Sculptural tokenism.

 It is easier to 

erect a monument

than to work against injustice.

Especially monuments to the victims of 'communism'.

Canada had no communist victims.
But the USA had many.

Ottawa, Canada.

Where are the monuments to the victims of capitalism ?

Thinking of Cretan and Iberian bull-cults,

I doubly appreciate this fine Romanesque
scene of a woman dancing
to the sound of a bullock playing a three-stringed rebel or vielle
on a capital at L'Estany in Catalonia.
(Do the circles represent money ?)

Cat-pub kit.

A book nook is a glowing night light/miniature house
that you can build and put on your bookshelf. 

There are many designs to choose from
- including a Feline Wine-bar.

Hello fish-eaters !

Just letting you know that the last 600 monk seals

in the whole of the Mediterranean are dwindling

on the coast of Türkiye - victims of drag-net fishing

for you and your cat.

Lovely picture, but

I wish people wouldn't use
telephoto lenses to photograph the moon.

 

Car thefts rise in South Africa.

 

"I don’t socialize with AI",

said Bill Gates, on NBC.

"It knows I'm a Very Serious Person."

And this blogger, preferring plants,
is too serious to socialise with people.

Super-intelligent AI

(or Independent Intelligence)
will probably perform suicide.

Wise humans, on the other hand,
may get around to understanding
that breathing is air-abuse.

And the Big Smile Giacometti Sculpture prize goes to

 

Tyrannosaurus rex

In bed last night

I heard Bach being played
on accordeon.  It was great.

Think of all the money
wasted on organs
that could have gone
to starving orphans!

The reason why

 

is simply because we have turned children
into totems in our perverted fetishism
of sex and nudity.
To finger a boy of twelve
has eclipsed blasphemy and murder
in the canon of evil. 
The uncle who does it
is the seed of the devil.

But then – I write as
an old-age gerontophile. 

theguardian/film2026/sept.25/chris-hansen-paedophile-show

This atrocious dog-painting

could be yours for only
two and a half million pounds.

Pretty good writer,

pretty poor painter.

 

"I felt extremely tired...

"I saw that nothing can be said on this earth
that wasn't predictable."

- Anne Tyler, The Patchwork Planet.

A scrotum-shrivelling illustration

(more a diagram)
of an swollen and inflamed
prostate gland.
Old chaps out there –
be not ashamed,
but have a good urination!

 

A splendid Romanesque tree,

farmers, and the foppish
Guy, count of Ponthieu
on the Bayeux 'Tapestry'.

Ai Wei-wei:

 

Mushrooms by Ai Wei-wei

"Cruelty is endured and inflicted by the same people.

In Days Without End, Thomas McNulty, an Irish famine victim,
takes part in slaughtering Indigenous Americans; 

in The Newer World, Tennyson, an African American victim
of enslavement, does the same.
It is “never enough for Americans to live in their American paradise. There had to be blood and chaos all the while too.”

- review of the latter by Sara Collins.

Gazing at the view,

I am sitting
on a mink-covered
barbed-wire fence
between living
and existing.

No asteroid required.

After the suicide-species
has done away with itself
(while failing to eliminate
the remnants of other life on the planet
there will be a short perpetuity
of vegetable bliss.

A dead paddy-field. Tree-planting
might have been a better option.

Living in a tub,

My oldest living friend, from 1973.

The same rhizome, often divided.

Nymphæa pygmæa 'rubra'

Brave Slow Fashion.

read more >

The century of selfishness.

Long before Legoland
there was Egoland
founded on genocide, religion and slavery
for the pursuit of happiness.

Out of this and more than one world war
came Ego-music brashly overpowering

all music from elsewhere, and from before.

*

 

Landscape of the near future,

now in Syria. 

The Bar on East 13th (New York)

 [after Manet]

painting by Salman Toor

An unusual depiction of Jesus.

Sunday Christ, Biella cathedral, Piedmont,
late 15th century. 

photo by Tania Perfetti

Apocaloptimism.

 from The Independent, London:

 « For the past 10 years, as a long-time writer on technology, I have been trying to sell an idea for a book on how an AI religion will eventually come about – and humanity will have finally built the god it always craved.

People, I argued, have been praying to gods for 10,000 years without anyone ever getting the smallest response. An AI god, by contrast, will come up with actionable help in seconds, without the need for tedious worship.

Millions of people already seek emotional advice from AI. It’s an easy step up to get people to believe this eternal fount of wisdom can influence events in your favour.

All that’s needed for someone wanting to monetise an AI deity, or, more horrifyingly, use it to drive forward some malevolent political or social agenda, is to put about the idea that there’s something supernatural, something ineffable, about the AI god. » 

more >

Lovely Leafy Sea-Dragon.

photograph: Marlene Boehm

The conservation status of the leafy sea dragon
(marine emblem of South Australia)
is being reassessed in light of the devastating algal bloom. 

