The television-watching public

is interested only in
the most trivial success-stories
and in the most infantile of politics,
which is another reason why
democracy has failed.

The musician

in Dhrupad
is no magician
but simply the trained
and inspired, ego-less connector
with death and pre-birth,
with sublime nothingness.

I will 'go gentle

into that good night',
because I did not want
to come into the light,
of duty, obligation,
blame, responsibility,
bereavement,
hubris, despair, and all
the complicated kinds
of wrong and right
that eat into our porous minds.

One is not truly vicious

unless and until one
loathes or despises virtue.

Like the rich.

Generosity of spirit

has no place in sport,
business, or politics.
Which is why the world
is worse than it ever was.

Ghosts, apparitions, and aliens

are, like God,
wise enough
to appear only
to believers.

After visiting

the local band of gentle brothers
who smoke dope together every day,
all day, and cook rude meals together
in companionable harmony,
I thought:What a pity Our Dear Lord
did not use cannabis or harmal -
thus saving (probably) this fragile world
from millennia of misery.  Such a pity
that he instead was into religiosity.

Which is worse –

a dealer in dope
or a dealer in hope ?

(It depends on the dope.
It depends on the hope.)

Lamentation upon the Earth

becomes ever greater - but the word
lamentation
is archaic, merely Biblical -
like turning swords into ploughshares
and going forth and multiplying,
which, in propinquity of time,
will cause ever more lamentation.

In the Beginning was the Word,
and the Word was Lamentation.

A 'Great Architect'

cannot design a house
that a dog would use.

"Intelligent life on a planet comes of age

when it first works out the reason for its own existence."

Comes of age ?
Reason for existence ?

I would have thought, Professor Dawkins*,
that a definition of intelligent life
would have nothing to do with a reason for existence
(which is just another form of Prime Mover, or god),
and indeed, truly intelligent life
would be way beyond the adolescent fantasy 
of seeking a reason for existence.

*in The Selfish Gene, 1976.

Second Wisdom, Third Season

(after an image by Gray Moon Gallery)

The creature

with the biggest brain
cannot think
what to do with it
beyond asserting its mere superiority.

Perception Management

So wrote Muamar Gadafi.
Western leaders think the opposite.
Either way, democracy is a sham.

But of course there might be other definitions,
for example:
Democracy is government by explanation,
consultation and participation -
if only that were possible.

To be held

by what you cannot hold
is not as bad
as to be held
by what you can.

Monotheism :

one of the greatest curses
of humanity:
God is vanity.

North America:

the worm turns
and
the worms turn

Information Technology

Input-overload
keeps us quiet
or at least ineffective.

Émile Cioran wrote:

'Write for those who have not long to live.'

But there is no guarantee that they are any wiser
or more receptive than when they left the womb. 

I write for those who will never be born
- and will of course be spared a life,
a destiny, a  pointless tomb.

People who don't

like their own smell
are very dead.

Two views

of

- and a third: here.

Puzzled Outsider

I don't understand love
(except as respect or,
on the other hand,
infatuation).
I don't understand grief
(except as self-pity)
and I am incapable of
understanding wilful
insemination.

Lop-sided evolution.

The only creature
who can consistently ask Why ?
only asks How ?

From cruelty to animals for fun

to cruelty to children,
from dancing bears
to child pornography,
from whipping horses' eyes
to gang-raping children,
modern Man has indeed progressed.
No wonder that we're all depressed.

It is a meanness

to notice the meanness
of others.

What dark relation

has kindness
to optimism ?

London,

Not yet approved by Her Majesty's
Health and Safety Executive (HaSEX)
but approved conditionally
by Her Majesty's Willy Inspectorate
and the Office of Male Sexual Regulation
(Ofcock).

Alas! I was not always so saintly.

I don't want
more than I have
because I have
more than I want
- much more than I need.
The rest - of life - is greed.

Culture

in capitalism
is decoration of greed.
Aftershave
smells of the slave.

adapted from a blog by Jindra

Fifty years after

the Cuban Missile Crisis
we are part of the whimper
which thinks it's
the only show in town.
We parade, we destroy,
we torture, we simper.
When will we all fall down ?

Indignation

If dignity comes
only through employment,
there is no dignity.
And what about enjoyment ?

Religion

is the recruitment
and mobilisation
of the wilfully superstitious.

Breeders need
to think wishfully.

Isn't it disturbing

how often we need permission
to tell the truth - when, if we
had any moral sense whatever,
we should seek permission to tell lies ?

The ancient, apparently-gormless are great survivors

and will probably outlive us by a few million years.

 



























"Cuttlefish are arguably the most fabulous animal of the ocean,
often posing for cameras whether asked to or not." - 'Eduardo'

Millions of pink-grey-beige people

now have lives far, far better
than people had 50 years ago.

The opposite is true for pigs.

Heuristic

is such an ugly word
that I decided to be
eristic
instead.

Sold yesterday for over £23 million ($34 million)

Gerhard Richter: Abstract Composition (upside-down)

Well, it's not bad  - but better upside-down.
I'd give maybe £250 (€300, $350) for it.
But then I'm a painter, not an investor,
not a fool - and not a con-man.

THE MORE ARTIFACTS, THE LESS ART.

