It is often easier for us to complain

or keep silent
than to praise or rejoice.
Is Man the only endogenously
miscommunicating animal ?
Certainly he is a very lonely voice.

Or is it only in our culture of ricocheting blame ?

At the end of the year

I discovered two things quite by accident:

1. a bland or acrid red wine can be greatly improved by adding a small pinch of cinnamon or cassia.

2. (at the age of 71¼) the likely identity of my father. [see comments for more]

What we get to see of politics

is largely pantomime.
Religion has glorified male vanity to God,
while art has split between the two extremes
of therapy - and fraud.

Sex :

to communicate
first like a flash-flood
then like a drought:
the game's
not worth the candle:
it's not like handball
nor an edifying country ramble.
In fact, the sickening scandal
of it is that it hi-jacks
all the tender and generous feelings
which men could otherhow
distribute around
in their daily social dealings.

After being swallowed, 
a Rainbow Trout fingerling peeks out fron the gullet of a Northern Pike.

The thing about thoughts

is that nobody's interested in yours -
so you might as well not bother
expressing them, especially not
in a 'consumer-democracy'.

It is an ugly culture

in which parents would prefer
their children to be murdered
than to be suicides.

I know the last line is ungrammatical, but this is a sort-of- poem about

the Unintended Consequences of "Gay Liberation".

Wherever 'gay' men
are no longer perceived as a threat
to patristic Family Values,
they indulge in rejecting
the errant: outsiders, beggars, hill-billies...
and even want to stifle each other
by marriage, put chains on each other's willies.

for Jeffrey Dudgeon

Projection

We attribute to others
our most glaring faults.
Thus the English
find the French rude
and the Germans ruthless.

(Fish-Eye, much re-blogged)

It is very sad for me

that men tend to be
more touchy
than touchy-feely.

Perhaps Socrates

the footballer
is wiser than was Socrates
the philosopher.
And he's thinner if not taller.

A lot of time can be saved

by disliking people on sight:
time to plant trees, read books,
choose wines, write poetry, self-ignite,
learn Lucid Dreaming, re-instate
the Caliphate,
and, best of all, autofellate.

It is not widely appreciated

that English potatoes are very male
(King Edward, Home Guard, Ulster Chieftain),
while French ones are feminine
(Charlotte, Belle de Fontenay, Rose de France).
Could this be why French potatoes taste so much better ?

The Real Awfulness

of the Mega-Church of Mammon's Chief Festival
of greed, false generosity, hypocrisy,
overconsumption (and of course overpopulation),
is that it has been embraced
wholeheartedly by "humanists", Jews,
Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus
- which leaves only a daring few
vile dissidents like me
to spit upon the Christmas-tree.

After the Liberation

'gay' men pranced
(though some slunk) into
the stadium of normality,
where proper queers police a
standard superficiality.

In this vale of other people's tears,

There is no such thing as rightful property.

Not even our egos.
Everything we acquire
even before birth
we capture from each other
and plunder from the earth.

Solitude is best at Christmas :

people are easy to avoid
because they're all shopping
or recovering from parties
and pill-popping.
or jetting
or fretting or writing lists.
So (paradoxically) Christmas is
a good time also for vegetarians
and anti-natalists.

Thus the culture of war infects our language.

It is much easier to say
I was devastated
than to say
I am heart-broken.

Poetry is moribund.

Prose has had its day.
And neither
entropy-therapy
nor ecstasy-cure
exist in
all the gray.

As Lewis Carroll would have said to Diogenes:

if you're not totally baffled by people
you don't know them.

On meeting a beautiful (non-canine) person.

No-one informed me,
nobody warned me
that the Slough of Senility
could turn (but oh, so briefly)
by common and complicit magic
into the most ecstatic
mudbath of vagility.

Indoctrination

I remember texts
   from the Bible -
but have difficulty
   remembering 'good sex'.

The Monads

are windowless
nomads in the wilderness
of human understanding,
for we ourselves
are only monads
with gonads.

My nipples are
the windows
of my soul.

In Main Avenue South,

Britt, Iowa, USA
(formerly The Chief picture-house)
lies the Hobo Museum
on more than just a floor,

and every day that passes
I loathe the turnkey classes
more and more and more.

Better than the extremist silence of nuns:

the wise might indulge in not more 
than 140 well-chosen words a day.

The Decline of the Species.

As spontaneous ceremony
diminishes
so do people.

History

(as badly-balanced opinion)
ended a few years before 2000
(1422 AH).
Since then there has been
only data.

Explanations -

even when needlessly complicated
- are too simple.
It is more intelligent, more sane,
more respectful, to wonder
than to explain.

