royal Hospital in London (now in Kent), better known as “Bedlam”. It’s unknown how the nickname came about — since the modern word Bedlam is from the asylum’s nickname and did not exist before the asylum. Perhaps that was the best way some of the locals or unlucky inmates could pronounce it.

Conditions inside Bedlam were hopeless and despairing, very similar to a castle dungeon. The only medication you got was a thump on the back of the head and possibly a bucket of cold water. Although the original Bedlam was shut down before photographs, written letters from visitors still survive. They point out that if you weren’t mad by the time you enterred Bedlam, you definately were after a couple of days.

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There’s no reason to have a hatred of hate. If you deny hate a place in your life, it’ll never leave you alone. Hate can actually be a good thing (and not just for bloggers and talk-show radio hosts), provided you do three things:

• You use the hate to motivate a positive change in society
• You don’t do anything illegal
• You hate people based on their individual characteristics and not just for their appearance, gender or nationality. In other words, get to know someone before you can really hate them.

So, on that note, let’s look at people who really deserve our hatred and how we can use that hatred to better change society (or, at least better about ourselves by making fun of others.)

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I have a client who wants me to write about how Bangledesh should become more eco-friendly and cut down on urban sprawl. Is he kidding me? The poor people in Bangledesh are probably looking forward to the end of the world. Ecological Armageddon would probably be a relief.

Does any good news ever come out of Bangledesh? It seems that’s a place set up to be as bad as possible so their governments rake in all of the charity money. Not that the people (or other critters) of Bangledesh ever see any of it. The first big charity rock concert was in 1971 for Bangledesh, organized by ex-Beatle George Harrison. Fat lot of good that did. But it does make for some interesting YouTube clips.

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Because you just can’t get enough change in your life, YouTube Digger presents the second installment of Some Change May Do You Good. That, and I forgot to add this classic video clip which I meant to add to Part one. It’s of Tony Blair murdering David Bowie, but, as “Graham Golden” points out, “Tony’s no stranger to murder”.:

Right — now that’s out of the way, let’s go on to the rest of this post and look more deeply into the ramifications and excitiations of change.
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Last time on YouTube Digger, I did a post entitiled “Hackney Horse People Are Nuts” and now all I can think is:

Mmmm…..nuts!

Of course, there is a peanut butter product recall currently going on the United States, and that has driven my craving for peanut butter and peanut butter products through the freakin’ roof. There’s nothing like the government teling you “Don’t eat that” in order to really make you want to eat something. Especially since the government is paranoid about a few deaths from salmonella, while meanwhile, drunk driving fatalities…anyway, I think you know where I’m going with that.

So, in honour of nuts of all kinds, here’s a sampling of nut-related YouTube video clips. Enjoy.
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Yesterday, for another blog, I did a little book review of Life And How To Survive It by John Cleese and Robin Skynner (no relation to famous behaviorist BF Skinner). So, just out curiosity, I went to YouTube and stuck in the words “skinner” or “skynner” in the search feature and looked to see what came up.

This is always fun to do, especially if you are desperate to kill time in an entertaining way. Just stick any random word or word combination into the search feature at YouTube and see what weird and wacky stuff comes up.
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The last week of the year always brings about glum recollections of all the wonderful folk who have passed away in the previous year. Hey, I’m guilty of this, too. It really puts a damper on any holiday festivities. Wouldn’t it be great that if, in the holidays of 2009, we managed to toast the Grim Reaper’s choices for the year? Sure, we’d all claim to miss the dead (because of the old taboo of speaking ill of the dead) but deep inside, we’d be all a-glow with warmth and cheer.

For more mortal fun, check out The Death List.

Topping the list is runaway winner of Maggots Should Eat Out His Eyes award goes to the dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. Do you think they’ll play this song at his death and dismemberment?

