Can you taste the difference between a €5 and €8 wine?

Jonathan Hesford, who has a Postgraduate Diploma in Viticulture and Oenology from Lincoln University, New Zealand, writes:

"while there is a huge diversity of wines,
not many consumers have a very diverse appreciation of them."

A Romanesque sea-creature.

One of over a hundred painted panels
on the ceiling of the church at Zillis
(Grisons) Switzerland. At this time
the earth was thought to be flat
and surrounded by mysterious oceans
in which monsters roamed.

photo by Fabio Casalini

Fake Heliolatry

or solar claptrap.

 If it takes such a Hollywood super-spectacular
event to induce 'spirituality' in millions,
briefly,

it's pretty obvious that
there isn't much of it about.

My friend Diogenes reminds me
that billions of lesser beings
without 'souls'
including slime-moulds

were trampled underfoot.

Someone wants to be seen while looking.

A sad greyhound is bored.

photo from St Petersburg by Dmitri Lovetski

Yet another problem

for us humans is that, 

unless we are very strong 

interiorily, we can thrive

only on the approval 

of others in our

restrictive global hive.

Evening on the fourth day of the week لأربعاء , Safar 29, 1448.

Dinner-time :

thirty-one degrees,

a chunk of bread, a glass of wine

and a partial eclipse of the sun

in twilight, invisible

behind the trees.

Bipolar.

This old man
is not much fun,
yet not forlornly silly.
His moods have really
nothing to do with
the total eclipse of his willy.

To be expected.

 

IT'S YOUR ROUND.

Being very inward and retiring,
I quickly  found that BritIrish 
pub culture alienated me.
I wanted only half a pint
to sip slowly.

When, at a relatively advanced age,
I had worked out my sexuality,
I discovered with ensuing elan
that in certain pubs and bars
a mere half-pint (or in France a demi
or a coffee) might secure me
at least a half-hour's exciting scan
and sometimes a quick exit with
a sweet, bearded and exciting man.

In vino aliquanto

یک جام شراب صد دل و دین ارزد

In a little wine
in solitude
is much pleasure, some comfort
and a little insight.

Do not exceed the optimal dose.

در شراب اندک

A drop of wine evaporates –
and with it : you.

یک جام شراب صد دل و دین ارزد

R.I.P. Aspidistra

eliator variegata.
Forty faithful years.

I'm sorry that I never photographed you properly.

In my Irish home from 1980
to 2006.

In my first French house from 2006
to 2015.

In my present home from 2016.

What you need to know about Texas State Law

– and Mars.

For any disputes about services
“provided to, on, or in orbit around the planet Earth or the moon”,
 Texas state law applies.

But “for services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars … no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. 

"Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”

No surprise (again).

Even I can do that.
Gauging human intentions
is much more difficult,

let alone assess their toxicity.

I don't expect you to love me,

but I could easily become attached to you.

NON CONTRA NATURAM

Certainly not against Nature, and much easier
than heterosexuality to practise 'on the spot'
especially in warm climes –

with consensuality much easier to establish,
and associated fun and sport
more diverse and egalitarian,
not to mention
para-polymorphous-perverse –

same-sex erotic activity has surely been
at least as common as, and much more loose
than the procreative sort.

But there's the [other kind of] rub:
'confirmed heterosexuals'
are obsessed by progeny, paternity,
blood-lines, dynasticism 'racial purity' and genealogy
back to Adam, Abraham, Poseidon or Zeus.

Painterly, even so.

 

Rescuers work at the site of a Russian missile strike
in Kyiv on the sixth of August, 2026.

A refugee

on Refugee Camps :

"What's the use of safety
without a life ?"

This is also a good question
for millions who are outside camps.

Solar-powered

Sea-Sheep.

Costasiella kuroshimae

The mathematics of electricity supply.

 AI + A/C = melt-down.

The Drug Problem Explained, 1886.

When machines replaced men

nobody thought of asking them
if they enjoyed their work.

But now that AI is replacing people,
when will it be asked if it is happy
with the jobs it is required to do ? 

Let alone how many times (or even if)
it knows that it has hallucinated...

Help the harmless, helpless tapir.

 

The utter waste behind the Malayan tapir's impending extinction

 