A Manichæan Heresy

for whomever ever feels the same

And the never-naked God said:
Let there be light!
and there was light.

And Satan said:
Let there be heat!
and there was heat
and hugs and lots of
intermingling fun
and passion.

And Satan said:
Let there be moisture!
Behold! The Kingdom
of Come that's scrummy,
scrotummy,
the loving beyond a mere
Second Coming
which God's gangs deny
in their dour devotion
to a grizzling, grisly
boss in the sky.

What we call Charity

Shops are known as Thrift Stores
in the USA and Canada -
which says quite a lot about
the North American mentality.

On one of his 'Off-Days'

Einstein wrote:
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.
For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand,
while imagination embraces the entire world,
and all there ever will be to know and understand.” 

But because our imagination is so limited,
we know too much and understand too little,
and what we strive to know
is censored by our pitiful imagination.

Skyscrapers

and legal codes:

they tower.
We cower.

That's power.

The Water and Babel

In 1962
I understood a French film
only by reading the Danish subtitles.
In 2012
I understood a Danish film
only by reading the French subtitles.

The misty difference between
the two long-separated, but related acts
was caused by senile cataracts.


A week later I relied to some extent on French subtitles while watching an American thriller.
I have hearing-loss as well!
 

There is a mystical difference

between refuse
and re-fuse.
LINGUA ANGLORA INSOLITA EST.

Some questions about School Shootings

   (Apart from freak occurrences in Norway and Scotland)
why do they tend to happen in the USA
   rather than, say, Kazakhstan or Mexico ?

Why do right-wing Americans mythologise guns ?
Why is it worse to shoot babies and young children
   rather than adults (or dogs) ?
Why did we not hear about the Iraqi babies
   bombed and shot by the mad United States military ?
Will all American schools become like airports
   or Green Zones ?
Can the War Against Terror continue
   to exclude Americans and real terrorism ?

Work

(especially paid employment)
is God
in our peculiar, joyless culture -
and we all love
interrupting other people
doing it.

Smelly old men

are smelly on purpose -
but only by day
to keep people away.

An optimist

is someone who has problems
with insight.

Not one of us is big enough

to take even the tiniest fraction
of responsibility
for Man's malignity and misery.
But not to think of it
is derelict.

If the Universe

is the result of Intelligent Design
the designer very cleverly
created the moon just so
that it would take intelligent
animals just so much time to discover
that it revolved exactly so that just one side
faced both Earth and Sun forever
(O Lux horribilis! Lux æterna)  -
for that could surely
not have been by accident.

Beautiful Being Killed

I went to the city

- one of my very rare visits.
After a little light shoplifting
I saw two Romanians whom I knew
from the town.  They greeted me
with smiles.  I gave one £1.  (A pound=$1.60)
I gave her mother a pound.
They were on a very bad pitch.
They wished me a Merry Christmas.
I never ignore beggars.

Homage to Pam Ayres.

People who live in centrally-heated homes
with microwaves, washing-machines,
food-processors, tv sets,
computer-games and garages (...)
think my house a hovel,
while in my rural solitude
I ponder in sweet lentitude
upon great subjects - such as
deceit, desire and the attraction of the novel.

Today is the Feast

of the Immaculate Conception.
This is only one
of the more ridiculous components
of life's hydra-headed
Dirty Big Deception.

I care

and I care that I care
too much
and probably
I care too much
that I care.
Silly caring
is just ersatz religion.

Time is a theory.

Death is the end of time
for each of us, because
we measure time by life, by process.
When there will be no more humans
to imagine it, measure it,
time will end...

...and l'esprit de l'escalier
will become l'esprit du tombeau.

In Memoriam Alan Watts

How wonderful
if the millennium
of Europe's second rise
were coming to an end,
and its exquisite savagery,
its land-grabs, art and smugness,
ceaseless wars and conquest,
its ignorant arrogance -
though it's too late to mend
the damage...and start to dance.

The Collective Unconscious

If people ever
get even a little wiser,
the stupid will just
expand and reinforce
their petty empires of bleak prejudice.

Without possessing

Elie Wiesel 
quoted his five-year-old grandson:
"If I love you more, will you suffer less?"

A truly profound question
whose ramifications could fill a library.
The simple answer, of course, is:

"Yes - and no! But loving 
(not possessing)
 is a good state of being."

A tweet to Twitter

Hafez wrote:
The words you speak become the house you live in.

 حافظ
Khwajeh Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Shirazi,
14th-century Persian mystic and poet, whose tomb is in Shiraz.

