Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Monday 31 July 2023

A question of Functionality

 

Reading buyers’ reviews (as I do, often after rather than before buying a Major Item, I came across this comment on the now-considered-basic fridge-freezer which I bought online – but of course not from amazon.fr – perish the thought !

idéal pour une personne seule ou un couple fonctionnel

ideal for someone living alone or a functional couple
so…to be avoided, I guess, by dysfunctional couples.


Pantscape.

Pausing from my reading and looking down I took this photo.



Friday 28 July 2023

Gazing

(too long ?) at the spider on the ceiling,

I am a sponge too full of unshared feeling.


Colonies.

Below is a Météo-France weather-alert graphic
indicating nothing-worrisome weatherwise
on two Caribbean islands,
Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy,
one-and-a-half of which
belong to France.  The other half (in blue)
is the Dutch colony of Sint-Maarten,
for which the French meteorological service
wlll not provide predictions.




'Land of the Free'.

Mississippi, USA.



A money-making seal-embosser.

used to authenticate medieval indulgences
which were a profitable way of reducing penance for sins.

According to The Guardian,
each indulgence authenticated by such a seal
reduced the buyer's time in Purgatory by one year and forty days. 
Of course, one's time in Purgatory might last hundreds if not thousands of years...
The metal stamp or matrix is shown on the right.

Found after spending 500 years buried in a field.  


Thursday 27 July 2023

Not drowning yet,

and certainly not waving,
I am swimming in a sea
of human stupidity.
The only lighthouse
is a glimmer.
I always was
a hopeless swimmer.


Tuesday 25 July 2023

"Old age sure ain't for sissies"

pre-dates Bette Davis.
I'm sure that Henry Ford was not the first
(by a few thousand years) to declare
that The greatest thing in life
is to keep your mind young

– maybe a greater thing even than becoming
a greedy production-line millionaire.
When and where the mind goes, you go, too.
There may or may not
be lots of time to sit and stare.


Monday 24 July 2023

Someone I despised

admired my paintings
yesterday.
I got an uncomfortable feeling.

It's probably just as well
that few admire my writing.


Today's splendid neologism :

non-regardance.

– Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
or As You Will, circa 1601.


Sunday 23 July 2023

A drinking song.

I drink cow's milk

sheep's milk I

used to drink goat's milk I

have drunk Bull's Blood I

don't think I ever drunk

my mother's milk

maybe a wet-nurse's

maybe a bottle I

was farmed out for a year

pasteurised not sterilised 

I have on occasion drunk

Liebfraumilch and

as I said Bull's Blood

and cock's milk

which may or may not be

of human kindness

but as far as taste goes

is a bit of a dud.


Saturday 22 July 2023

The sanest behaviour

in this insane world
may be to behave
as the only sane person
on a space-ship of fools.


Friday 21 July 2023

Random ( & apposite) lines

from Shakespeare's As You Will
(alias Twelfth Night, because it was first performed
on the Feast of Fools at the beginning of the 17th century)
 

Infirmity that decays the wise
doth ever make the better fool;

Methinks I have no more wits
than a Christian or an ordinary man has;

For I myself am best when least in company.


In other words, Combat Normality

“I think we need to start another movement.
This one is so simple: Stop Ableism. That’s it.”

- Rosie Jones, comedian.


Thursday 20 July 2023

'The Rise of Voluntary Celibacy.'

  ‘Most of the sex I’ve had, I wish I hadn’t bothered.’

I think millions would agree with you, Ms Saner.
Most of the 'sex' I've had wasn't worth the emotional effort.

But erotic games are something else: they are fun.
Alas! playmates are hard to find; impossible when you're old.


Her most treasured possession.

Dahlia flower preserved in formaldehyde.

 















She photographed everything she owned.

'This is the way the world ends...'

Tuesday 18 July 2023

Two kinds of people

rule the world:

the arrogant ignorant
and the ignorant arrogant.


Good Advice.

This summer...












     leave this          ...          collect that.

Monday 17 July 2023

On deceleration

or the slowing-down :
when it takes more than two seconds
to find the word or phrase
the conversation dies.

 

Painterly.




















A small marble head recently found in Rome’s Piazza Augusto Imperatore.


Sunday 16 July 2023

'Red-neck'

is an insulting term
that seems to have fallen out of use.

I propose a new one:  RedBull-neck.


Saturday 15 July 2023

Dear Autists,

Something that you will rarely hear
Normal People say
is that they are blocked
and terrified of giving themselves away.


Friday 14 July 2023

La Fleur du Mal.

Capitalism,
the quasi-religious system of Demonic Possession
based on the anti-Christian concept
of material success,

is a failure by its own economic reckoning.
It is will inevitably fail,
marching to environmental ruin
and dictatorship through divisiveness.

Note: Two million citizens of the desirable USA
don't have running water in their homes.
One million are in jail.


Thursday 13 July 2023

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

never happened. What we've had
was the Dictatorship of dictators
and Dictatorship of the Product-
manufacturers and marketers.

And Socialism was a little blip, a fad.


A socio-political statement.

No stupidity is as frightening
as the stupidity of the clever.


Wednesday 12 July 2023

seXX - seXY

One of my double-x chromosomic friends
asked me which had been better for me,
sex with women (xx) or with men (xy).