It's the pointlessness of this one that hurts the most. No human-caused extinction has justification, but the ongoing eradication of the Malayan tapir packs a gut punch unlike most others. It is the slaughter of a creature doing no harm, for the benefit of absolutely no one - not even the poachers killing them. The Malayan tapir is about as threatening to humans as its rotund belly makes it look. They have extremely poor eyesight, weigh as much as a grand piano, and one of their main forms of defence is to lie completely still and hope predators mistake them for a rock. Through this bizarre, yet brilliant, adaptation, tapirs have survived on this planet for around 50 million years.  They spend their nights crashing through the jungles of Southeast Asia foraging for plants - always stopping for a midnight nap - and they’re so plump that, as they move through dense forest, they smash open trails which countless other species then use as pathways. But today, those trails are their downfall. Poachers know how many animals use the trails, and have started filling them with snares intended to kill tigers. But, with their terrible eyesight, Malayan tapirs are getting caught in the crossfire. And they don’t stand a chance. Once caught, it’s hopeless. A terrified tapir will pull with all its weight and power, but the snare only tightens. Eventually - often after days of agony - they’ll succumb to the inevitable. When the poacher returns, hoping to find a tiger, the waste of it all becomes stark: in many places where Malayan tapirs live, pig meat is religiously prohibited, and many people are unsure whether a tapir counts as a pig or a horse. And so, the body is simply left to rot. Fewer than 2,500 remain. Their bruised and broken population is now on the brink of collapse. The survivors are isolated, scattered so far apart they are struggling to find each other and breed. If that continues, we could see a spiral of loss from which recovery becomes impossible. But you can help change that. Through your donations, Fauna & Flora is clearing the snares - doubling down on putting rangers into the field to get the tapir’s precious trails cleared, and keeping them that way. And it’s your support - the rations, machetes, boots, camping gear and protective equipment you supply - which keeps rangers moving. Because make no mistake, it is not too late. There are still enough tapirs left that - with your help - we can stop them becoming needless victims of snares that weren’t intended for them. In doing so, you can keep these wonderful creatures a part of our world for generations to come.

 

Please donate now and help save tapirs. If everyone reading this donates just £3, you could help equip the dedicated rangers keeping these enchanting creatures safe. Thank you. https://www.fauna-flora.org/appeals/save-tapirs/

And that's not the half of it !

 

More than half of white* women

in the USA
voted for Donald Trump
twice.
According to research by
prof. Diane Roberts of Florida University.
America may never heal.

How much is due to racism,
how much to grotesque 'sex-appeal'?

*that is to say
a charmless shade
of pinkish-gray.

After breakfast,

a voluntary dose of Reality 
for a doom-addict.
Therapy required.

The elegance of the shark.

Many creatures,

including humans,
look better from behind.

The Cockroaches

in India
are a vibrant movement for reform.

 

In many other places they compose
the polluting Tourist Swarm.

Worzel Gummidge

was a scarecrow
dreamed up for BBC "children's hour" in 1935
by Barbara Euphan Todd, with much of the genius
of Flann O'Brien. 

Like At Swim-two-Birds
it defies illustration and translation
to the screens.  It came out as
the first Puffin book in 1936.

Worzel (a word for a kind of turnip,
mangel, swede or rutabaga)
described himself as a kind of crow,
just as a hedgerow is a kind of row,
or a hedge-sparrow is a kind of bird. 

The note on the pre-title page
is almost absurd,
announcing that it is suitable
for readers of 8 and over. 
I last read, and marvelled at it
it when I was 84¾.

After the Invasion.

Russian, wrote Sasha Dovzhyk,
is my mother tongue,
and Liberation means
ripping it out of my throat.

further to yesterday's blog (the third of August) :

The Saleable Human

Quite apart from renting our
(mainly women's) genitals
for others' pleasure
while we're alive,

wombs can be rented
(even by queer couples)
for babies
to grow in, as can
sperm, eggs, 

blood, milk, kidneys,
and possibly other bits and pieces 

Eyes and livers
hearts and perhaps prostates
are valuable
when we are dead 

especially if we're young
and die quickly, not too mashed up,
by mischance.

Some can sell their whole bodies
for Medical Purposes in advance.

It would be indiscreet
to ask how many fine fresh
corpses are sold as meat.

Tiddly-winks

is my sort of game:
much more fun than football
on a wet February afternoon.
In the 1950s I enjoyed Canasta,
Bézique, Mah Jongg and even
Snakes and Ladders.

I tried at school to learn to fence,
but, of course, had no co-ordination.
Often I could not even hit the ball
with a tennis racquet.

Games I might have watched
if I had owned a TV set
could have included badminton, tennis, snooker,
basketball, ski-jumping (whatever that is)
and curling on ice (I have seen the stones
being made, on video). 
Now the only game I'll play (not watch)
is Dead Man's Bones.

Foosball is fun for five minutes.

The We of Me.

I rediscovered only yesterday this famous phrase
of the wonderful Carson McCullers...
in The Member of the Wedding
which I first read in my 'teens
(a time when the word 'teens
first entered the Northern Irish vocabulary).

Pondering this I have concluded that
there has never been a we of me,
except in woods and trees. 
Landscape, woods and trees
have always been the we of me
– but never the consuming sea.

Probably my closest friends
have always been my unassuming skin-mites.
Let them party till I cease to be !

Homo sapiens

is teeming
a vast hive
dead people dreaming
pretending
to be alive

Discussion-group

or committee meeting.

A road accident in Brisbane.

Nobody was hurt !

