Humanism

is just a form of Christianity
with even more
sickly sentimentality -
but without the gore.

Separating and segregating people

according to genital apparatus
is one of the stupidest habits
of Homo cretinus -
no more intelligent than
dividing people, actions and animals
into clean and unclean,
halal and haram,
kosher and treif,
superior and inferior,
human and inhuman...

Life on earth
is a vast, multi-dimensional spectrum
wherein even the categories of
sane and insane, deluded
and sensible cannot sensibly be established.

I used to think that I was intelligent and male,
but now I enjoy uncertainty.

I am much more tolerant of dogs than of humans.

This is because of my Neanderthal Genes.
Neanderthals cuddled up to wolves and bears
(because they had not invented fire),
while Homo "sapiens" hunted bears and wolves
and anything that moved, including male Neanderthals,
whom they ate - after raping the Neander-females
who were subsequently kept as the most menial slaves.

This habit has been repeated until recently
(when eating people came to be considered
as uncivilised behaviour)
by dominant "sapiens" groups, alliances and sects
against weaker ones (and individuals, of course)
and will shortly resume after the withering away
of the last golf-course.

Clomipramine...

...is an anti-depressant which can cause
yawning and concomitant orgasm/ejaculation.
I think it would be more pleasing
if it induced orgasm with sneezing.

(but not more than once a day)

Read more >

In the Kingdom of the Netherlands

one can have a really cheap cremation
with a paper (not even a cardboard) coffin.
In France, however, the cheapest means of disposal of one's corpse
is by paying 450 euros for one's cadaver-donation.

What makes us monstrous

is our craven fearfulness.

Unreliable Wikipedia.

In its entry on the phrase "To call a spade a spade"
Wikipedia tells us that the French equivalent means "To call a cat a cat".
However, the "chat" in Appeler un chat un chat, meant
in the 18th century what "chatte" (feminine) means today:
"pussy", "beaver", "muff", etc.
Moreover, the word "chas", meaning "crack", "fissure"
or "eye" of a needle,
is pronounced exactly the same.

So, as is often the case, the French are much better
at calling a spade a spade than are the Anglophones -
unless "spade" was once a slang term for "penis",
for which I can find no evidence, beyond that
it is cognate with "spada", Italian for "sword".

http://www.expressio.fr/expressions/appeler-un-chat-un-chat.php

When people talk of 'progress'

they usually mean comforts
and conveniences
brought to them through greed.

Reason

can probably go no farther.
The world belongs to belief.

Many people

mistake thirst for hunger
and become fat.
Many people also
(not necessarily the same ones)
confuse desire for intimate communication
(beyond the low level of language)
with desire for 'sex'
(usually penetration).

A Great Epitaph.

Nihil sed bene feci.

(I did nothing but did it well.)

AS MUCH AS YOU CAN

And if you can’t shape your life the way you want,
at least try as much as you can
not to degrade it
by too much contact with the world,
by too much activity and talk.
Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,
taking it around and exposing it so often
to the daily silliness
of social events and parties,
until it comes to seem a tedious hanger-on.

Constantine Cavafy
translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.

Death and Grief.

I would like to think that,
had I died before my mother,
she would have displayed no grief,
but, as I did when she died, demented,
felt a little sadness and much relief.

Kolkata

(formerly Calcutta, capital of Bengal)
has more theatres than London and New York combined.

Molière was translated into Bengali
before his plays were rendered into English...

The Quality of Paradise.

Hedonistic - not to say highly sensual - behaviour
condemned by Islam in this world
are offered by Islam in the next.

American homelessness.

On a legal (federal) minimum wage,
the average American worker needs to work 117 hours a week
for 52 weeks a year
to afford the rent for a two-bedroom apartment or house.
Not even two people living together
each with a federal minimum wage
can afford a two-bedroom rental.

But if you're not in a Northern state
perhaps this would be OK ?

Throwing up.

In the 12th century
the word noise meant the same in English and French. 
But the meaning of the French word evolved to 'loud dispute' or 'row' (as in rowdy). 
The Latin origin of the word is nausea - 'sea-sickness'. 
Vomiting can be a noisy business.

Then there's the verb to bruit,
which is related to the modern French for 'noise'
and means 'to let something be known' -
such as that your fellow-passenger
barfed over your mobile phone.

A problem for women.

A big problem for women
is that so many of them
look at themselves through
predatory men's eyes
and make themselves pornographic.
The problem with men
is that most of them fetishize women
and especially their parts and appendages.

The Raven and the Parrot.

The Fourteenth of July:

The Big French Lie.
Equality and Fraternity
can't co-exist with the Family,
which is, moreover,
not too keen on liberty.

The family is a competitive unit
inside and out.

Two deathless Limericks I penned in 1974.

A gravedigger from Malin Head
was dismissed for not burying the dead.
Said he, with a grin,
"They're all in the bin.
I planted potatoes instead."

A mortician from Southern Viêt-Nam
ended up in a bit of a jam.
He had coffins galore
piled up in his store
and nothing to fill them but Spam.

As for throwing out

the baby with the bathwater,
my dog suggests that you
eat the baby and drink the bathwater.

Alleged wisdom

tends to die
with the allegedly-wise individual.

The sea, the sea !

The least we can do is stop eating fish.

In the tattoo business

drunks are bleeders.

Wrong way round ?

When I had many friends
my expectations of them were high.
Now that I have almost no expectations,
I have almost no friends.

The Neo-Liberal Creator speaks.

Behold!
not from a burning star,
but from my Great Black Hole beyond all skies
I send you just one commandment:
Self-optimize!

Facebook:

the Great Panopticon.
The bigger the data
the more limited
and fragmented our freedoms.
The freest humans
have zero social
and monetary capital.

('Progress' is
oppression by numbers.)

On Overcoming Adversity.

I am proud that I have never,
in my accidental life of ease,
overcome adversity,
but let it wash over me,
or just slunk away
to return only slightly diminished
instead of being guilty of hubris.

Historical, hysterical...

Hyæna's feet,
saltpetre mixed with honey,
the urine of menopausal nuns:
down the centuries,
women have tried amazing strategies
to combat "barrenness"
(which might not have been theirs).

Victorian Pornography:

I have never understood

why people are so guarded.
To protect themselves
from being found out
as emotionally retarded ?

Love is to 'sex'

as time is to happenstance.

They prefer us to be passive.

Isn't it mean
that, to relieve pain,
doctors freely dispense morphine,
but not cocaine
to combat tiredness of the brain ?