John Updike was wrong.

America is not
a vast conspiracy to make you happy
but a vast conspiracy to make you angry
that you're not as happy as you think
you ought to be.

Furry ?

 Not really.

Aeolidia papillosa

Industrialised People-herding

first began
in the early 19th century
when folk were herded
into trains, then ships,
now onto aircraft...
and anti-social web-platforms
and their compartments...

Multi-image insects in flight.

by Xavi Bou.

Banded Orange Heliconian

Today's news.

 

Nothing new, same old...

but...

Appalling tragedy.

Lifetime and Bedtime.

Not-quite-most of my life
has been spent in bed.
I used to go at 10 pm
and then get up at nine;
now (in Central European Time)
I retire at 9 pm feeling good
and rise, feeling bad, at eight.
Recently I have started
to have a little lie-down
in the afternoon.
For the eternal sleep
I can hardly wait.

"Call me Frozen Crusoe"

on the melting ice-floe
of paralysing news-reports.

Not a blind-drunk boys-only

out-of-their-heads weekend,
nor legless in Ostia.

In Darkest Peru

 a newly discovered Blobfish.

You don't care what goes down your drains.

There's an awful lot of plastic in our brains !

Three years before I was born
the cold, calculating Dr Asperger
labelled a sometimes-socially-disabling condition.

I still don't know the proper use of lies
nor how to irrationally normalise.

He knew nothing of 'sabotaged cognition'.

Since then 'They' have discovered ADD, ADHD
and bi-polar depression
some symptoms of which have socially affected me...

but it is the categorising, 'consumer society'
(damn its infected eyes!),
not I, that's hurtlng to perdition.

This is how I often feel:

Forget the gold, forget the myrrh –

Frankincense

is now so in demand

by the loathsome cosmetics industry

that trees are being hacked to death

for frankin-contraband.

VainGlory, an aspect of Superbia.

 

"A US state department spokesperson"

"told the Guardian that a total of 140 Palestinians had been resettled in the United States in the past five years, and only 31 in the year since the conflict in Gaza began..."

'Palestinian' is not recognised by the Americans or the Israelis as a nationality.  Therefore they have to declare themselves Jordanian...

Another thought on our nearest relative

Perhaps,

Just as Western European diseases almost wiped out pre-Columbian peoples of America,

so might infections carried northwards out of Africa by invulnerable, smooth-skinned Homo pseudo-sapiens,

wiped out their colder-climate enemies, partners, pals,
the hairy, sensitive Neanderthals.

On the other hand,
the reason might have been hormonal:
Sapiens was (and is)
super-testosteronal.

It's fairly disturbing

to look at a beautiful photo
of a terrible place.

A Syrian prison after being emptied.

An even more beautiful detail.

I have known some

people who were genuinely false.
They did not know any other way to be.
Is this a paradox ?

World's richest man - and demented troll.

"If you’re following him on X,
then Elon Musk’s UK is a terrifying place.
Civil War is inevitable, he writes.
According to what he posts and retweets,
it’s a Stalinist country where the unhappy citizens
scream out for another election.
The people of Britain have had enough
of a tyrannical police state” he posts."

Has he dared to visit ?
The ignorant idiot does not realise that
if he were resident in Britain he would
be an earl and sit in the 'stalinist' House of Lords.

learn more >

I am unsurprised.

 

They went on to do much worse
mainly on other continents
when they became civilised.

Sometimes I think

that knowledge
is imposed opinion. 

Inevitably,

most of us
are mediocre.

Life is such
a dismal joker.

Anarchy works

 in small ways.  Why not largely ?

'Paths of Desire' vs Paths of Planners.

I was sure

that the line
Walls were made for knocking down
had been written (perhaps by Moses)
and was well-known,

but on consulting Messrs. Google
I found entries only along the lines of

Design advice for knocking down internal walls. In order to comply with fire regulations, the new structural support will need to be boxed in, which will typically result in a drop of 200mm-250mm in ceiling height. This is why you often see....blablablabla

"That love loves fidelity...

is a myth woven by men
from their insecurities." 

- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Cut it off!

There are too many humans in the world.

In the untiringly self-praising 'Land of the Free'

(the largest producer and consumer
of humourless, unbridled pornography**)
the word cunt
is pretty well taboo
and a cock (or cockerel)
is called a rooster.
and it is indecent to talk
of satisfying masturbation.

