Fashions in speaking.

 It is well-known (amongst certain cultural historians and phoneticists at least)

that the modern pronunciations of French, Danish and English (at least)

were the result of speech impediments or mannerisms at royal courts, and, in the case of English, also of the importation of Dutch- and then German-speaking rulers and their courtiers and soldiers.

In modern times the speech of female, white Americans has altered very noticeably.  As women more and more assert their rights and grievances, their speech has become more nasal, more penetrating, faster, and (inevitably) less clear.   It sounds like souped-up Barbie-speak, and may yet evolve into Chipmunk. 

Hillary Clinton is a comparatively mild example, but I find that more than half a minute of her shrieky delivery makes me turn off the radio to avoid a headache.

Water, rocks, trees and animals

were replaced by anthropic gods,
who were by accident of history
squashed by the jealous Jewish God,
who slowly and unwillingly morphed
into Truth and Wisdom,
which were torn by barbed-wire,
corrupted by unfairness, greed, 
ideals, hate and prejudice -
which were consumed by fire.

I just thought you would 'like to know'

 that more than 10% of the 320 land mammals known to have lived in Australia in 1788 are now extinct.  Read more >

Ireland, of course, lost furry fauna (and most of its forests) before 1788 : wolves, bears, elks, wild pigs, beavers...so let us not scapegoat white Australians.

When the Chinese,

a little before the Spaniards,Portuguese,
and other European 'gangster scum' went to Africa,
they didn't go as greedy, bloodthirsty pirates seeking slaves
but with dignity of state in large (unwieldy and expensive)
ships loaded with porcelain and tea and silks
to offer as gift-sweeteners for trade-deals or tributes
from the darker people that they found
(whom Europeans were wont to label 'beasts'
and lesser breeds without The Law)
- and never dreamed of sending priests.

Things are a little different this time round.

World Government

This world is governed by a vast obese baby
who ages surprisingly, intolerably slowly
whose oozing rash we must lick happily
whose farts we must inhale
whose shit we must devour al dente
whose piss we swim through doggedly
whose sweat lubricates our brains
whose blood oils our machinery
whose feet crush us like acorns
whose hands manipulate us like puppets
whose eyes watch every one of us
whose ears record our ear-worms
whose genitals arouse us irresistibly
whose screaming mouth gives us
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
day-in, day-out and all night long
whose horns impale us
whose beard entangles us
whose perpetual infection
we happily endure
but decline to cure.

[Thanks, Almina]

Handwriting.

It doesn't seem so long ago
that I received at least three
personal letters a week from the postman
who drove down my muddy, rutty lane.
I had boxes of them, with carbon copies
of my replies. I typed all my letters because
handwriting has been a problem for me
ever since I was forced to use my right hand,
and consequently (in those days of metal nibs
dipped into ink) dropped blots amongst
my spidery, uneven script.

Then came ball-point pens, which teachers
and other cultural snobs resisted.

The great thing about e-mail is that I can choose
the font and size (Bookman Old Style 16 point),
add pictures as attachments
or within the text.  But my desk is still covered
with scrappy little notes I sometimes cannot read
because my writing never improved after the age of eight
when I was quite inappropriately
sent to a snobby school where I too often had to do
text-copying (with fountain-pen) as punishment.

The banality

of suffering, revenge,
of cruelty, of spirit,
of humanity.

And beauty,
cataracts, tranquillity
purposelessly
defying our banality.

Women's Liberation -

like European Enlightenment -
would be a good idea -
if they can get it together.
But there's not much time.

Women cope better than men

with a lot of time on their own;
perhaps they're 'hard-wired'
for abandonment.

And maybe men are 'hard-wired'
for gang-rape, which is why they don't know
what to do when alone for long periods -
except drink and/or wank...
or kill themselves.

from Sociology wihout Evidence, the Qweir Handbook.

Maybe "The Meek"

mentioned by Jesus
are really the easy-going, happily laid-back
who don't write Last Wills and Testaments
and have no more wish to inherit the dearth
than to become as rich as Croesus.

Dogs don't like doors.

I don't like doors or locks.
I am a dog.

Dogs don't mind seat-belts.
I am not a dog.

A correspondent asks

me, out of the blue, if I play chess.
I reply:

I can think logistically
but I can’t think strategically,
so I’m hopeless at chess
(though I like the horse and the turret).
I'm no good at draughts, but not so bad
at an African game
involving cups and pebbles or seeds.
I didn't mind coming last in
the once-a-year egg-and-spoon race, 
which probably nobody plays any more, 
not even sport-retards like me.
Scrabble is fun (I still have my old board
with wooden tiles) so long as I play
with someone like me who
wants to make words and is not fixated
on winning - and, of course, not on-line.
If, in another fun game, my opponent, poor soul, 
would prefer me to slide down a snake 
and not climb up any ladders - well,
it's up to the die or the dice, but I'd happily cheat
to help him/her to win.  I'm a Born Loser
(downwardly-mobile, hence
an unintentional survivor)
and lack that horrible hominid attribute
competitiveness for competitiveness' sake.

