Open-air Meeting.

But where is the greatest predator of all ?

Many people think

that they are warm and fluffy.
But their fluffiness comes not from wool
but from glass fibre.

Good strength

is silent
and invisible.

Two Distinguished Bearded Gentlemen.

photo by Siddarth Setia

America First!

was a slogan of the Ku Klux Klan
who tried to patent it
in the 1920s.

The American Dream
was not, originally, an aspiration
to unbridled wealth amidst immigrant poverty,
but the dream of democracy
triumphing over monopolist capitalism
- which resulted in anti-Trust legislation.

Thinking of the Saffron Crocus,

Social Stigma
is what keeps me going.

The neat thing about Zadkine's sculptures for churches

is that he manages subtly to lose the Christianity,
as in this Pietà:

and this Christ (either crucified or springing up to Heaven).

In celebration of International Doodle Day

My Canine Companion writes:

I am the Never-Never Dog,
who never gets a walk,
never gets fondled,
belly-rubbed or fed,
and never meets other dogs,
nor ever chases cats
and never gets to lie
on his cruel master's bed.

Fiona

Desire-addicts,

we love our possessions
for reasons of status, comfort
or even æsthetics,
but are forever proclaiming
greater concern for our
fellow-humans.

I think I am missing

the Take-Yourself-Seriously gene
which so many men have - in spades.

A society which has an army and police force

is not worth defending.

I have never 'visited' a prostitute,

nor 'had recourse'
to financially-agreed intercourse.
I never even considered it.

But when I was in a hotel in downtown Bangui
(Central African Republic, then ruled by Jean-Bedel Bokassa)
a beautiful, unpainted, small-breasted chambermaid
came to my room and hesitantly offered herself to me
(naming no price) under the ancient, rattling air-conditioner.

If I had been raised in Africa, or even Southern Europe,
I might never have ended up attracted almost entirely to bearded men,
because unpainted, small-breasted, dark-hued women
take my breath away. 
Perhaps if they had had beards or moustaches as well,
I would have floated up in ecstasy to Paradise
to sit at the right hand of the Hermaphrodite Polymorphously-perverse Creator.

The Gbaya chambermaid was somewhat disturbed
by my request for her to sit on me and receive my willy slowly,
from below,
while we massaged each other's nipples gently. 
It was, she was, beautiful for, to me. 
It was safe for her (since I had had a vasectomy).
I did not ejaculate.
I don't think she "experienced orgasm"
- but the encounter was tender and (for me) delicious,
financially-rewarding for her - and not to be repeated.
Neither of us was up too late.
Neither was regretfully depleted.

The essence of civilisation

is clamour, hubbub,
din and commotion,
discord and repression.
We'd all be better without it.

Je chante le cadavre électrique - a homage

to Google Translate.

As a result of the White Men's urge

to change régimes in other people's countries:

"Sold as sex slaves for a few hundred pounds
to Libyan brothels,
the Nigerian girls were raped several times a day
as payment for their future crossing to Europe..."

(The Times of London)

Just knowing that this is happening
should be enough to make us impotent -
or become Skoptsy.

He prefers war-zones, of course.

The reason why an old church is peaceful and calming
is that it is the last place where God is likely to be.

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 ?