Human communication.

"Don't get me wrong," he said. Alas!
I get everyone wrong.
And/or they do the same to me.

This beautiful Greenlandic woman

was among thousands of 13-year-olds
who were compulsorily (if not forcibly)
made infertile by the insertion of an Inta-uterine Device
by the Danish authorities between 1966 and 1975.

It is, of course, not Greenlanders who have been
overpopulating the planet.

Only the best

liars are perfect.

Like 'Jesus on the Cross'

'History' shows
that 'Morality'
is self-defeating.

Stagnant Ponds

of 'crocodile tears' have just been shed
at the death of His Holiness, The People's Pope
(à la Princess Diana),
especially from such caring people
as Her Not-Quite-Ultra-Right Venality
Marine Le Pen of France
and Her Astuteness the not-quite-fascist
Prime Minister of Italy.
Maybe also not-quite-dictator Viktor Orbán of Hungary.

Lovelock would agree

that 'Nature' is neither
beneficent mother
nor savage opponent,
but WHAT IS  –
which is what human beings
are loath to accept.

Photo of the Day

enhanced, but not by me:
a public convenience in Tokyo.
Maybe Ladies Only ?

'Enlightenment'

is a fancy and fanciful word
for the realisation
that language, like money
is only a token of communication.

Perhaps

the only supernatural phenomenon
is human stupidity.

It is possible

that the reason why Diogenes left
no writing or scripture was that
he did not think much of language
as a means of communication, although,
of course, like all of us he thought
linguistically.  He also had no
writing implements, while Socrates
was shadowed by the idolising Plato.

Rotten Lambs.

While shepherding is now a rather rare occupation,
and wool no longer the staple fibre,
Christianity stays sheep-obsessed, 

though, as time passed,
rabbits, chickens and eggs have been introduced
to the Easter Stew.

Jews and Muslims will not eat pork or ham
because pigs (like us omnivorous) eat shit.
Christianity's fuzzy demigod is frequently called The Lamb
because the Israelites (aka Jews) were sheep-herding
nomads (like many in Central Asia and Baluchistan today)
who eventually descended from overgrazed hills
'Like wolves on the fold',

and took hold of a part of Palestine
until the latest wave of conquerors
threw them out for refusing to accept
the deity of Roman Emperors.

In modern times, groups of Lamb-worshippers
commit appalling acts
against other Lamb-worshippers, especially children.

These include Holy Orders, such as:
Opus Dei and the

Christian Brothers
Sisters of Bon Secours
Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul
Sisters of St John of God
Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary
Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy
Legion of Mary -

to name only the Irish gangs
guilty of kidnap, violence, torture and infanticide.

The long slow, bleating death of ritually-slaughtered lambs,
plus the reported long slow death of the Lamb of God,
has led Christians to prefer and praise
messy, tube-infested, terminal suffering to neat,
quick and assisted death, or planned suicide...
and is one ingredient of the Abrahamic
mountain-nomadic
(now world-wide)
obsession with eating meat.

The United States' Execution Racket

A doctor willing to participate in an execution
is a precious commodity, and states will pay dearly for it –
up to $20,000 in cash per execution in some places. 

read more >

Two photos

of the shallow Wadden Sea,
UNESCO-registered
and bounded by Denmark,
the Netherlands and Germany.

 

Deep in the rainforest of Sumatra,

one clever orang-utan has been observed making
and then applying a plant-based medicinal paste
to a painful wound – a paste which was anti-bacterial,
anti-fungal, and analgesic, thus enabling him
'to heal in record time'. 

Orang-utans are not unique.
Rakus the Clever was not a freak.

Neo-Jungian thoughts : Holiness and Happiness

The truly holy
are unappreciated.

Holiness is not religious. 

Nor can happiness
come from seeking,
or from application;

it's not a state
nor an emotion
but a realisation.

Scratch my card!

I guess I'm no longer
one of your deadbeats.
I won a million dollars
at Sandy's liquor store
in San Luis Obispo
and I can't wait
to get off the streets. 

Not the frontier of tourism :

a fairground rocket ride

to the end of the atmosphere

and the trashing of feminism.

Except

at the most enigmatic level,
language is lies.
But so also is communication
by touch and by eyes.

Tongues

in barbed wire.
Eyes in pale blinders.
Ears scared of silence.
Brains in the pickle
of taboos and desire.

 

The Antinatalist's Tale.

"A man goes into a tobacconist
and gets a packet of cigarettes....
Warning: smoking causes cancer.
No, give me a different pack...
Smoking causes impotence.
That'll do, thanks very much."

"Almost heaven, West Virginia...

Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River...

Life is old there, older than the trees,
younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze..."

Whitaker family, Odd, West Virginia

Prehistoric cave-painters

might regard art exhibitions
as outrageous and blasphemous.

On the other hand, the out-of-doors
rock engravers might not.

Just the sort of thing the Nazis would have done.

Israel’s military is organising hiking tours for civilians in newly occupied Syrian territory during the Passover holiday, local media has reported.

Holiness and Happiness,

Jungian thoughts. 