Jesus' message to Judæa

(one that is not taught in
school or Sunday-school)
Verily, it is better to be oppressed
than to rule.

In the past hundred years, and more,

and especially now,
the USA has deported
more "huddled poor"
(mostly non-Europeans)
from its 'teeming shore'
than it has accepted.

One of our many

unrecognised
'original' sins
is rule-
making and imposing,
and the creation
of institutions
(from marriage to banks)
which has led
to the destructive
institutionalisation
of everything.

Moving House

in San Francisco, at one mile an hour.

History

is declarative
and not necessarily
'written by the victors',
but, rather, by those who can write
and can write the best narrative.

How can anyone enjoy

good mental health
in a society based upon crude wealth
which seems to function
but is not only obviously sick
but also defines good mental health ?

If we ever are improved

it is by what befalls us,
rather than what we do
or we intend.

On Monday the government
is vaccinating people,
on Tuesday it is shooting them,
on Wednesday there's no more water,
On Thursday bombs fall -
that's how our little
devastated world will end.

If your day

has not been weird
perhaps you haven't
had a day,
says the sage who mumbles
into his beard
that there is either nothing
or too much to say.

The defective glue

of any hierarchical society
is mass-hypocrisy
from which hermits
are the only refugees.

What Countries Call Themselves.

 For a long time, the title United States of America
has greatly annoyed me.  It would annoy me even
if it were called The United States of North America -
for, the North American nation which we call Mexico
is in fact the United States of Mexico.  So the USA
should call itself the United Anglophone States
of North America, including both Texas and Florida.

The United Kingdom sounds as if it belongs to no continent,
and indeed many people within it think so, but it is
the United Kingdom of Great Britain  (England +Wales and Scotland),
with or without 'autonomous' Northern Ireland.  It does not include
the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands (which the French
quite exactly call les Iles anglo-normandes).
Its name may soon have to change.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has disappeared,
leaving its core: the Russian Federation of 'autonomous' statelets and regions
and cities all known as Subjects -  such as Tatarstan,
Tuva, Karelia, Komi, Chukotka, Udmurt, Magadan..., ).

Malaysia (you may be surprised to learn)
is a Federal Constitutional Monarchy
comprising thirteen states (including the Sultanate
of Brunei) and three federal territories.

Greenland (which has a rather fine flag - see below) is not a country
but an 'Autonomous Territory'  (Kalaalit Nunaat)
within the Kingdom of Denmark*
(which once also embraced Norway, South Sweden and Iceland).

Venezuela is The Bolivarian Republic -
but I won't go on...

(*note that the first nation-state flag, white on red, was Danish.)

  

My New Monopoly-board.

doesn't have hotels or railway-stations
but shopping-malls and private airports.
The streets are different, too:
  Corruption Boulevard
  Back-hander Crescent
  Offshore Avenue
  Hedge-fund Heights
  Dirty Tricks Drive
  Bribery Road
  False-accounting Gardens
  Money-laundering Mansions...
 

To restore the silly 19th century 96-metre spire

of the ugly and vainglorious
cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris
(partially destroyed by fire in 2019)
around 1,000 oak trees between 150 and 200 years old
will be required.

Thus was Europe deforested.

An obsolete word.

Loving-kindness
(as obsolete as yesterday)
and generosity (especially of spirit)
are rare enough in times of plenty.
But when plenty depletes,
loving-kindness and generosity
shrink to some rare 
- sometimes heroic - instances
(an attic here, a cellar there)
from which optimists extrapolate
(quite hypocritically) a false generality
of what we smugly call basic humanity.
But 'basic humanity' is 'get the bastards',
'an eye for an eye', and 'sauve qui peut'.
Wolves and dogs are obviously kinder
and more loving than us - without
even a shred of sentimentality.

 

Pineapples

air-freighted from the Dominican Republic cost $7 each.
Those sent by boat from the Ivory Coast cost under $3.
Mangoes by air from Peru are $4...

Who cares a damn about climate-change ?

Quest.

Aggression and violence need to be justified,
as well as supported and financed,

and so 'maidens in distress'
were invented - or distressed - to justify
the the seeking out and killing
of a purely fictional dragon.

“There’s no revolution in the world

that has happened for an ideological reason –
they have all happened for practical reasons, without exception,
including the [French] revolution of 1789, and the Russian Revolution.”

- Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of France's socialist party La France Insoumise.

Ha! ha! ha!

There will be elections this year

for the democratic but fairly powerless
European Parliament...

Beauty

is a Monster.
Wilderness is perfect.

I have always loved Ogres,
but not Buggers.

From ants to elephants,

all species alter landscape
-some more than others.
Us more than others
for tens of thousands of years.

We didn't advance into agriculture.
We had wiped out our prey,
laid waste the generous landscape,
and so were forced to adapt
to the meanness and labour
of animal husbandry and horticulture.

I have always considered myself sort-of-intellectual.

But, unfortunately,
to be an intellectual
you have to have a memory.
Few things stick in my vague mind -
a few facts or factoids,
a lot of ideas,
some high- and low-lights,
some feelings.

I comfort myself with the thought
that many intellectuals are silly,
if not actually stupid, such as
those geniuses who investigate
the beginning, and the end!
of the universe[s].