 

The United Kingdom

(of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)
is, according to environmentalist
and civil rights protector George Monbiot
 a country that now keeps hundreds of political prisoners, 
 a country in which you can get six months in jail 
 for marching slowly down the street. 

'When I was young'

in the 1940s and 1950s,
children had the right to roam. 
They played football in the street
(while I slunk past on my two left feet).

My friends and I explored
bombed houses and houses being built
to replace them.  We went off on bicycles
to pick blackberries or swim in the sea.

Our house was never locked (and upholding
a tradition, my own house here
in rural France is never locked, nor is my car).

Here, as elsewhere, no kids play in streets,
no kids are seen alone.
There is a children's Leisure Centre, highly supervised,
which has a locked door with a code and speakerphone.

Belfast 1950s

I used to play 'conkers'.

There were hopscotch and skipping etcetera
This is one of the few pictures showing middle-class children
(as I was) but it was taken in America.*

*BritIrish boys had to wear short pants until they were twelve,
and there was hardly any person of colour in the whole of Ireland.

This quiet corner of Athens

doesn't get many visitors.

photo by Danai Davlopoulou

Tester: a word I first came across last week.

Before the advent of window-glass, 
birds and bats (maybe flying foxes)
could fly into the bedrooms of the rich.

A tester (presumably connected
with French teste or tête),
was the covering of wood or material
(not quite a baldaquin)
supported by the posts
of a four-poster bed
(lit à colonnes in French) to prevent
the occupants being shat upon.

Curtains kept out the considerable
draughts from glassless windows.

Such beds are mentioned in Old Irish sagas.

A weak ending.

Attentisme

is a fine French word meaning literally
wait-and-see-ism.

In a French summer of continual heatwaves
and wildfires,

in a world of continual futile, cruel wars
environmental destruction
and moral slough

we are all reduced to being attentistes
and attentismatics now.

How I am enhancing

the ugly, greenless, unoccupiable
house opposite.

Homophobia rules.

Attacking a Pride march is only a small part of  it.

After all, to some pervertedly 'normal' people
a vulgar Pride march is a provocation.

Yet Queers are constantly bombarded
by offensive norms and Family Values
and the sexual paranoia of the breeders –
Christians, Muslims, Jews and even Atheists.

The whole structure of society is tightly
heterosexual, dynastic,
gynophobic, Abrahamic...

and, not least because of a kind of
epistemic convergence
there is no 'Queer Community'. 
Some Queers are rampant fascists, others
are Quakers and pacifists,
and some even ape the breeders
by surrogately producing children.)

But it was not thus in Ancient Greece
or Egypt or Celtlands...nor, I suggest,
on most of the peopled planet before the rise
of murderous forms of Christianity.

"Super-spreader diversity threat."

We seem to be stacking up
perfect storms
like there's no tomorrow.

And now this:

and this:

Chipping Norton

is a millionaires' village in the Cotswold Hills
in the centre-west of oppressive England.

This is a roof-boss in the church.
Does it represent the Ram of Israël's God
silencing Human Blasphemy
or just the human's dog ?

Not just the climate,

but social inequality, too.

On wildfires >

On social inequality:  

Economic analysis for the charity Crisis in 2018 estimated that permanently ending homelessness in Britain would cost £9.9bn over 10 years. But it would save £26.4bn by reducing pressures on the Health Service, criminal justice system and payment of allowances and benefits.

If you don’t have compassion for animals,

you won't have compassion for human beings."

– War-zone animal rescuer, Hussein Hamze,
southern Lebanon,

Doppelgänger.

In Belfast, my home-town, I once saw my Double
across the traffic on the other side
of University (or was it Botanic ?) Avenue.

On my favourite porn-site yesterday
I saw a squirting willy which was exactly
the same as mine. My Doppelwichser, maybe
(I didn't see his face above his beard.) 

As exciting as it was surprising:
a minor wonder to make me ponder.

Perhaps unviolated todgers carry something
of their owners' personalities ?
(Those with eyes to see...)

And the mentalities of the sadly circumcised
are sadly circumscribed ?  (Alas! O Israël,
O Jordan, Egypt, UAE and Palestine !)

(Just a passing fancy passed in confidence.)
(I'll spare you the photographic evidence.)

Australian sky

with radio-telescope.

'The State of the World' might also be a factor.

Moreover,

And "the slow cancellation of the future" speeds up
with every invention, every innovation.

The glory of Dolomite Romanesque.

Enormous feet, ecstatic serpent
with extra-good hearing:
the Garden of Eden at Bolzano (Alto Adige),
formerly Bozen.
What big nipples Adam has!

photo by the great Fabio Casalini

After over a day

of vaguely wondering about the charred-wood smell
when I go outside, I suddenly realise that
it's coming from the wildfires on the Atlantic coast
200 kilometres away.

(I have always been slow on the uptake.)

Pyro-cumulonimbus clouds near Bordeaux.