The truly holy
are unappreciated.
Holiness is not religious. 

Nor can happiness
come from seeking.
from application;

it's not quantifiable,
not achieved,
not a state,
nor an emotion,
but a realisation.

Probably, but too late.

Will the intelligence manufactured
by power-hungry, nuclear-fired
iron man become aware of the
inorganic irony of its existence ?

"the most distressful country"

It's the most distressful country

that ever yet was seen;

they're hanging men and women there

for the wearing of the green.

Ireland has barely escaped
from the blood-curdling clutches of the Catholic church,
only to fall victim to vampiric American employers
such as Facebook, Apple and (literally) hundreds
of other 'transnationals'.  Serve it right
if Donald Trump pulls the plug...and the rug...

Self-medication.

Deep in the rainforest of Sumatra, 
a wise orang-utan whom humans call Rakus
has been observed making and then applying
a plant-based medicinal paste to a painful wound. 

It was anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and it numbed his pain,
helping him to heal "in record time.
"This might be one of the more blatant
and sophisticated examples out there,
but Rakus is far from the only one."

Obviously,

happiness
should be communal,

though for me it is
hermetic.

For the economic system
it must only be cosmetic.

Would President Trump like to buy

Northern Ireland, which, according to
a British Government Committee

“recently held the world record
for prescribing the most anti-depressants
per head of population” ?

It has the highest public spending per person in the UK,
yet raises the least revenue per person...

but it's going for two songs,
and the USA would then own a scrap of Europe.

Perhaps it's due to diet ?

Primary-age child constipation rates
up 60% in England and Wales.

One small cheer for President Trump.

Having had, like any intellectual, some sympathy
with the writings (but not the actions)
of The Unabomber, I applaud The Great Donald's
brave attempt to dismantle Satanic Globalism
and the Evil Axis of Globalisation.

"...the blessing

which rests on humility :
an easy-going nature."

~ Sylvia Townsend-Walker, Mr Fortune's Maggot, 1927,
first page.

On page 32 is another splendid line :

"The air was thick with taboos." 

A Cat called Donald.

 

Poets should not be piffle-mongers

dispensing clichés of petty comfort,
descriptions of beauty,
or gobbets of private pain
to the normals. Poets should rage
against the evil of our species,
its bad judgement,
its monstrous brain, and the mad
perpetuation of our insane rampage.

A Theropod Walked

on the Isle of Skye
a Very Long Time Ago.

A 'Little Grey Rabbit' Joke,

with apologies to Margaret Tempest.

Moldy Warp dreams of Van Gogh's Chair.

Liminality.

 "Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things,
the honest thief, the tender murderer."

~ Robert Browning.

I imagine

parenthood
as a hungry monster...

Out of the Fire.

 

Max Ayres: Self-portrait.

V.Z. How to look careworn - and sexy.

No wonder D.T. hates him.

Speed culture.

It's not just North Americans
who seem unaware that the faster you speak
the less your audience will hear
and retain.

The latest

nonsense sociological concept :

Genetic Talent.

A beautiful but microscopic resistance to consumer-capitalism.

Every week,

Bastián Barria ventures into the Atacama desert in northern Chile looking for items of discarded clothing in the sand.

 About half of the hundreds of garments he finds are in perfect condition. He collects what he can and adds them to the two-ton pile of clothes he has stored at a friend’s house.

They are then 're-sold' for the price of the postage...

[more]

Typical Disinformation

The rapid expulsion from Paradise
that has been reported to us
is worse than a parody
of the immeasurably-long
development of human self-consciousness.

Sheila Hancock,

 English actor and comédienne,

This was The Future

for a baby mammoth
in the Siberian cold
of 50,000 years ago.

"Who knows how
The Future will unfold ?"

Art and A.I.

At one time it was normal
for a picture's frame to cost
more than the picture.

*

You don't yet actually have to wheedle
information out of a computer.

I have a hunch –

just a hunch that
human stupidity
is more often learned
(by rote or by example)
than inherited.

Spectators ?

photo by Brian Grover

 

At the Red Hedgehog - Zum Roten Igel

    a bar, restaurant and chamber-concert venue
    (see below)
    frequented a generation later by Brahms 
    (who had his own barrel of Tokaj)

on this day. also a Wednesday, in 1828,
Franz Schubert gave his only public concert,
which included his second piano trio.

The entrance charge of 2 florins per person
made him rich for the last nine months of his life.
Another of my Most Admired Men sold only one painting.
None of these three heterosexual beauty-makers had a wife.

• Parterre and 1st floor of a residential building.
• Address: Tuchlauben No. 12.
• Also: Rother Igel.
• 1822 The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde rents premises within a building on the Tuchlauben in Vienna, “Zum roten Igel” (same complex).
• 1829-1870 The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde buys “Zum roten Igel”, the building it had formerly rented, planning to replace this with a new building bringing the diverse activities of the Musikverein together under one roof.
• Also visited frequently by  Robert Schumann (1810-1856), Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847), and Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) 
  Brahms refused to eat anywhere else.