Alcohol-smuggling

costs the United Kingdom a billion pounds
($1.5 billion) every year
in lost tax-revenue.
But how often do we hear
about it ?  Our 'free press'
would rather report on 20 cannabis plants
seized in suburbia, or how some parentally
deranged teenager took more than a little
too much Ecstasy - plus alcohol,
paracetamol and god-knows-what
(though of course we're not told that)
at someone else's 'party'
and ended up in hospital.

Musca domestica

It is often easier to kill a human
than a fly.

Voluntary breeders

in the overpopulated
factory of misery that is our world
are so heartless and selfish
and, let's face it, mad,
that I am aghast, agape
with outrage - and slightly glad
to be the product of a rape.

Advance Directive

I, being of sounder mind than most,
wouldn't care at all
if you murdered me tomorrow
for my generous weekly pension,
my passport, my credit cards,
my free bus-pass,
my paintings, my identity -
or for no kind of worldly gain -
so long as it involved
no violence or pain.

'The truth shall make you free'

is a Christian* idea
inextricably enmeshed
in the belief in progress.

But how can one indefinable,
unmeasurable abstraction
produce a measurable increase in,
or a transformation of, another ?

Free from what ?
Free to what ?

Our criterion for judging religions, however,
should not be the narrow and splenetic
matter of truth and falsehood
- it should be æsthetic.

(*John VIII, 32)

My friend Al

who lives in Colorado
says that the United States
is not really a nation
or even a country -
but a nest of corporations.

The best news for thousands of years.

"US scientists aim to create human sperm
from stem-cells".

Now that women can control their own fertility
(despite the imams, mullahs and the Pope)
and sperm can be 'designed' by women
to produce a gentle, intelligent species
(like bright, beneficent bonobos),

a brave new world of hope
may rise from the patristic shit:
men need not be frightened of
masturbation,
and can even turn happily,
unpenetratively homosexual
to save the planet from horrific
overpopulation.

(If only!)

I know it was yesterday in the USA, but

Am anderen Ufer

On the other side
of those two-dimensional things
that we are urged and urged
and urged to want
is
love
          - of entropy.

Just call me Uncle

Sam
- though my maiden name was
John Bull.

The words of politicans

priests, journalists,
and people of power
are calumnies on weasels.

The man who has nothing

to hide
cannot tell
stories.

A new theory:

Perhaps the men who control the Catholic Church
(who are only rarely Popes)
are chosen for their asexuality.
This would explain their failure to understand
the tortures of celibacy in the priesthood
and the Church's cruel perpetuation of
crimes against women.

And we/you/they're all dyslexic.
If you can spot the spelling-mistake
you're Good Overpopulating Material.

;-)

On the radio,

Salman Rushdie said
that because stories are untrue
they reveal truths that truth-tellers
like myself cannot get people to listen to.

But stories - love, adventure,
tragedy and strife -
are only amusement.
They rarely change lives.
Only a vision, a version
of the truth can change a life.

Why bother ?

In cultures of charge
and discharge, most men
'have sex'
simply for relief -
never mind the quality.
Silly romantics like myself
seek some sort of
'glorious mutuality'.

Silly Names for Cars

I thought that the (Toyota) Corolla
and (Nissan) Cherry were
pretty inappropriate.
But now there is the (Renault)
(Dacia) DUSTER
to wipe the road with.

Cars used to be called Minx
and Mustang, Rapier and Scimitar,
all very macho... Of course any name
is better than Avenger.

Perhaps

a truth is a truth
only until it is
accepted.

(from the Page of Perhaps)

Self-education

has always been my chief source
of entertainment, so I have never understood
why mere entertainers, performing athletes,
fashion-creatures, "celebrities"
and other egotists hold the world in thrall.

The passive dumpen-bourgeoisie is now
all of us - well, almost all.

Traps and Trappers.

Someone (was it Auden ?)
wrote that Childhood is a Trap -
the trap of flesh from flesh by flesh,
of being owned, directed and prevented.
To grow up, he said, is to escape
from that first, almost universal trap.

Some do - even in our infantilising culture,
which turns childhood into an insane competition
which continues until dementia.
But there are many other traps,
some set by how we coped with childhood,
most set by prejudice, by expectations
(or lack of them), by governments and customs,
or by the metallic teeth of avaricious
self-advancement.

No-one can escape them all, but the most thoughtful,
the most serious, the most fortunate amongst our billions
can choose (to an extent) the most benign amongst them.
The most important - indeed vital - to avoid
is the Trap of Traps which sets so many others
so dynastically, smothers evolution,
drags so many into the distressing human void:
parenthood.

A.I.M.L.E.S.S

proudly presents
The Association for the Introduction
of More 'Loafeing' and Ease
in the Social Set-up.

The Association has two members already.
Could we make it a sextet ?
More than that will make
Power perceive us as a threat.

On opposite sides of a strip of sea

The French want no-one to be their superiors.
The English can't live without inferiors.

Grow older, shout louder!

Education-systems
are now so good
at squashing intelligence
that the old are more
subversive than the young.

Click on the picture
for an analysis of the Latin motto,
which could be said to be
a very good example of totalitarian
Double-Speak.

Implanting Democracy

is easier said than done.
The press in Hungary is now
less free than in 1981.