Famous people

are rarely sane.

Discuss, with reference to Schopenhauer.

Private (閒人免進)

 

photo by Fan Ho, Hong-Kong, 1960.

It is ever more difficult to be private
in an aggressively public world.

'There's something awfully sad

about happiness.'

– Noël Coward, Present Laughter, 1939.

First we had 'The End of History',

but now we must consider
the end of Philosophy and Psychology:

human shame at being human.

Typical human extremism.

Alcohol-free drinks are booming in France,
including wines from which the alcohol is extracted.
The non-alcoholic beers are good. 

But why not a 'happy medium'
of low-alcohol wines and spirits
like Northern Portugal's Vinho Verde ?

How to see

beyond the seeming

seems impossible to me.

Denmark's 'Crimes against Humanity'.

One of the first and most brutal slaving nations,
'Little Denmark' has been waging a subtle genocide
against Greenlanders since Iceland
finally gained independence in 1944
(during Nazi occupation). 
Contraceptive coils were inserted into their wombs
without either their consent or their knowledge.
Birth-rates plummeted, of course,
and Greenlandic culture almost collapsed
as a result of Danish education forced upon them.

Meanwhile the rich planet-destroyers
keep on breeding and arrogantly consuming.

Like frost on barbed-wire,

the amyloid plaques in the brain
which indicate Alzheimer's disease.

Dresden James,

alias Donald James Wheal (1931-2008) :

“The ideal tyranny
is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims.
The most perfect slaves are, therefore,
those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.”

and:

I quite liked balloons,

but was never attracted to balls,
specially not rugby, soccer or cricket balls,

until, forty years old,
I encountered the small, tender.
skin-encased balls 

of a beautiful lover, at a time
when to nuzzle them, even in private,
in that country, still was a crime.

When I was a little boy

I loved going with my grandmother
to visit her friends – lovely old ladies
in lovely old houses with old furniture. 
Now, owning old furniture,
the only person I visit is an old lady
five years younger than me.

My favourite word :

unspeakable.

Cruel Christmas

Hideous Hypocrisy
Happy Holiday !

Britain's brilliant billionaire prime minister

asks a homeless man at a soup-kitchen
do you work in business ?

In 1970 I discovered that I was a feminist.

Protest against the Miss World contest.
The loathsome Bob Hope and the tarted-up Grenadian Ms World.

 

Now women have to behave like men
(but tougher)
AND
submit to the crippling Cosmetics Fraud.

It's very cold in much of North America.

 A toot from Mastodon :

Meanwhile in Canada@MeanwhileinCanada@ohai.social

A publicly-funded snowplow just went past my house. Will this liberal tyranny never end?!

@beyond@tooting.ch

Which of us is not

behind a window behind a cage ?

photo by Margaret Courtney-Clark

Christmas in Anatolia.

 ('Deep and crisp and even.')

photo by Ismail Kaplan

'Metamorphoto'.

My Berlin friend Karl-Heinz
as painted by Modigliani.

My doctor retired.

His young replacement took my blood-pressure,
asked me my height, my weight, my alcohol intake,
whether or not I smoked, what medication
I have been taking – that's all.
He did not ask what I ate
He did not ask if I
(as an 81-year old living alone)
managed to cut my toenails.
He did not ask if any disease or condition
ran in my family.  He didn't ask when I last
had a blood-test. When I told him (unasked)
about my femoral head replacement he only inquired
how long since I had it – not: did I have any pain ?
Needless to say, he did not show any interest in
my eyes, my teeth, or my hearing.  

To renew my prescription I'll have to visit
this recently 'qualified doctor' again...

To celebrate the Winter Solstice

(possibly my last) in a prehistoric way,
I painted neolithic graffiti
(not very successfully)
on an ugly section of wall
opposite my house.
It may fade nicely,
like myself.

Freedom of Expression,

though everywhere vulnerable
is not so important, and not so threatened
(principally by what we are taught)
as freedom of thought.

When a village,

town or 'community' has more second-homes
than second-hand cars
it's likely that it exists
only on Facebook.

The Bandwagon of Doom

is made of indestructible plastic.

Meaningless Collective Nouns

are worse than Fake News :

The People
The Disabled
The Electorate
The Gay...Hispanic...Muslim...(etc.) Community

Society.

The 'meaning of life'

is Passing Meaningless Time
or killing it and much else.

People with power

 don't know
(or refuse to remember)
what it is like to be powerless.

Nor do they care.

Outdated technology.

Language has enabled us
to do our worst.
The result is beyond language,
beyond remedy.

