Nobody cares a bullock's fart.

Domestic strimmer,
deep-sea mining :
the war against the world
is not declining.

In a zero-sum struggle that nobody wins
we dump bits of the planet
in colour-coded bins.

Dodgy Questionnaires.

I recently volunteered to fill in a sociological questionnaire
with the typical 'tick the applicable box' questions.
Half-way through I was confronted with the question
Are you right-handed / left-handed / ambidextrous ?
I am none of these.  I am one of - possibly millions -
of people who were punished for being left-handed,
and, being right-handed in some tasks, left-handed in others,
can be defined as confused.
The stupid (and eminent and probably right-handed)
compiler of the questionnaire was evidently unaware
of this small - but important - demographic. 
I did not complete the questionnaire.  I wrote to its compiler
and received no reply. I conclude that the statistics
derived from box-ticking questionnaires are unreliable.

Coming across the word 'gabble'

in a book I was reading on a train to Spain
(though I alighted at Toulouse)
it occurred to me that it may have come
from  ¿ Habla [español] ?
Indeed a similar word with the same meaning
entered Middle Dutch at the time of the Spanish
occupation of the southern low countries...
Babble comes from Babel and its many-tongued tower,
and Greeks called non-Greek speakers [ba-ba-] Barbaroi.

A World War One song
(probably originating in Armentières in 1915)
starts:
Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parley-voo...

A World War 2 version of this began:
Two German officers crossed the Rhine, parley-voo
[repeat}
Two German officers crossed the Rhine
to fuck the women and drink the wine,
inky-pinky parley-voo.

from Wikipedia:
                            'Inky Pinky' was a Scottish children's name for parsnip and potato cakes, but it has been suggested that an onomatopoeic reference to the sound of bed-springs is a more likely soldier's ribald derivation.'

Another version has Inky-Dinky, which might be a jocular corruption of the German Ich denke.

Ich denke, also bin ich.

Comfortable

and comfortably-off sheeple
like to be 'moved', 'uplifted'.
The less-comfortable
would like a lift-up.

Past horrible and Present inconsequential.

Fifty-six years after the break-up
with my only female lover in Copenhagen
(who, astonishingly to me, took up with my 'best friend'),
I am still puzzling over what it was
that she found inadequate in me.
It was probably my blithe and aimless
immaturity.

Yesterday -
after reading two books set in 1930s USA -
I drank a Dry Martini for the first time in my life.

From the various recipes on the internet
I made it from 6 parts
of cold junipery gin, one part of
cold Noilly Prat vermouth,
and an olive (since I didn't have a lemon)
plus a couple of ice cubes.

It was quite pleasant, but I'd prefer
a glass of cold, light, dry white wine,
such as the local Gaillac Perlé.

I don't think I'll bother trying a Manhattan,
a Gimlet, Twister or Thunderbird. 

The Utilitarian Principle

of the greatest good for the greatest number
(which is the basis of majoritarian and coalition democracy)
was never applied to our fellow-creatures -
some of which we rear in misery for food
- and so they suffer for what we pettily presume
to be "the greater good".

And not just animals, either:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/science/cactus-trafficking-chile.html

Negative bias.

Once we could be ruly, couth, pecunious
mayed, ept, gruntled and so on,
but now we can only be their opposites.

Dear Sugar-saturated and Addicted Sheeple,

Milk does not go off or spoil.
Its sugar (lactose) simply converts
to lactic acid, which makes it taste just as good
as kefir, fromage blanc and various 'natural' yogurts.

It's not a joke.

Freedom of Ludicrous Expression,
Milan Fashion Week.

 Pietro D’Aprano/Getty Images

No prizes for guessing
what the Taliban would think

of this example of un-islamic decadence.

 

Supermarket shopping

is much more stressful,
much less satisfying
and barely more nutritious
than gathering food
in a tropical rain forest.

Unfortunately,
supermarkets are expanding
while rain forests shrink.

My 'artistic talent'

lies less in my poetry
or in my painting
than in my mastery
of elegant frugality.