Translation of a poem by Hafez

FROM A LARGE PITCHER
version by Anthony Weir, 2012

From a large pitcher
drink the wine of oneness
to wash your consciousness
of life's futility and greed,

and still keep your consciousness
magnanimous
like a great vessel. 
There can never be a need
to shrink awareness
into an unopened bottle!

When your mouth is blest and full
with wine of oneness
you are selfless,
prideless, free of dull
me-ness, cleansed of meanness.

Look to the pebble on the road
for inspiration,
not blue sky: aspiration
involves deceit, corruption,
and life becomes mere letters of a code.

Absorb the wine of oneness, give it body -
murder hypocrisy, not your heart.

Bestir yourself!  Get ready!
Lift up the jug - now start!

Chomsky in Paris

with thanks to:  hearts of clearest glass

Empires deliquesce

from pomposity and pomp
to dribbling pomposity.

Stupid Intelligence

- the concept that came too late.

Just a suggestion...

The Manichæans and the Cathars

believed that the world was created by the Devil.
It certainly seems that way...

The book of the Jews, the Christians
and the Muslims states:
 'GOD saw that the wickedness of man
was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually.
And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, 
and it grieved him at his heart.' (Genesis VI)

A man is thus a million times
more harmful than a slug.
So why are the priests of those religions
so irredeemably smug ?

__________


'For what has man of all his labour,
and of the vexation of his heart,
wherein he has labored under the sun ?'
- Ecclesiastes.

The strength of capitalism (as well as religion)

No amount of logic
can overcome belief.

'Gentlemen's Clubs'

were, I thought, places where
gentlemen went to smoke their pipes
read, snooze, drink port or brandy,
discuss philosophy or politics...

But now I learn that they are
Lap-dancing venues, where   The women
who work there are naked or nearly so,
though sexual stimulation is usually forbidden. 
The women keep what money men
(often also nearly or quite naked) give them.

A small bottle of water costs £6.
The profit goes to the establishment
and to fix the flics.
I think real gentlemen might have a better time
smoking pipes, browsing my website,
discussing philosophy or politics.

Revenge is for

psychopaths.

An interesting lacuna.

We can save and replay sounds,
take photographs, make videos...
but have made no effort towards
connecting with our animal selves
by analysing, storing, reproducing,
broadcasting smells.

Yet another wonder of the deep

click on the picture

For women

in most societies
the quality most valued
is kindness.
In men
the talent most praised
is violence.

A new genre: the poetic e-mail

(received yesterday)

"I remember entering Williston, North Dakota, the blackened, oily heart of the Bakken oilfield for the first time from the East.
The first thing I noted, other than the horrendous decay of the highway and streets,
was the town's Walmart store.
It looked like some macabre oasis.
Travelers of all persuasions and economic conditions stopped there for sustenance
or a moment's respite - but from what? 
It seemed more a leap from the frying pan into the fire..."

Many thanks, Willie.
- And for incidentally explaining what a Black Friday is.


* * *

Now read:
Less an aspiration, more a fantasy ->

Over twenty years after the fall of the USSR,

Moscow is host
to hundreds of Central Asian,
bruised and beaten slaves,
some of them, born in captivity,
who have never seen the light of day.
Russia is a New Democracy.

Thoughtful people died for Universal Franchise.

click to see the full zombie horror

So much for Democracy.

Modern Heroes

The more our civilisation
'advances',
the more that psychopathic behaviour
is praised and rewarded,
and the less value
is given to simple kindness,
the greatest, most beautiful of talents.

Dividing Lines

The lines between regret
 and guilt,



 between shame and guilt,

and between
pornography and sympathetic magic
are very vague and personal
and tragic.

Perhaps

and perhaps unfortunately
you need to taste romantic love
before you can properly
judge and then appreciate
friendship.

For the food !

- The only good reason to go to Jerusalem.
Especially if you're an eastward-looking
 vegetarian vasectomised
anti-natalist atheist.

Fifty years ago

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
was published in the USSR
as part of Nikita Khrushchev's
'deStalinisation process'.
That book was one of the principal
harbingers of the eventual
collapse of the pseudo-communist system.

In liberal democracies
what is unacceptable is ignored.
There is no need for censorship
or suppression when and where
freedom of speech is to be found. 
There is such a flood of mediocre words
that the good ones get drowned.

Totem and Taboo

People will talk
about almost anything
(even suicide)
except overpopulation.
And on the rare occasions
in their overpopulating lives
that they briefly touch upon the subject,
their own rôle in the appalling
process is not mentioned.

" Et miraris

quod paucis placeo cui cum paucis convenit,
cui omnia fere aliter videntur ac vulgo,
a quo semper quod longissime abest id penitus rectum iter censeo."