Diogenes would certainly have agreed with me

that all education -
however useful to the educated 
- is indoctrination.

The greater its usefulness
the greater the indoctrination.

Plato's Academy and
Aristotle's Lyceum
provide excellent examples,
yet were probably less indoctrinating
than most educators since.

Whether rich or poor,

humans will not change their behaviour
to mitigate climate-change.
They won't even boycott Amazon.

"From the Beginning of Time."

 But time began only this morning.

There was nothing before -
only Fiction, Bad Memory,
Myth, Legend..

Good old Heracl[e]itus !

'Thinking is a sacred disease, and sight is deceptive.'
(but some diseases last only a few days, while others destroy you slowly)

'Time is a game played beautifully by children.'
(when they are not being educated, beaten or otherwise abused) 

more of Heraclitus' maxims >

There's no comfort

like self-comfort.

- if only by sniffing your armpits
or underwear.

And hermits luxuriate
in solitude.

What's wrong with my judgement, my brain ?

(One should not judge a book by its Penguin Modern Classics cover.)

I decided - for the third time - to tackle James Joyce's Ulysses,
in the hope that my near-senility would reveal its genius.

But - again - I found it juvenile, painfully smart-ass,
pretentious, and overlaid (if not overladen) with
a not-very-pleasant kind of matey heterosexuality.

In that kind of writing, Henry Miller is better
funnier, more in-your-face - but not so allusive.
(Come to think of it, I'm not so keen on the Odyssey, either -
another Adventure Book for Boys!)

Fantastically literate, but with nothing underneath
that I could discern : literary forms without content
(Plato's shadows).

As for originality, Flann O'Brien's hilarious,
existentialist, surreal Third Policeman is far more readable,
far less contrived. 

It might be comparing chalk with cheese, but Joyce's
Czech/German/Jewish contemporary Kafka
was 'all content', profound, and anything but a show-off.

So why is this book so revered by the Literati, the Irish
and, above all, by Americans ?  Is it, like Proust
(whom I also three times found claustrophobic,  unreadable even in French) 
on a (deep and high) level that I'll never reach ?
Or was Joyce just lucky to have been pitied
by the unfortunate Sylvia Beach ?

We call them Care Homes.

The French, who love acronyms
and are a little less hypocritical,
call them EHPAD
- which almost means
Establishment for the Hiding of People in Appalling Distress:
Etablissement d'hébergement pour personnes âgées dépendantes.

Thought

is the furniture of my mind.
Some is too heavy,
some is uncomfortable,
some will collapse if sat on,
some is cluttered with other thoughts,
and none seems to go
with the social-ideological wallpaper.

On the Definite Article.

There is a war of difference
between Truth and The Truth.
But not everybody knows
that they can be foes.

Super-sapient Sentient I am not -

 but I venture to suggest that
'The Secret of Happiness'
is Playfulness -
which of course involves
a continuous sense of humour,
and is brainwashed out of us
by the time we are ten,
or is regimented into Sport,
which involves no sense of humour.

Dogs, when permitted, are playful and happy
and have a sense of humour,
unless, of course, it is beaten, bored
or starved out of them.

*
(A Sense of Humour, of course,
is not the telling of jokes :
I have always thought that people who tell jokes
tend to lack a sense of humour,)

Yet another thing that few people know :

The Irish Republican Army, admired by Lenin,
lent money to the USSR...

In 1920, a secret loan deal was reached
between the proclaimed Irish Republic and the Soviet Union. 

Russian crown jewels were given to the Irish Republic
n exchange for $20,000, the equivalent of over $250,000 today.
The jewels were not returned for another three decades. 

[from Wikipedia]

The Irish Free State, alas! was largely taken over
by the Catholic Church, and Socialism (let alone Marxism)
was largely excluded until Ireland had to (and was glad to) join
the European Economic Community (now European Union) in 1972.

ٱللَّٰهُ أَكْبَرُ

God is the Greatest
Excuse and
Commodification.

Picture of the Week.

 'Banana Split' : a bus in Euston Station, London.

photo by Mark Wilkins on FlickR

The advertisement 'celebrates' Chiquitas, a near-monopoly
and inglorious successor to the notorious United Fruit Company
of Florida, whose record of cruel exploitation in South and Central America
can be read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiquita_Brands_International

Men like to

sermonise and lecture
(usually more lengthily than I in this blog).
Women, however, (usually) don't like to nag.

Telephonophobia :

a 'condition' that I 'suffer from'
and which is not yet fashionable
but soon will be.

An Orwellian American Euphemism.

A prison is not a Correctional Facility,
but a dysfunctional dump for the poor and disadvantaged.

*footnote: Loyal readers will remember that I spent three months in an old, overcrowded gaol in 1973.
Since I was not disadvantaged, it was an eye-opening and useful experience.

Young Mr Yeats feels his belly rumble at Thoor Ballylee*.

I will arise and go now into the scullery,
and a small omelette cook there of magic mushrooms made.
Nine wines have I to choose from, and fresh stream-water free,
and a simple board with plate and damask laid...

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoor_Ballylee