Looking back

through the forgetful
fog of my life passed,
the good memories
make me feel sad,
and the bad ones
just regretful.
 

Obviously,

some tattoos
are better* than others.

*or at least more interesting.

Dark Progress.

Humans love to talk of light, illumination

and enlightenment, but work increasingly

to keep themselves and each other in the dark.

Terrible

(apparently) to be a
Reverse Centaur.
Not much fun
to be a Reverse Minotaur.

Harvest Being

If only more of us dressed like this, 

life would be more beautiful.

Epigram

by Ludvig Holberg, philosopher
and dramatist of Bergen.

Time and place
determine what is moral.

Connectivity is the key

to a successful 4,000-kilometre
migration for a group of wild dogs.

No stupid quarrels over rights or territory.

Brutalism's just fate

at the former Evropa Hotel,
Oteševo, Macedonia.
This soul-chilling 'welcome arch'
held a star-circled globe which was stolen.

Between the last two World Wars

Denmark had no standing army.
No standing army
could have resisted the Nazi swoop
over the threshold to Norway.
Denmark chose welfare rather than weapons
(but not the welfare of pigs).

Almost all countries now
(except Sikkim, Bhutan, Panama,
Iceland, small island nations
and the Vatican City) prefer
to spend money on arms
rather than welfare
or Earth-friendly farms.

Landscape art.

 

First Love: Dog

Osmosis and Absorption.

Caffeine in sharks
Crystal meth in catfish
Opioids in octopi
Fentanyl in fire-eels
Cocaine in cod
Anti-depressants in 
just about all river-
and shore-life.
Some must penetrate
birds of the air,

and perhaps God
who is, unfortunately, everywhere.

Sign of the times

I have noticed especially this tired year
the drabness of men's "leisure wear" :

plain colours (often beige or grey)
on bulbous bodies,

almost nobody but me in anything striped,
patterned, patchwork, bright or gay.

Does this suggest that soon there'll be a
Global Fashion Take-over
by joyless Chinese industry ?

Dressing up

on the Iranian island of Qeshm :
part of the New Year celebrations.

Photograph: Huda Abdulmughni

Fragment of a play by Ion B.Orto

Jz:  Did you know, guys, that crocodiles survived the last Great Extinction and will survive the current apocalypse and probably the seventh ?  

Palz cough politely.
Silence.

Jz:  You know, chaps, it's not such a bed of roses being the S of G.

Palz:  Bless us, Lord ! So you keep saying, especially after your devil-baiting 'trips'  in the Negev.  Meanwhile, there's been a bit of bother here.

Jz:  I read about it in Gay Times.  Those nail and spear-wounds, Judi - they'll heal quite well.  The Modena vinegar is not just a nice drink, you know. Keep on praying.  Soon you'll be able to live fast and die forever. That's the way forward. Way to go.

By the way - anyone know where to find J the B ?  His ma told my ma to ask me to ask you...just in case he's topped himself, y'know ?

AI.Inc.

Some business
is funny business
without the fun.

Much business
is dog's business
without the dog.

But, of course, it's none
of our business.

Is that all ?

 

Mecca

 

my-pilgrimage-in-the-age-of-the-golf-cart-and-mall

Gangrene of the will

encompasses
gangrene of the will to live
and gangrene of the will to die.

Gods are immortal
insofar as they don't exist
outside the dismal domination
of the human mind
and can be no greater than
human imagination.

Forbidden.

Imagine the 'triple-whammy'
for Uyghur women confined by the gooks
of conservative Islam
in a paranoid, racist state
which oppresses Muslims
and suppresses books.

The Cat's Pyjamas

unfortunately
didn't reach as far as
the dog's ballocks
let alone the bee's knees.

Fifty-three years ago,

 on the 11th of September, 1973

Salvador Allende, democratically-elected
President of Chile, committed suicide during a coup
organised by his army chief of staff,
President Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and the CIA
amongst others.

Twenty years before that, Mohammed Mossadegh,
the first democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iran,
was removed in a coup instigated by the United Kingdom
government and Anglo-Iranian Oil, now BP,
(under the codename Operation Boot)
and by the United States,
(under the codename TP-AJAX Project or Operation Ajax).

A year later, in 1954, the first democratically-elected
President of Guatemala was removed by a coup
engineered by the USA.

'Democracy' (which is definitely worth trying)
in South and Central America
has been strangled, even after 2001,
by numerous State Department and military crimes
and 'crimes against humanity'.

Americans wonder why they were attacked by Sa'udis
in 2001.
I wonder why Sa'udi Arabian diplomats were involved.

But nothing in politics is as it seems.

We may all wonder why Afghanistan became and remains
the sorriest victim of American killing-regimes.

By the way,