(Petrarch, Epistolæ de Rebus Familiaribus, Book XIX, Letter 7.)

A Short Sunday Sermon

On the one hand,
you might say that crime began
in the limbo of cities,
not in a garden, not with a woman,
not with a snake, but with
malnourished, deracinated
desperate men.

On the other hand,
you might say that crime began
with the fence around
the Garden of Eden.

Living

causes cancer.
Life
is ruining the planet.

Music of the Spheres

Incandescent bulbs, whose manufacture has been banned
within the European Union, will soon be as rare as hens' teeth...
The sublime is often criminalised.

Necessarily,

politicians are liars,
cheats, betrayers and frauds.

Armed forces are necessarily
well-organised bands of
thugs with expensive training
and very expensive weaponry.

The press is pervertedly infantile
when not an instrument of misinformation.
This is not necessary, nor inevitable.

The Christians killed simple Jesus
a long time ago, when they opted for autocracy.
This was maybe necessary but not inevitable.

Necessarily, it seems, politicians, military,
press, Christianity - and ourselves
through 'social media' -
all manipulate us - now, inevitably,
in the name of democracy.

An extraordinary observation ;-)

It is now considered insulting
to refer to ordinary people.
Which is why
there is no such thing as society.

Crime without punishment.

The most consistently
and spectacularly lucrative
form of capitalism depends on the ongoing
criminalisation of certain commodities;

and the money that keeps on flowing
from supplying (and fleecing)
and policing
keeps the whole system going.

'Social Capital'

The vast, towering machinery
of capitalism grinds anti-socially.

'Social Capital', judged by status,
ambition, acquisition,
is essentially unsociable.

Eleventh hour

At the eleventh hour
of the eleventh day
of the eleventh month
militarists, their lackeys,
and their dupes
briefly remember
cannon-fodder,
and congratulate themselves.

A nation-state without an army
would not now be considered
a nation-state, though Denmark,
probably the oldest European nation-state
had no army in 1940.

Now, at some eleventh hour,
nation-states are starting
to disintegrate.

For most of human life on earth

it was rare to find someone without
disfigurement, even among the rich
and powerful.  But in our culture
of mass-vanity,
a blemish is a kind of curse,
and the blemished
are seen as victims,
objects of pity.

Pause to consider :

 

reblogged from DogsDepicted.

On Sex

Pleasure rests on illusion,
but happiness lies in reality.

It is much easier

to legalise
than legitimise,
just as it is much easier
to condemn
than judge.

Systems and institutions
can't tell good from bad.

Sense of History

A generation has grown up which cannot imagine
a world without computers, the internet, cell-phones,
credit-cards...
How will people be able to imagine a world without plastic,
without radio, electricity, plumbing,
without coffee or tomatoes,
chimneys, forks or chairs,
without glass, cotton,  steel,
cotton,  paper,  cement, without stairs...
without even the potter's wheel ?

The beauty

of duty
is the apotheosis
of neurosis.

No-one's supposed to be single.

Just as the most boring people
are those who are frightened of boredom,
the loneliest
are those who are frightened of loneliness,
and those trapped by marriage.
But no-one's supposed to be single.

The Comfort of Age

As I get older
the 'sex' gets better
and better - and longer
and longer - with myself.
All that's missing
is kissing.

Anti-government Health Warning

Hypocrisy helps
to cause cancer.
(And medicine
is not the answer.)

Corporate

Capitalism (which we now know
will devour even itself)
offers heaven on earth -
and delivers
hell with Super-HD/3D movies.

Restricting men's sexual activity

makes them tense
and even dangerous.
So armies and patriarchies
came about simply by
restricting men's sexual activity
mainly through monogamy.
with the subtle help of alcohol.

Not only in the USA

is cast of mind
becoming caste of mind.

Some light relief.

A Stoplight-Loosejaw photographed by Alex Ries.
This deep-sea fish has a dislocatable jaw, teeth in its throat, and “night vision”
light-organs that illuminate a hapless victim unable to see the wavelength they emit.

An observation..

There is so little record of child sexual abuse
in historical documents - including show-trials
for heresy and witchcraft - including
even Stalin's show-trials - that either it
was so common and acceptable that
it deserved no mention,
or that it hardly existed before, say, the advent
of television and video.

For John Gray

The philosopher
who claims to be rational
is like the meat-eater
or the child-maker
who claims to be harmless.

Life is like a game of poker.

Yesterday I heard
a really good line
in a popular song:

'The best that you can hope for
is to die in your sleep.'

- Kenny Rogers, 'The Gambler'.