I didn't hesitate to say that the lovemaking I had
with the One Woman In My Life was more fulfilling,

but the best frolics I had with
maybe half a dozen men
were more exciting.


Last Week

I visited a friend from 1965 in Ireland
who built himself a stark, half-million euro/dollar
mansion which looks like an old Police Barracks,
the windows too high, the bleak rooms mostly too large;
ugly and shapeless outside, the inside comfortless
with random, clashing clutter. 

Over the years he had cadged over 15 of my paintings
which look like sore thumbs where they've been placed
on walls.  Some had long since been put in the loft.  I asked
for one to include in a small show in my French village. 
Titled Lecale Landscape, The Ulster Way,
it features a derelict cottage (long since demolished),
a modern bungaloid monstrosity,
the Mountains of Mourne under cloud - and a crucifixion
of a refugee wearing a crown of horns.

He declined.

Not my best painting, I would, of course have improved it
as I have done with many I have kept.  Only yesterday
I made little alterations to one I painted in 1989...



















Here is a seascape of mine that he has, entitled The Fall of Icarus.












And the portrait of another friend at breakfast.



Tuesday 11 July 2023

Funding Sought

to print a very limited
and elegant
English edition
of the King James version of the
Old Testament of the Bible,
on rag-paper,
in which every instance
of God is replaced by Dog.

This would be known (of course)
as The Dog Bible,
and would become immensely valuable.


"Dear Mr Musk...
...Looking forward to hearing from you.
Dissident Editions
publisher number 9520451..."


Self-portraits.

My teenage interest in painting
was ignited by the self-portraits of Van Gogh,
followed by those of Rembrandt.
I have daubed several myself.
Good photographic self-portraits are,
I think, much rarer, because technology
often gets in the way of originality.
(The more complicated the equipment
the less interesting and 'authentic' the result.)

This modest example is by
famous American photographer Eve Arnold.


















It can be compared with this one by the great Vivian Maier...












...though neither is half as interesting as a Rembrandt, Van Gogh
Otto Dix or Alice Neel self-portrait.


Monday 10 July 2023

All autocrats

go mad  – some very quickly.
This is the best argument for democracy,
or at least for regular autocrat-replacement.


Saturday 8 July 2023

'Woke'

was a word (used in a 1938 song by Lead Belly*)
meaning aware, vigilant. It now, like fascist,
has been debased to signify
almost anything and nothing.

*Huddie Ledbetter,
whose recordings  I listened to in the 1950s. 

I am one of the wokest people on the planet,
keenly aware of the inherent evils of Civilisation,
Big Religion, Big Capitalism, Big Agriculture...


Friday 7 July 2023

It is strange

that, since the 1960s, thousands of films
have had pumping, heaving, moaning sex-scenes
(though, admittedly, not in penetrative detail)
– yet very few have shown men pissing discreetly
or women sitting on a water-closet seat.


'Leading Expert Says'

AI likely to spell end of traditional school classroom.

Prof essor Stuart Russell says that the technology could result in
 ‘fewer teachers being employed – possibly even none’

And thus will come totalitarian education.
Teachers, arise!


*  *  *

Also from today's newspaper:

Disasters that we once called
Biblical
are now normal.


Thursday 6 July 2023

A Recommendation.

Sufferers of fronto-temporal dementia
may experience a decline in personal hygiene.
That means that they are too apathetic to wash
or change their clothes,
and thus they start to smell.

To counter this I suggest sprinkling two or three drops
of essential oil (such as fennel, chamomile, patchouli
myrrh, vetiver) on the smelly bits of clothing.
Their aroma will blend nicely with old-body smells
and avoid embarrassment for one day, at least.


Wednesday 5 July 2023

When men,

especially in Abrahamic cultures,
are asked or made to strip naked,
they immediately and automatically
hide their genitals behind
their hands, a towel, or a sock.  

I, on the other hand,
have always folded my thin arms
to hide my chest,
because I never had pectoral muscles,
but (it seemed to me)
an unexceptionable cock.


'Human Progress'

Most new technologies
increase inequalities.
Then come schisms,
new mentalities,
social unrest, power-grabs
(usually called Revolutions)
and the imposition
of new inequalities.


Strange lacuna in BritEnglish.

When you thank an American for something,
s/he will say 'You're welcome'.

In French one will courteously say Je vous en prie
or, charmingly, A moi le plaisir. 

But the BritIrish have no response other
than to mindlessly parrot Thank-you,

not even emphasising the you


Tuesday 4 July 2023

The Human Equation: P+p=C²

 Purposiveness + proliferation
= Catastrophe*.

*Or if you prefer it, Devastation...


Monday 3 July 2023

Attitudes to Technology.

In English
the word digital implies
nimble or caressing fingers.
The French word, numérique
lets us know that we are controlled by numbers.


Sunday 2 July 2023

I look away

when there is film-footage
of sex and guns.
Deep in my snowflake mind
they are as one.


Saturday 1 July 2023

Most people

want what other people have.

Many people want
what others do not have.

A lot of people have
what others do not want.

Some people have almost nothing.

A few people want nothing much.

Even fewer want for nothing
– apart from such-and-such.