Brainwashed, Shrinkwrapped...

Triangle of affection

Our truly French
and very cuddly lover
calls me mon amour,
chéri, mon choux,
mon loup,
mon responchou...
My other lover
loves me more,
and doesn't tell me
je t'adore!

The present state of the Welfare States

The unemployable live and die
in the mephitic squalor of the Victorian masses,
while the comparatively (and really) rich
get titanium knees and triple heart by-passes.

If you want an example of how 'democracy' is sham,

just think about the history of the tram.
Lines expensively ripped up and cars replaced
by unpleasant, inefficient buses
all over Western Europe (except Amsterdam).
This important decision was left to
ignorant town councils, not to passengers.

Ending a brief correspondence.

Hi Anthony,
 
Apologies, I was getting my days mixed up. I recall you saying you were busy on Thursday and Saturday. Our last filming window for this is therefore Sunday. But, fortunately, also the furthest away for preparation time. So would Sunday in Paris work as a possibility for you? We’d need to confirm our end, but wanted to check with you first.

We’d still love to make this happen if we can.

Simon, CB Films.


Dear Simon,

I have not had good feelings about your project.
It seems very rushed  - can I be in Paris on Sunday, where ?
do I book the trains or do you ? overnight ? what do I wear ?
You have not told me the storyline of the documentary
beyond that it is about shoplifting and kleptomania.

I have pointed out that kleptomania, though a sexy subject,
is actually very rare, and most shoplifters are not kleptomaniacs.
Kleptomaniacs steal from their friends, for example,
and are unaware or only vaguely aware that they are doing so.
My extraordinarily low-level shoplifting, though somewhat compulsive,
is both part of my anti-property philosophy
and (conveniently)of sheer economic value in a life
led entirely 'below the bread line' even before I left university
for the second time - without a degree.

As you know, I do not have television, and though I have watched some great documentaries
and some great Iranian movies thereon, I regard it as one of the greatest of the modern evils,
along with compulsory brainwashing of children. I have been told that Channel 4 has already produced some programmes about shoplifters which were contemptibly shallow infotainment.  I have also had a poor experience with BBC Radio 4, who cut out the (to me) only important point that I made in a 'slot'.

I have no intention of wasting my time and someone's money taking (possibly overnight) trains to and from Paris for a tedious bit of interview which will end up as 5 minutes in a broadcast which does not consider the complicated social-ethical-economic aspects of shoplifting - which, as I point out on my web-page, is regarded somewhat differently in many parts of Europe from the often-vindictive attitude in anglophone countries.  I am not sure that you have even read all of that web-page, or any others on my website.  You at no point mentioned expenses, and seem to me all-too-desperate to put me in front of a camera without having seen me in real life.  When October Films UK filmed me for their documentary on unconventional funerals, they were in contact for 6 weeks before filming.

If the project were by someone as serious and distinguished as Adam Curtis, and if I had been approached early on and  'put in the picture' rather than lassooed at what seems like the last moment of a tottering project, I might have been happy to recount before a camera my sometimes brazen, sometimes discreditable experiences, my brief imprisonment in Belfast's famous prison (where prison officers decided I was homo 5 years before I did), my fondness for giving money to beggars on the streets rather than to the comfortable in shops, and my thoughts on a minor criminal but not antisocial behaviour in which I have indulged for most of my life.

Yours sincerely,

Anthony.
http://outcyber.tumblr.com

[no reply received]

If only

Kim Jong-un had a beard !
(sigh)
but not with that haircut.

Is it progress if a cannibal learns to use a knife and fork ?

asked Jerzy Lec
(born Baron Stanisław Jerzy de Tusch-Letz, 1909-1966)
Well, yes, of course.
We define progress almost entirely by learned behaviour
and by gadgets,
many of which are making the world uninhabitable
except for secret, dedicated baby-eating cannibals.

Certificates

are mainly paper.
People are usually
either more or less
than their certificates.
But some, although considered
distinguished by fools and knaves,
are indistinguishable
from their certificates.