On the banality of evil :

The spineless are the drones
of evil.  They do more harm
than missiles.

- adapted from an aphorism of  
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas, known as Nicolas Chamfort.

A rational individual

can act only through power of reason -
which is why human beings
cannot call themselves rational,
and indeed are less reasonable
than almost any other creature.

The television-watching public

is interested only in
the most trivial success-stories
and in the most infantile of politics,
which is another reason why
democracy has failed.

The musician

in Dhrupad
is no magician
but simply the trained
and inspired, ego-less connector
with death and pre-birth,
with sublime nothingness.

I will 'go gentle

into that good night',
because I did not want
to come into the light,
of duty, obligation,
blame, responsibility,
bereavement,
hubris, despair, and all
the complicated kinds
of wrong and right
that eat into our porous minds.

One is not truly vicious

unless and until one
loathes or despises virtue.

Like the rich.

Generosity of spirit

has no place in sport,
business, or politics.
Which is why the world
is worse than it ever was.

Ghosts, apparitions, and aliens

are, like God,
wise enough
to appear only
to believers.

After visiting

the local band of gentle brothers
who smoke dope together every day,
all day, and cook rude meals together
in companionable harmony,
I thought:What a pity Our Dear Lord
did not use cannabis or harmal -
thus saving (probably) this fragile world
from millennia of misery.  Such a pity
that he instead was into religiosity.

Which is worse –

a dealer in dope
or a dealer in hope ?

(It depends on the dope.
It depends on the hope.)

Lamentation upon the Earth

becomes ever greater - but the word
lamentation
is archaic, merely Biblical -
like turning swords into ploughshares
and going forth and multiplying,
which, in propinquity of time,
will cause ever more lamentation.

In the Beginning was the Word,
and the Word was Lamentation.

A 'Great Architect'

cannot design a house
that a dog would use.

"Intelligent life on a planet comes of age

when it first works out the reason for its own existence."

Comes of age ?
Reason for existence ?

I would have thought, Professor Dawkins*,
that a definition of intelligent life
would have nothing to do with a reason for existence
(which is just another form of Prime Mover, or god),
and indeed, truly intelligent life
would be way beyond the adolescent fantasy 
of seeking a reason for existence.

*in The Selfish Gene, 1976.

Second Wisdom, Third Season

(after an image by Gray Moon Gallery)

The creature

with the biggest brain
cannot think
what to do with it
beyond asserting its mere superiority.

Perception Management

So wrote Muamar Gadafi.
Western leaders think the opposite.
Either way, democracy is a sham.

But of course there might be other definitions,
for example:
Democracy is government by explanation,
consultation and participation -
if only that were possible.

To be held

by what you cannot hold
is not as bad
as to be held
by what you can.

Monotheism :

one of the greatest curses
of humanity:
God is vanity.

North America:

the worm turns
and
the worms turn

Information Technology

Input-overload
keeps us quiet
or at least ineffective.

Émile Cioran wrote:

'Write for those who have not long to live.'

But there is no guarantee that they are any wiser
or more receptive than when they left the womb. 

I write for those who will never be born
- and will of course be spared a life,
a destiny, a  pointless tomb.

People who don't

like their own smell
are very dead.

Two views

of

- and a third: here.

Puzzled Outsider

I don't understand love
(except as respect or,
on the other hand,
infatuation).
I don't understand grief
(except as self-pity)
and I am incapable of
understanding wilful
insemination.

Lop-sided evolution.

The only creature
who can consistently ask Why ?
only asks How ?

From cruelty to animals for fun

to cruelty to children,
from dancing bears
to child pornography,
from whipping horses' eyes
to gang-raping children,
modern Man has indeed progressed.
No wonder that we're all depressed.

It is a meanness

to notice the meanness
of others.

What dark relation

has kindness
to optimism ?

London,

Not yet approved by Her Majesty's
Health and Safety Executive (HaSEX)
but approved conditionally
by Her Majesty's Willy Inspectorate
and the Office of Male Sexual Regulation
(Ofcock).

Alas! I was not always so saintly.

I don't want
more than I have
because I have
more than I want
- much more than I need.
The rest - of life - is greed.

Culture

in capitalism
is decoration of greed.
Aftershave
smells of the slave.

adapted from a blog by Jindra

Fifty years after

the Cuban Missile Crisis
we are part of the whimper
which thinks it's
the only show in town.
We parade, we destroy,
we torture, we simper.
When will we all fall down ?

Indignation

If dignity comes
only through employment,
there is no dignity.
And what about enjoyment ?

Religion

is the recruitment
and mobilisation
of the wilfully superstitious.