"The puritan's obscurantisms of one period
provide the pornographer's extenuations of the next."
- Anthony Powell.

I was in my teens when Bill Haley's
Rock around the Clock came as an affront
to many tender ears, including mine.
I preferred Sibelius and Ravel
and Scottish ballads and Lonnie's
version of Rock Island Line sung
at the Castle Street folk-club. 

Few honky-whiteys knew that Rock
meant Fuck, just as Jazz & Jizz
(& Jass and Jasm) meant Sex
and poor old Bessie's Sugar-bowl
was her oft-raided Cunt.  

~~~

** 'Out of the 193 people interviewed who felt they could not control their consumption of pornography, more than 93% reported struggling with depression. “Very worryingly, more than 40% say that, at times, they feel like ending their life,” said Paula Hall, psychotherapist.'

'Some people might be masturbating 10 times a day, up to three or four hours a go. They’re physically in pain,' said Peter Waddington of Relate (formerly the UK's Marriage Guidance Council).

 

Masks.

 Mexican, Tuvan & Fang.

Wow! I am appreciated,

if only as a statistic.
.

Unfortunately, I find many articles
in The Guardian (under the rubrics of Culture,
and Lifestyle) pretty trashy.  Some are
badly written or imported entirely from
the right-wing New York Times. There is far
too much reporting on the USA, and far too little
on Africa and Europe. I scroll
swiftly past the Sports and Stupid Recipes
for Rich Folk section.  I subscribe
mainly for the serious analyses and photos.

Hobby-horse racing.

"The sport has also been found to help young people
with symptoms of autism and ADHD,
giving them a chance to connect with other young people
articularly those with a love of horses."

 

Seventy years too late for me. And I prefer donkeys.
I liked fencing (because of the footwork)
but of course was rather inept.

Ding-dong hairily on high...

Shocking Chinese trade in human body-parts.

The annual Christian orgy-time is here,
and Temu are selling these beautiful Christmas-tree 
‘Elephant ornaments' 

but, given the difficulty of finding enough
male elephants to satisfy demand, 

they more likely have been removed from the corpses
of homeless old men, of which there may be
hundreds of thousands in China.

What's wrong with escape ?

The oppressed do it.
War-prisoners do it.
People whose lives
are torn to shreds
do it.
A good reason for suicide
is to escape the all-pervading
outer madness, as well as
the little madness in our heads.

The music that I hear

is tinnitus, which sounds
both near and far away,
accompanied by almost-random
ear-worms. It is not oppressive.
I run from drummers.
They display and beat for mummers.

'If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.'

Photo of the Day.

Aleppo, Syria.

photo of Assad mural by Mahmoud Hassano

It has to be said

that this totemic building is far
from being the finest Gothic* cathedral going

photo by Sarah Meyssonier

much less the finest medieval one. In fact
some more modestly astounding
provincial churches
are not even cathedrals.

Church of Notre-Dame-la-Grande Poitiers.

*The best bits of Notre-Dame in Paris
(on the West doorway) are Romanesque!

Winter haiku.

Bleak December rain,
new moon – and only one sock
in the wash – again.

more haikai >

This may not be

the entire poem.
But I don't think it matters.
It's just words to me.

(Between dog and wolf = twilight)

Numbers.

On the face of it
The Gates Foundation is entirely
laudable/admirable/worth all our admiration/commendable
in saving the lives of 10,000
anonymous children in Africa.

Mr Gates himself has bewailed
the short-termism
of (even serious and uncorrupt) governments.

But let us consider his own.

Many of those anonymous ten thousand
will move to ever-less-sustainable,
ever-more-dissociating, anonymising cities,

and on to fighting their way
through border-controls, civil wars and 'conflict-zones',
past kidnappers, swindlers and traffickers,
afflicted by dehydration, hunger, bites and stings

to the smug paradise of Europe,
the Paradise of Things. 

To brighten you up

 on a drear, Temuescent November day:

A tee-shirt with your name or photo on it
was something most of you young people
left behind at nursery school. 

(When I was young T-shirts didn't even exist.)

But Temu men are a throwback,
or perhaps a missing macho link

– or they just missed out on nursery school
and all other formal education.

Or they are all Chinese.

Never mind the spelling.
Admire the butch tattoos, the sexy pose.
$5.99 from Temu.

I wonder where he went after the photo-shoot.
Or is he AI-generated ?

Food for gender-oriented thought...

Sapiens and Neanderthalensis –

which way round ?
either way,

Cunning eclipsed intelligence.

Party Food.

Pastry-wrapped
prolapsed rectums:
a fabulous new Eating Xperience!

Creepier than Taylor Swift.

 

Da Vinci's Saviour of the World.

Millions, perhaps billions,

of parents in the many unfortunate lands
don't seem to realise
(or are prevented from realising)
that if a child is attached to a 'cuddly toy'
(or inanimate intimate)
it is missing something important.
And so the 'cuddly toy' industry enlarges
and expands.

Three cheers for "Plucky Little Belgium".

The criminalisation of sex-work
is itself a crime.

read more >

Under France's Third Republic (1870-1940), sex-work was de-criminalised and medically supervised.  Charles de Gaulle, a tyrannical prude with an even more prudish wife, re-criminalised it on assuming power in 1945.  

No Immaculate Conception

The Queen of Sparta might have tried
herbal remedies such as silphium or scammony,
rue or hellebore, early in the pregnancy;

might have tried jumping
or tumbling down the stairs,
taken hot or icy baths, or both,
but probably could not have summoned
the regally-appointed
medicine-man to do the business,
nor even stolen to a secret cave
to meet a helpful woman
or talented male slave.

If she felt that she had been defiled,
she obviously decided to 'just go through'
with it as millions did and do,
stagger on and go
with the thankless flow
towards her mythic, unregretting fame –

unless enthralled, spell-struck,
or thrilled less fleetingly than he,
the queen felt yet more privileged
than she was already...or just normally,
involuntarily maternal.
 
In any case,
the Olympian shape-shifter's fuck
(or fucks) led to hubris-hallowed towers of flame
and bodies turned to ash throughout
our nasty little history,

and towards a less-painterly end of time
than that foretold by Old Mad John.

So much for Ravished Leda
and the Götterdämmerung.





https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Leda/leda.html

SILPHIUM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion

Crossbones.

 

Hidden in Southwark on London's South Bank, jostled by skyscrapers and stations, a garden called Crossbones, formerly a mediæval sex workers' graveyard. It is entered through a set of iron gates, festooned with photos, ribbons and other tributes.

These women*, known as the Winchester Geese, were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester, whose palace was nearby, to operate in streets on the other side of the River Thames from the 'respectable' City of London.

In 1997, the writer John Constable had what he calls a 'visitation' which showed him the location of the graveyard and, following excavations, it was confirmed as the site of Crossbones.

from the BBC website.

*Though one or two might have been men.

To cheer us all up,

a Clear-fin Lionfish in the Red Sea.

photo by Anadolu

There's a lot of them about.

James
lives in Manchester (England)
and earns his living as a landscape gardener.
Since he was a child he has believed himself to be God,
and is on a mission to bring peace to the world.
He is part of an organisation that runs community events,
fitness sessions and games evenings.
He shares his ideas at regular Q&A meetings with a group of people,
including many who share his belief that he is a divine figure,
though he is not displaying his dominion.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00219dj

Unfortunately, James, it has been revealed to me
that both God and Christ are dogs.
As for the Buddha, I am not qualified to offer an opinion.

 

In the wrong at the wrong.

I lived (and almost bloomed)
in a place where
at a time when
olive oil was meant for ears
and garlic was consumed
by dodgy Foreigners
and dirty Queers.

Procrustean.

It's Very Annoying
that fitted sheets
are either too big
or too small for my bed
which admittedly has
a couple of (surely-not cloying ?)
blankets on top of
the futon-mattress.
But I've cheered up since
looking for a rhyme
and discovering that a
round-bottomed flask
with a long neck is not called
a swan (living and shuddering,
dying or dead)
but a matrass.

In 1938/9

people all over Europe talked of
The Coming War. Then Russia invaded Finland.
The three 'Baltic States'
and Eastern Poland;
Germany occupied Western Poland -
and lo! The Second World
(and the world's worst) War had arrived.

100 kilometres (62 miles from
the arms and aircraft factories in Toulouse)
I am cleaning out my cellar and buying
beans.  Must remember kitchen-roll.
Fortunately a small stream
runs through it.  A home-below-home 
can be contrived for a few days before
I decide (quietly & rationally, of course)
to take my Chinese suicide powder
with a last delicious meal.

Meanwhile,in another part of Hell:

Our comforts

and our every expensive cure
are supported by the exploitation of
the distant dispossessed,
the wretched, and the very poor.

