30th June 2019

Why the sudden flurry of interest ?
Am I (suddenly) famous
though my first name's not Séamus ?

I read somewhere that in Italy

a few centuries ago
doctors sold
their body-smells
on bits of cloth.

"They sniffed me and they're cured."

Heatwave.

People are dying

in cities. My cacti are
in Paradise.

Each one of us

is Holocaust.
The Tree of Life
is toilet-paper.
We all look for bargains.
The planet has come
very cheap.

"Democracy is like Christ.

There is nothing you cannot do
in the name of democracy."

- David Cornwell (A Small Town in Germany, 1968).

Earlier in the same book :
Democracy [is] like shaving.  No one thanks you for shaving.
No-one thanks you for democracy...
Democracy was only possible under a class system...
it was an indulgence granted by the privileged.
We haven't time for it any more : a flash of light
between feudalism and automation, and now it's gone.
What's left ?  The voters are cut off from parliament.
Parliament is cut off from the government,
and the government is cut off from everyone.

The opposite of hate

is also the opposite of love :
indifference.

On 'morality'.

Except on rare occasions
or accidentally
the nearest we get to virtue
is hypocrisy.

What's the point ?

Possibly the most unvisited daily blog on Blogger.

I have three regular readers:
1. Malcolm my chum.
2. Almina my Internet Acquaintance.
3. You ?

Only the most unimaginative,

the most  unexamining,
could imagine that
the examined life
could be worth living.

ὁ ... ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ - [ascribed by Plato to] Socrates

Isn't Wikipedia wonderful ?

I learned today
that Kool-Aid® is a powder,
cooked up in Nebraska (USA) in 1927,

to which its celebrants
add sugar and water.
It contains a dye said to be
useful for changing the colour of hair
wool, cotton or cement mortar.

On Artificial Intelligence.

What humans can cope with least
is statistics.

I don't think

that it is possible
to love 'Nature'
and also to
like humans.

"On course for the end of the world."

"I told you so...way back in 1975."

https://www.mnn.com/green-tech/computers/stories/MIT-computer-model-predicted-end-world-limits-of-growth

Meanwhile there are kind policemen...

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/hummingbird-rescue-michael-cardenaz-returns-georgia

...and redwood rescuscitation.

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/super-grove-redwood-tree-clones

Fantasies of human perfectibility

both prop and undermine
all religions, all civilisations.

"The concept of original sin

 gives us a penetrating insight into human destiny."

- Leszek Kołakowski, 'On the Dilemmas of the Christian Legacy'.

A Brief Guide to Gorgeous Hyænas

Spotted Hyæna: The classic hyæna. Definitely what we all think of when we hear “hyena”. Very good round ears and a really big and cute nose. Also, very powerful jaws that make it a very good eater. Has a very beautiful laugh that deserves to be heard. The perfect doggo imitator. 15/10

Striped Hyæna: Pointy ears that do a great job picking up sounds. Loves the night and enjoys hunting in the darkness and being home before sunrise. Loves to scream, and scream loudly. Owner of a set of two beautiful eyes. Also, a wonderful actor, able to fool other animals by playing dead. 13/10

Brown Hyæna: Beautiful, beautiful hair! Most likely has a very good hair care routine. The rarest hyena there is, so it deserves to be cherished. Very strong jaws, capable of breaking bones shortly after birth. Very scary to even larger predators, but they have a heard of gold. FANTASTIC snoot. 14/10

Aardwolf: The SMALLEST of hyænas.
Please be gentle! Really loves insects, especially termites. Has a long and sticky tongue used for eating termites, making it one of the world’s most profound bleppers. Has a cute fuzzy tail that should be considered one of the wonders of the world. Has tiny ears, tiny paws, and a tiny nose. Overall very dainty but also, very tough. 13/10

(from Hushpupper.tumblr.com)

Unfortunately, my neighbour's sweet cat  would be the least of the local damage.

Louis XV

(king of France)
famously said
Après moi le déluge.

Now, you don't need
the contacts and networks
or royal insight of a king
or a minister of state,
nor do you need to be
a visionary philosopher :

any thoughtful person
near to or at the bottom
of the social heap

(though you may scoff

at my assumption)

can recognise that
Après nous le catastrophe.

Nothing

is worth saying -
especially not this !

Existence

refutes
Purpose.

The Individual and The Vast Majority

"Mass democracy, mass morality and the mass media thrive independently of the individual,
who joins them only at the cost of at least a partial perversion of his instincts and insights.
He pays for his social ease with what used to be called his soul –
his discriminations, his uniqueness, his psychic energy, his self."

- Al Alvarez, in The Savage God, 1971.

Go - and stay - under their radar.

The flaw of democracy

lies in the assumption
that most of the voters
are intelligent and informed.

"In the end..."

nothing is worth saying,
not even this.

I looked up Bobo on the Web

and was informed that it was a term
for Bourgeois Bohemians
(rather as Yuppie was a term
for Young Upwardly-mobile Professional People).

But on reading another one of John le Carré's excellent books,
I learn that it is short for
Bollinger Bolsheviks - a more-catchy version of
Champagne Socialists.

Deafened by the noise

of a hundred million strimmers,
they wonder
what happened to the bees.

Onanists Anonymous

have no need
of group therapy,
or ever to meet.

But see:
http://umich.edu/~ece/student_projects/advertising/post3.html

No ecstasy

is false
though many
especially in battle
are obscene.

"Freedom of Information"

The British Government papers
concerning Napoleon's living and dying on
the island of St Helena are still Top Secret
and available to nobody but the Prime Minister.
Is this sinister ?

A living person

is just a dead one
gone missing.

At the International Conference

of Poetry Police
An observer who claimed
That a tree was worth
A thousand poets
Was declared mentally ill
And unfit to work at
The paper-mill.

Religions

worship
themselves
but never
each other.

A new definition of Civilisation :

unnatural selection.

The Past :

invented
then lived in
- as much as is convenient.

Never mind the grammar; forgive the terrible design.