Breeders need
to think wishfully.

Isn't it disturbing

how often we need permission
to tell the truth - when, if we
had any moral sense whatever,
we should seek permission to tell lies ?

The ancient, apparently-gormless are great survivors

and will probably outlive us by a few million years.

 



























"Cuttlefish are arguably the most fabulous animal of the ocean,
often posing for cameras whether asked to or not." - 'Eduardo'

Millions of pink-grey-beige people

now have lives far, far better
than people had 50 years ago.

The opposite is true for pigs.

Heuristic

is such an ugly word
that I decided to be
eristic
instead.

Sold yesterday for over £23 million ($34 million)

Gerhard Richter: Abstract Composition (upside-down)

Well, it's not bad  - but better upside-down.
I'd give maybe £250 (€300, $350) for it.
But then I'm a painter, not an investor,
not a fool - and not a con-man.

THE MORE ARTIFACTS, THE LESS ART.

Alcohol-smuggling

costs the United Kingdom a billion pounds
($1.5 billion) every year
in lost tax-revenue.
But how often do we hear
about it ?  Our 'free press'
would rather report on 20 cannabis plants
seized in suburbia, or how some parentally
deranged teenager took more than a little
too much Ecstasy - plus alcohol,
paracetamol and god-knows-what
(though of course we're not told that)
at someone else's 'party'
and ended up in hospital.

Musca domestica

It is often easier to kill a human
than a fly.

Voluntary breeders

in the overpopulated
factory of misery that is our world
are so heartless and selfish
and, let's face it, mad,
that I am aghast, agape
with outrage - and slightly glad
to be the product of a rape.

Advance Directive

I, being of sounder mind than most,
wouldn't care at all
if you murdered me tomorrow
for my generous weekly pension,
my passport, my credit cards,
my free bus-pass,
my paintings, my identity -
or for no kind of worldly gain -
so long as it involved
no violence or pain.

'The truth shall make you free'

is a Christian* idea
inextricably enmeshed
in the belief in progress.

But how can one indefinable,
unmeasurable abstraction
produce a measurable increase in,
or a transformation of, another ?

Free from what ?
Free to what ?

Our criterion for judging religions, however,
should not be the narrow and splenetic
matter of truth and falsehood
- it should be æsthetic.

(*John VIII, 32)

My friend Al

who lives in Colorado
says that the United States
is not really a nation
or even a country -
but a nest of corporations.

The best news for thousands of years.

"US scientists aim to create human sperm
from stem-cells".

Now that women can control their own fertility
(despite the imams, mullahs and the Pope)
and sperm can be 'designed' by women
to produce a gentle, intelligent species
(like bright, beneficent bonobos),

a brave new world of hope
may rise from the patristic shit:
men need not be frightened of
masturbation,
and can even turn happily,
unpenetratively homosexual
to save the planet from horrific
overpopulation.

(If only!)

I know it was yesterday in the USA, but

Am anderen Ufer

On the other side
of those two-dimensional things
that we are urged and urged
and urged to want
is
love
          - of entropy.

Just call me Uncle

Sam
- though my maiden name was
John Bull.

The words of politicans

priests, journalists,
and people of power
are calumnies on weasels.

The man who has nothing

to hide
cannot tell
stories.

A new theory:

Perhaps the men who control the Catholic Church
(who are only rarely Popes)
are chosen for their asexuality.
This would explain their failure to understand
the tortures of celibacy in the priesthood
and the Church's cruel perpetuation of
crimes against women.

And we/you/they're all dyslexic.
If you can spot the spelling-mistake
you're Good Overpopulating Material.

;-)

On the radio,

Salman Rushdie said
that because stories are untrue
they reveal truths that truth-tellers
like myself cannot get people to listen to.

But stories - love, adventure,
tragedy and strife -
are only amusement.
They rarely change lives.
Only a vision, a version
of the truth can change a life.

Why bother ?

In cultures of charge
and discharge, most men
'have sex'
simply for relief -
never mind the quality.
Silly romantics like myself
seek some sort of
'glorious mutuality'.

Silly Names for Cars

I thought that the (Toyota) Corolla
and (Nissan) Cherry were
pretty inappropriate.
But now there is the (Renault)
(Dacia) DUSTER
to wipe the road with.

Cars used to be called Minx
and Mustang, Rapier and Scimitar,
all very macho... Of course any name
is better than Avenger.

Perhaps

a truth is a truth
only until it is
accepted.

(from the Page of Perhaps)

Self-education

has always been my chief source
of entertainment, so I have never understood
why mere entertainers, performing athletes,
fashion-creatures, "celebrities"
and other egotists hold the world in thrall.