Next up, just for all of those in the UK, a special choice — Sir Jeffrey Archer. For those in America who aren’t aware of who Jeffrey Archer is, consider yourself lucky. He’s a total Berk. (Look it up). One of the celebritites I met when I lived in England was the guy who was the star witness in the perjury trial who put this bastard away for an unmercifully brief amount of time. I couldn’t actually bring it in myself to put a Jeffrey Archer clip on, so I have something much better — a segment from Room 101 with Kathy Burke and host Paul Merton from 2000:

Last time on YouTube Digger, we looked at three of the notable females who passed away in the past year. As you’ve probably guessed from the title of this post, we are now going to look at three men who shuffled off this mortal coil in this past year. No offence to the spirits of all of the other men who’ve passed away in 2008 who I don’t mention. I just have enough room in the post for three. So there.

First up is Ellas Otha Bates, better known as Bo Diddley, who passed away on June 2 of this year. He was one of the most influential personas in pop music, so much so that he was nicknamed “The Originator”. Thankfully, unlike a lot of black musicians of the early twentieth century, Bo Diddley did receive the recognition he deserved. I always loved the square guitar.

Next up was a guy who I thought would live forever — Paul Newman. Although best known for being a movie actor (that’s always good for the career), he also managed to give a lot of money to charity through his unique food line and his daughter’s food line, Newman’s Organics. I never did understand his fascination for car racing, but then again, I’m not a guy. It’s hard to narrow down a celebrity’s life in just one YouTube clip, but perhaps this bit from “Cool Hand Luke” is as good as any. Paul Newman sings “Plastic Jesus”. I do not know who played the banjo:

And now, the death that I will never get over, that of legendary comic, truthteller and linguist, George Carlin. He had a real way of playing with words and getting into their true meanings that I will always admire. That, and no one else in the world could swear as humorously as he did. Not everything he did was funny, but most of it gave me a good laugh, even years later when I knew the punchline of the joke. As I was starting narrowing down this list to three, I at first completely forgot that George had died — because part of me still hopes that he’s alive. Here he is in a post put up by a fellow comedian, Boy Howdy. Appropriately, this bit is about death, done a couple of years ago:

2008 saw the sun set on a lot of beloved celebrities and entertainers. For this post, we’ll just concentrate on some of the notable and influential women celebrities who have have taken their last bow. We’ll give space to the male dead celebrities in a future post. Granted, this post will be done with more of an American slant, (since it’s written by an American) so no offence is intended if a favorite deceased celebrity from your country is omitted.

I’ve narrowed the list down to three ladies, otherwise we’ll be crying into our drinks all year. I’m not spending the rest of my life doing this post (although I could think of worse fates).
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Hey, all you Pagans there. Okay — all of you non-Pagans can join in. Today is the winter solstice, which is traditionally one of the most celebrated days of the year. From now on, the sunlight will be getting longer, proving that once again the promise of spring is not a false one. This was what was originally celebrated this time of year with feasting. This was such a central day in the year of our ancestors, that they went to great lengths to mark it.

Every year, the winter solstice moves, which makes it fall anywhere from December 20 - 23 on the current calander. Every year, I’m taken by surprise on which day it actually falls. Every year, it seems to come sooner and sooner.
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Happy September, Diggers!  Today marks the beginning of the final third of 2008 and I thought I would bring you some of my favorite videos of misheard lyrics.  You know the ones I mean; those songs that everyone has a different idea about what the artist is actually singing and some of them are often quite funny - dare I say hilarious at times.

These three videos represent three such songs and I am certain that you will not be disappointed.

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I love Saturday Night Live, but there is nothing like the classic Saturday Night Live days with Christopher Walken, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphey, and more.

In this hilarious clip, Steve Martin gets down King Tut style with his “King Tut� song. The beauty of Steve Martin’s comedy is it doesn’t have to be outrageous to be funny. He can have fun with whatever he’s doing and you can’t help but laugh because he’s just plain funny when he’s having a good time.

This video is no different as he sings and dances – Nile style – along with a full entourage of Egyptian musicians and groupies.

If the Steve Martin dressed up as Tut can’t make you laugh, then I have no idea what will.

YouTube, video, King Tut, Saturday Night Live, Steve Martin, Christopher Walken, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphey, Nile, Egypt, singing, dancing, costumes, music, comedy