Good news from Russia ?

The biggest best-selling book this year
is George Orwell's Nineteen eighty-four,
written in 1948.

According to the odious

and shockingly-influential Ayn Rand,
'Altruism is evil.' 

The Feeling of Desolation,

whether brief or enduring,
rare, occasional or frequent,
is almost universal.

What we do best.

 

Two Christian Paintings

from 1987, by painters born in 1941.

Firstly, Markus Lüpertz's 
St Francis Prevents the Extermination of Rats.

Secondly, my Self-portrait as Lazarus with Dog.

Lüpertz was disruptive at art-college and was 'sent down' without a degree. 
I (also refused a degree, but in Philosophy) am entirely self-taught
and do not have a Wikipedia entry.

We both have white beards.

Snakes have a clitoris:

'scientists overcome "a massive taboo around female genitalia."’

“Female genitalia are conspicuously overlooked
in comparison to their male counterparts,
limiting our understanding of sexual reproduction
across vertebrate lineages,” the study’s authors wrote.

I have always liked snakes and spiders.
I have lots of the latter in the house,
and once welcomed a visiting viper.
But she didn't stay,
at least not upstairs.  She may be feasting
on mice in the cellar.

When I was a weedy, bookish and cold-rife boy

and was forced to play rugby football at school
three times a week,
soccer-players were pale and ugly
and didn't have beards.

They also had day-jobs.

Now that soccer-players come in beautiful colours
sometimes with neat little beards –
and therefore look sexy (to me),

and are insanely rich,

still nothing would induce me to take an interest
in any team sport, especially not one
between nation-states, played on a pitch.

*However, as a Berber-lover, I hope that Western-Sahara-seizing Morocco beats genocidal France in today's World Cup quarter-finals in obscene Qatar.

'Plastic-man'

 

The environmental activist Modou Fall,
alias ‘Plastic-Man’, poses for a photo on Yarakh Beach
littered with trash and plastics in Dakar, Senegal.

Truth, like belief

(and Easter and Ramadan)
is a moveable feast.

The best hugs

start from the tips of your toes.

Capitalists just love slaughter and destruction.

 

Seventy years too late,

I think of the right riposte to

'Why do you always have to be
different from everyone else ?'

which is 'Why do you all, always
have to be the same ?'

L'esprit de l'escalier, alas,
is not a Medical Problem.

A Girl named Madeline,

with a vivid imagination and remarkable awareness of how bureaucracy can dash dreams, got her wish when she asked Los Angeles animal control authorities for a license to own a unicorn – if she is able to find one.

The first-of-its-kind permit came with strings attached, however: the mythical creature must be provided ample exposure to sunlight, moonbeams and rainbows and have its horn polished at least once a month with a soft cloth.

[read more]

Lies, Damned Lies and Economics.

An 'inexact science'
is not a science at all,
but akin to genealogy.

A microphone

is a teleportation-device.

A 1923 BBC ‘Meat Safe’ stand
with its accompanying microphone.

On Book-signing :

'At my first Salem’s Lot signing, I had one customer –
a fat kid who said,
Hey bud, do you know where there’s some Nazi books?’

– Stephen King, who had not arrived with a translation of Mein Kampf, just in case.

'I did a signing to which nobody came, except a guy who wanted to buy some Scotch tape and thought I was the help.'

– Margaret Atwood, who now knows that one should never be without some handy scotch-tape - and that one should dress up for signings.

'The Banality of Evil.'

We are all banal,
and every one of us
is evil – even if only a little.

The book in my head

is called
Empire and Infantilism.

That's as far as I've got with it.
I shall keep it under the bed.

The Reichstag, Berlin 1945.

 

I have devoted my life

to making a little nest to die in.

'It's not because I cannot explain

that you won't understand;

it's because you won't understand
that I cannot explain.'

– Eli Wiesel

Hundreds of aeroplanes

flew to hideous Doha
bearing thousands of
(mainly masculine) gawpers in thrall
to international and nationalist
testosteronal (and not very beautiful)
ballet with a ball.

Nonsense of History.

When Russian forces entered Chernobyl
very soon after entering Ukraine
they started digging World War One trenches
in the radioactive soil.

Alcohol and Entropy.

A bar of the abandoned cruise-ship
Costa Concordia, run aground on the Italian coast.

For those who believe in General Human Progress.

Indonesia set to make sex outside marriage punishable by jail

Indonesia's parliament expected to pass new criminal code that will also make insulting the president or state institutions a crime.

Let's not worry about Climate Catastrophe.
There are far more pressing issues.