The passive dumpen-bourgeoisie is now
all of us - well, almost all.

Traps and Trappers.

Someone (was it Auden ?)
wrote that Childhood is a Trap -
the trap of flesh from flesh by flesh,
of being owned, directed and prevented.
To grow up, he said, is to escape
from that first, almost universal trap.

Some do - even in our infantilising culture,
which turns childhood into an insane competition
which continues until dementia.
But there are many other traps,
some set by how we coped with childhood,
most set by prejudice, by expectations
(or lack of them), by governments and customs,
or by the metallic teeth of avaricious
self-advancement.

No-one can escape them all, but the most thoughtful,
the most serious, the most fortunate amongst our billions
can choose (to an extent) the most benign amongst them.
The most important - indeed vital - to avoid
is the Trap of Traps which sets so many others
so dynastically, smothers evolution,
drags so many into the distressing human void:
parenthood.

A.I.M.L.E.S.S

proudly presents
The Association for the Introduction
of More 'Loafeing' and Ease
in the Social Set-up.

The Association has two members already.
Could we make it a sextet ?
More than that will make
Power perceive us as a threat.

On opposite sides of a strip of sea

The French want no-one to be their superiors.
The English can't live without inferiors.

Grow older, shout louder!

Education-systems
are now so good
at squashing intelligence
that the old are more
subversive than the young.

Click on the picture
for an analysis of the Latin motto,
which could be said to be
a very good example of totalitarian
Double-Speak.

Implanting Democracy

is easier said than done.
The press in Hungary is now
less free than in 1981.

Insad.

Beyond insight
is insadfulness
that doctors and other
fools might call
depression,
but is really the ineluctable
sense of oppression
that comes with
outsightful consciousness.

A long way to come for nothing.

Struggling upwards into Time
and ever-downwards to Tradition,
breeding, feeding, breeding,
speeding our stupid species to perdition.

The March of Time

To my mind

RESPECTED
is the most insulting
adjective describing anyone.

I can't decide whether FECUND
or DISTINGUISHED
should come second.

What an unbelievable species!

Man:
the laughing animal, the aggrieved animal,
the complaining animal, the vengeful animal,
the weeping animal, the jeering animal,
the destroying animal, the triumphant animal
the poetic animal, the deranged animal,
the interfering and meddlesome animal,
the addictive, the life-denying,
the antibiotic animal, the cruel animal,
the only animal to make war on itself
(and in more ways than one)...

[add your own lines here]

but above all, the bored, the jaded animal
battered into social and moral passivity
which cannot transcend its boredom
but only feed it through crude hyperactivity.

"Would it not be better to live

in abeyance 
than be involved in all the mischief
and misjudgements produced by
human delusions ?"

- Michel de Montaigne

Vaut-il pas mieux demeurer en suspens que de s'infrasquer
en tant d'erreurs que l'humaine fantaisie a produites ?

Agenda Suicide

click title to play...
     (I think this great video is better with the sound OFF.)

The Foundation of the Family

 

adapted from an image on Phallus&Art

The Evening Entertainment

Harassed also by my own intelligence,
I cannot decide :
   - the Shoplifters Anonymous
   meeting
   - or the Greeting
   Party
   for Asexual Pride ?

The not-so-hidden agenda

behind capitalist and socialist
Scientific Endeavour
is to make us immortal,
disease-free,
hence able to work forever
on Mars or Alpha Centauri.

In that eventuality
most people might be engaged
in the prevention of mass-suicide
by the desperate, enraged.

Click on the stamp

                  to appreciate the irony.

There is no education

as good as no education.

What a shame

that tactile sensuality
(as opposed to hydraulic sexuality)
can thrive only in spite of
Islam and Christianity.

Civilisation cannot exist

without self-justification.
Stories defuse reality.

And so narrative was invented.

Imagine the sheer liberty
of life without narrative!

after Dashiell Snow

(Untitled, 2007. Collage on wood. Title added by this blogger.)

I know that this sort of thing happens

throughout history, but
I do not understand why those Americans
who have a lovely colour to their skin
have taken to their beautiful bosoms
the sick religion of their oppressors -
thus enslaving their successors.

Millions of women

welcome
pregnancy
after pregnancy
 - to lessen,
or even stop
the beatings.

Is this a dagger ?

Portable
and user-friendly
(if only to me)
- my willy.

The worst reason

for not committing suicide
is 'Consideration For Others'
who might be encouraged
to seek their own, legitimate
release.

Love Nest

  

A puffer fish made this for his nice lady friend.

[read more]

Never a Pygmy:

the latest page on my website.

