Why men love salads more than steak and never look at a woman’s tits

(Paul Cézanne: The first tabloid artist…?)

It’s as the prophet said:

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”

Nothing new then under the sun? Well, probably not – not until, perhaps, they do manage to prove that cold fusion works.

One thing is for sure though and that is that tabloids like the Sun, the Daily Telegraph and other insults to various rainforests don’t bother much with trying to prove the old prophet wrong.

Mind you, I am quite partial to the odd lurid headline – especially when these ‘newspapers’ are trying to sell yet another (t)issue of lies as science but then I do demand that these stories are, at least, modestly entertaining.

As it is though, most of these articles are as repetitious as Cézanne and his bloody mountain - without the old impressionist’s artistry, that is. The average tabloid science story is more like a four year old’s drawing of a cartoon sun, repeated & held up to be admired ad nauseam.

Like this following story on the Telegraph’s science page:

“Looking into someone’s eyes is the key to remembering their face, a new study suggests. Scientists believe that our brains take the information they need to identify a person primarily from their eyes. After processing this information the mind then moves onto the mouth and the nose, rather than attempting to gauge a person’s face as a whole. Previous studies have shown that when humans analyse others they tend to focus only on one part of the face at a time.”

Right, now there’s a surprise…

… so, you can actually remember people’s faces better if you’ve looked them in the eyes, instead of, for instance, having looked at their shoes the whole damn evening? Thank God that we have scientists – or tabloid journalists - to sort these things out for us.

Obviously, this only works for men if the person we look at is another man – since it is a truth universally acknowledged by these same tabloids that men only stare at a woman’s tits.

Okay, one more science article from the Daily Telegraph before a tired, old sun will set on yet another day’s non-revolutionary column:

“Psychologists proved what car-dealers have boasted for generations the car one drives is key when it comes to turning a woman’s head. The university team showed women pictures of the same man sitting in two cars - a £70,000 silver Bentley Continental and a battered Ford Fiesta. The women, who were aged between 21 to 40, picked the man sitting in the Bentley ahead of the same man in the Ford.”

Right, that’s all the evidence we need that women are shallow creatures that only love shiny things.

Of course, if you did a similar test for men you could arrive at equally earth shattering conclusions.

Although, if you’d first show pictures of Angelina Jolie buried in a steaming pile of dead cows and then one of her wearing a few cole slaw leaves, I’m not really sure that the resulting headline, “Men prefer salads to steak!!!” would convince all that many people.

(Oh yes, ANY old excuse to play this record will do for me…)