Epicurean Musings

Death, being merely an absence of life,
cannot be 'an evil', though it may be regretted
by those solipsists who think they have a claim on,
or some sort of right to expect, The Future,
and by those few to whom a death
will cause misery and deprivation.
Knowledge of death is also, surely,
an important part of human existence.

My own death, being an easy absence of my life,
is an event to which I am not even now averse,
though my life (especially my love-life)
currently gets better as I get older.
When it starts to get appreciably worse
I will regard it, not death, as an eradicable curse.

The Experience Project

I read somewhere that
What men call love
is usually an attempt at
or an assertion of power.
But then I read this 
and began to cower...

The Percenters

There is a facile theory
propagated by an élitist group called
The Five Percenters,
who divide human populations into 85, 10 and 5 percent
(at least the maths is OK)
just like earlier class-divisions into
Lumpenproletariat,
Bourgeoisie and  Wise (or merely educated) Few.
One might just as well divide us all into
Snobs, Yobs, Thickos and Sickos !

Stanisław Jerzy Lec (born Baron Stanisław Jerzy de Tusch-Letz)

is credited with the marvellous injunction:
DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH OF THE END OF THE WORLD !

Sculpture by Isamu Krieger

Here are some of Lec's lesser apophthegms:

• The exit is usually where the entrance was.
• He who limps is still walking.
• In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.
• I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward.
• Is it progress if a cannibal learns to use a knife and fork ?
• Suppose you succeed in breaking down the wall with your head.
  What, then, will you do in the next cell?

more >

Today is International Day of Dína

which I am celebrating with two photos
by the venerable Bohemian photographer
Jindřich Hrdlićka :

Over half the world's human

- and rat - populations live in cities.
So it is no surprise that a supermarket
chain's promotion advertisement for milk
displayed a bullock.

Refusing the train, converting the station.

When they left the crushingly dull institution
my school-friends boarded career-trains
and sped or slowly pulled away
and continued along, along -
tickety-pack, clickety-clack.
 *
I got as far as a platform,
which I turned into a cosy
little house and garden
and never went further,
never turned back.

*famous herpetologist, anæsthetist, stomach-surgeon,
car-dealer, Captain of Industry, Methodist minister, 
professor of astrophysics, head teacher...

'Mr Mean-spirited' and

Click on the cabin to read what he says.

Walden.
                    But how is the true drop-out going to afford the piece of land
on which to place a shelter or a cabin ?
How will she insulate it and make it rat-proof ?
Even Diogenes had only a big wine-jar (a modern equivalent might be a dustbin) to live in,
and (so far as we know) no rent to pay;
probably no food to buy, either, since he was often entertained by his intellectual friends.

Mass Puritanism

Contentment
can be the only possible
justification for living.
Yet the discontent, the malcontent
and the unhappy consciously decide
to deny themselves even
the minor luxury of suicide.

Any money a bank lends

soon ends up in another bank.
So, for the banking system as a whole,
most loans are in reality deposits,
and there is no such thing as a shortage of money.

So who gains from financial austerity ?

more >

« People do not appreciate poverty -

and this is a sign of serious malaise. »
- Erik Satie

There is only one basic human right :

the right to question everything,
anything.

Forms of enchantment

Those with the time to do so seek enchantment -
religion, drugs, sex, country rambles,
betting on horses...whatever -
they are interchangeable:
to select or blend according to personality,
cultural background, belief and taste.
Enchantment, however,
is not a power, but a capacity, an openness within,
accessible whether one is stupid or clever,
rich or poor, promiscuous or chaste.

Beyond Otaku おたく/オタク

Ego is the witch who rides the broomstick of Western thought.
The Beyond-Otaku is ego-less, like an unemployed geisha,
makes journeys without goals,
exercises freedom by staying centred in humility.
A prime example within Japanese culture is Santoka.
A good Western example is probably Diogenes, though Genet might qualify, too -
if his passive, desire-less (maybe pleasure-less) homosexuality
was an expression of dedicated innocence.