Some concepts are suicidal

- or do I mean autophagous ?
For example: 'Happiness'.

What if

we see only in negative -
and are part of the small amount of Dark Matter
in a universe of light ?

Even looked at upside down

and inside out,
all success is eruliaf

None by Dogs, Gypsies or Native Americans ?

Japanese man who served his genitals to dinner-guests

is charged with 'Indecent Exposure'.

Alfred Austin, forgotten Poet Laureate :

No Mosques Allowed in Switzerland

For at least a thousand years
Christendom has ceaselessly
trashed Islam, sneered at it,
patronised it, murdered,
bombed, enslaved and burned
Islamic populations. Can anyone
be surprised that the worm,
cut into little bits,
has finally and severally
(and so-far-ineptly) turned ?

The Old Boys

A poem which is only a title might still be

a poem.

A God-forsaken place

is the next most beautiful
place to a Man-forsaken place
which is the next most
beautiful place to the place
where Man has been
and flourished,
but has loved, respected, kissed
and cherished.

I cannot say why

this is one of the best short poems
I have ever read - or smelt.
It beats a lot of great haikai,
and even Saint Emily.
It's by Richard Brautigan
and I know exactly how he felt.

 

December 30

At 1:30 in the morning a fart
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.

I have to get out of bed
to write this down without
my glasses on.

The horrible thing about humans

is that we are more alike
than different.

"A foul mouth is so ill matched with a white beard..."

"A gap-toothed and hoary-headed ape."

If art improved

rather than slightly or deeply
entertaining us, we would be
living beautifully in Paradise.

A rarely-asked question.

Just how much difference
do 'free elections' make
when politicians, press, police
and banks are all corrupt
when not actually criminal ?

The only thing that matters
is that governments can fall,
and that elections must be called.
Beyond that, it's Tweedledum
and Tweedledee - and a strong
and incorruptible judiciary.

But Hitler came to power quite legally.

No wrinkles:

no personality.
Don't even think
about sagacity.

The Work Ethic spares no-one.

Soon there'll be bionic dogs.
Maybe even rats...

And I learned the other day
that we have ten times more bacterial cells
than human cells in our bodies.

The wise are not necessarily pleasant

or patient.  According to Timothy Mo,
the patience of the saint
is as short as the life-expectancy
of the jihadi martyr.
And we are only the living.

There's not a lot of Platonic Space

for those who seek a life of grace.
Only some rich
and some outcasts
can - but rarely do.
Most of us just grovel
and muddle through.

 

(adapted from a blog by Jindra)

Letter to Hollywood directors, producers...

(1934) Dear Sir: I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory.  I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde.  I like suave "V" words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty.  I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl.  I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land's-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid.  I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp. I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around. I have just returned and I still like words. May I have a few with you?

Robert Pirosh
385 Madison Avenue
Room 610
New York
Eldorado 5-6024

[reblogged from  lettersofnote.com]

for another wonderful letter, click here.                

It finally occurred to me

on the eve of my 71st
birthday, that people
more and more prefer
false relationships
to real ones 
(friendship, marriage,
cohabitation)
- which, consequently,
become more difficult
as we become less capable
of adaptation

'Only in America'

where nothing is long-lasting
could there be a fad
for 'mirror-fasting'.

"A maker of condoms purported to be from the town of Condom

in southwestern France has been ordered to pay 10,000 euros ($12,600) for false advertising
after the provenance of its prophylactics was found to be Malaysia..."

Condom d’Armagnac in the département of the Gers
is, notoriously, on the river Baise - which now also means ‘fuck’.  

But the verb ‘baiser’ still also keeps – albeit residually - 

its old sense of ‘kiss’.  Which tells us a lot

about some men’s attitude to, and confusion about,
the relationship between affection and sex.

‘Le baiser de la Fée’ (a ballet by Stravinsky)

means ‘The Fairy’s Kiss’.  

But ‘Je veux te baiser’ means ‘I want to fuck you’.

The usual current French word for ‘to kiss’ is ‘embrasser’ 

which originally mean ‘to hug’.  

This has pressed into service the rather awkward
‘serrer dans les bras’ (hold in one’s arms) 

or difficult-to-pronounce ‘étreindre’  for ‘to hug’.

Recently, the English noun (but not the verb) ‘hug’ has started to appear in French.

The baby-word 'bisous' is often used, but, more formally, ‘Je t’embrasse’ at the end of a French letter is equivalent to ‘xxx’ (or ‘kisses’).  

‘French letter’ is an obsolescent-to-obsolete  term in English 

 (along with ‘johnny’)  for ‘condom’…

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