It's easy, Marcus Aurelius,

to live each day as if it were your last
when you hope each night will be your final one.
But hope is a thought-crime
that is probably unsurpassed...

(Nevertheless,
I hope that you're not fed up or annoyed,
nor offended, when I say one more time
that the meaning of meaning is void.)

"I went to a marvellous party!"

 

Belfast to Bangkok ?

As a teenager  in 1950s Belfast
I was (naturally) very interested in
the Buddhisms.

Perhaps (if there had been the opportunity)
I should have become a monk,
maybe in  Krung Thep's Wat Chak Daeng
- instead of a pupil-friendly, hierarchy-hating 
lecteur d'anglais in Soussa, Tunisia.

The Earth

would lose nothing
if every human artefact were destroyed

I think the great & terribly troubled Vincent would have agreed
that no painting is worth more than an ordinary bourgeois[e]
would be prepared to pay for it.
Unfortunately no such person existed for him, apart from
his sympathetic keeper and friend, Dr Gachet.
The bourgeoisie, true to form, offered him only their sneers.
But this, the only one of his paintings to have sold in a show
was bought by a Belgian painter, Anna Boch.

Hezbollah Hits Back

 

This landscape

was once covered by trees
and fauna-rich vegetation of many kinds
which stretched across most of Scotland
and Ireland, until late in the Middle Ages.

The last wolf in Ireland was killed in 1786
when the 'Industrial Revolution'
(or Devastation) was starting in England.

Glen Orchy, Argyll & Bute, Scotland.

The Great Caledonian Forest
was 'cleared' to make settlements,
pastures, cultivable fields, charcoal, ships...
and to remove places of last resort
for the displaced and rebellious.
Finally, the denuded, eroded land
(now considered to be admirable)
was cleared of the few people
who lived there.  Against human progress
nothing and no-one can stand.

Making the best

of a bad situation.

 

The Taliban would greatly approve of 'Saint' Paul.

The First Letter to Timothy, chapter two (King James Bible)

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;

² For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

³ For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;

⁴ Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

⁵ For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;

⁶ Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

⁷ Whereunto I am ordained a preacher, and an apostle, (I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not;) a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity.

⁸ I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.

⁹ In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shame-facedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;

¹⁰ But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.

¹¹ Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

¹² But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be [at rest] in silence.

¹³ For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

¹⁴ And Adam [himself] was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, was [caught] in the transgression.

¹⁵ Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they [both] continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

i.e. The woman shall be saved through bearing children if both she and her husband toe the Paul-line. 

 

From H to P : bit of Etymology.

I loathe the use of the word 'pooch' to refer to a dog.
To me it is too close to the childish terms 'poop' and 'poo',
and sounds dismissive. 
But it has an interesting history.

The Etymological Dictionary Online has informed me
that the word derives from the name that a prospector
in Alaska (called Dick Craine)
gave to his dog, in the belief that it was Tlingit for booze.  

It was, however, a shortened corruption of Hoochinoo
"liquor made by Alaskan Indians,"
from the name of a native tribe in Alaska
who distilled a liquor which was a favourite with miners
during the 1898 Klondike gold rush. 
Hence the word 'hooch' or 'hootch' to refer to
any home-made (or low-quality) spirit, 'moonshine'.

Well, whaddaya know!

(I once had brief acquaintance
with a playful dog called Brandy –
but he did not give rise to
the generic name for the distilled
fermented uice of the fruit of the vine,
originally known as brandywine.)

The Minotaur

 
had a vegetarian, browsing head
curly-haired and horned...

The rest of him was
murderously unsatisfied.

There was also Theseus.

Somewhere in between
was the Anti-Minotaur
whose upper parts were
murderously human
and whose bottom half
was hairy-vegetarian,
sexually unsatified.

My composition here
portrays the latter,

perhaps uniquely.

The many images that anyone can find
online are only of the former.

The Assyrian King-headed winged bull
hardly counts.