The Third Way

Failing better
or succeeding worse
- it's a very subtle choice
for the spiritually sprightly.
But there is also
trying lightly...

A Rightist Rant, rather hit-&-miss in the Fact Department.

"Although the cultural sphere is entirely Leftist, the economic system is hyper-oligarchical and capitalist. Nature has been ravaged by pollution: the weather is colder; sunlight is lethal; countless species are extinct.

The US has an essentially Third World economy, spewing out cheap plastic junk for vulgar morons. The dollar is worthless, and the currency of choice is the Chinese yuan.
The endless, sprawling cities are filthy, impoverished, racially and ethnically segmented, crime-ridden, and chaotic.
The United States is still bogged down in senseless wars and police actions around the globe. Still, it’s all supposed to be “good for the economy,” as the characters [in Perdue's 'The Node'] never tire of reminding us."
                                            - Greg Johnson

Be nobody's poodle !

It is at least as bad to borrow
someone else's nihilism
as to accept the flapdoodle
of brainwashing optimism.

"The uttering of metaphysical declarations 
is the function of monks, degenerates and the indigent."
~ Emile Cioran

Such fun!

for two of them at least

It goes without saying

that there are evil people.
Not the obvious, spectacular ones
who could have been stopped
if circumstances had been otherwise,
but the small, inevitable ones
such as the inventor of the rotary flail
which is used to mangle millions of miles
of hedgerows horribly every year.

Looks are important

if you need to convince people
of your sanity -
especially if you are a woman.

So where do you think this beautiful old mosque is ?

Click on the photo to find out.

click here to find out more...

Yet another good reason to refuse coffee from a paper or plastic cup.

Huge News: A Win for Pigs in Canada !

read more >

'Community'

is fine for those on the inside
but not for people like me
and my carefully-chosen friends.
Its lack or loss
is not something to be mourned,
 but should perhaps be welcomed
with a very moderate amount of glee.

It was Lenin and the Bolsheviks

who dreamed up the radical phrase
"national self-determination".
Three cheers for Canada and Vanuatu
two of the few non-testosteronal nation-states.

Don't get scammed by Spamfighter !

If you receive an e-mail from Spamfighter offering computer clean-up free "for the first 1,000 to apply", or mentioning MYInternetSecurity or Anytech365 Computer Optimization, be warned that you might be sweet-talked into parting with £60+ (nearly $100) before you know it.  Delete that e-mail after returning it to SpamFighter.

Thank the Lord

that he doesn't exist -
for it would be Too Much
on top of Everything Else.
The trouble is, though,
that people have deified
Life -
and powerful deities,
like tribes and nations,
can't help fomenting strife.

An amazing story.

click the picture to read it

More on the same topic:

The world's greatest hypocritocracy.

In 1983 United States forces invaded Grenada,
a tiny, sovereign island in the Caribbean
(in an operation dubbed Urgent Fury),
occupied it for several weeks
and removed its Prime Minister,
whom president Reagan said was a mad,
bad commie stooge
who threatened the security of the Americas.

The USSR made very little noise about this
outrageous event.  After all, Grenada was
in the USA's back yard...

As they say in slightly-larger Albania:
Vetë e vërteta s'është shumë e fuqishme -
The truth, in truth, is almost powerless...

Failing worse.

From late childhood I imagined myself as
A Writer.
                    Unfortunately,
I can write neither narrative nor dialogue,
have never felt unloved, and am a happy 'failure'.
I do not see life, the world, the universe
in terms of beginnings, middles and ends,
but as a jumble of discrete and often contradictory
events, reactions, consequences and trends.

Well, who would have guessed it ;-)

Loving dogs.

http://www.quickmeme.com/p/3vtlfo

'The Banality of Evil'

is not nearly so banal
as the banality
of normality.