"I amount to very little,
but that little is entirely mine."

- Swami Vrkha Baba

C.R.A.S.S.S

Against Cocacolanization :

The Council for the Reduction of American Shit
in Self-respecting Societies.

Photojournalism.

It is telling that in this photograph
of a boy and a dog with an amputated leg
(due to shrapnel) in Idlib (Northern Syria)
the boy is in sharp focus, but not the dog.

When I finally found my father of 1940

he wasn't looking too good.

(Was he really an RAF pilot in Iraq ?)
 

In late mediæval times

there were Sumptuary Laws
which forbade the wearing of fine clothes
above your class.  In other words,
a mere merchant, no matter how rich,
could not wear an earl's apparel.

Nobody seems to have noticed that
the democratisation of rich, industrial countries
and the westernisation of economically-poorer ones
has led to the world-wide wearing
of (mostly) charmless Euro-American clothes,
especially hideous tee-shirts and loutish jeans,
which suit few of the world's sheeple,
least of all those who used to wear
gorgeous robes or simple gowns,
lovely headgear - or very little.

Wofl picnicking at Ait Mansour, Morocco, 1993.

As the world becomes less habitable

for millions of people and billions of other
creatures, the ego-worshippers with wealth
to waste will be rushing to install smart toilets
to monitor their ever-more-precious health.

Probably the best first line

of any book that I have read:

'In the wastes of civilization, Luristan is still an enchanted name.'

Freya Stark - The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels, 1936.

The Lur men were ordered by the Shah to shave off their beards and wear Pahlevi headgear - a hat horribly similar to a baseball cap..  I guess they now have their beards, but I have no idea whether or not they wear their traditional dress. 
The women, who used to have no face-covering, will of course now have to wear the hijab.

'The Widow's Mite'

In many countries, those who pay tax
(especially the very rich)
receive a tax-rebate when they give
money to a 'recognised' charity,
but not directly (e.g. on the street)
to the starving or impoverished.
Those donors who are too poor to pay tax
are unrewarded.

School Sports Days.

I liked only the egg-and-spoon race.
It was fun.
                    But just imagine
the rules and regulations,
the strict specifications for the egg,
the spoon (which should not be too short), 
the clothing and the footwear,
had it had the misfortune
to become an Olympic Sport!

You wouldn't believe

from reading my gloomy-doomy blogs
that in the village I'm a little ray of light,
greeting everybody cheerfully,
exchanging little jokes,
and smiling at the dogs.

How we are and what we write
are very different.

Good metabolism ? Or good genes ?

Unlike many people,
I seem to have been born fit,
because I have remained lithe
and the same weight
(60 kg) for 60 years since I was 20,
without the slightest effort
(i.e. 'exercise') on my part.

My blood pressure is a little high
but I seem (so far) to have a good heart.

‘It is no measure of health to be well adjusted
to a profoundly sick society.’ - Sinéad O’Connor

Obedience

is an easy, sleazy bed.
I guess I'll be obedient when I'm dead.

'Original Sin'

was not so much the plucking
nor even the eating of the pomegranate,
nor Eve's desire to share it,
but Adam's failure before Massa God
to control a disobedient woman.

Our ugly arrogance,

unsurprisingly,
is lethal for birds.

'In New York City, between 90,000 and 230,000 birds are killed each year
when they collide with building glass, according to research by NYC Audubon. 
Nationwide, a study from 2019 found that the number of bird deaths caused by building collisions could be as high as one billion', according to NPR.

Did I say this earlier ?

Western Democracy
is the dictatorship of hypocrisy.
Other dictatorships are worse.

Jesus said

(off the redacted record) :
Friends are ours to respect,
the poor are ours to enrich,
and family ours to escape. 

Solitude

 is a wonderful resource.

Liberty

is not compatible with
property.

A Feminist Poem on my favourite Greek Legend.

"There's something awful in the basin!"

"It's the better bits of Jason
which I'm pickling in beer.
They'll be delicious by New Year,"

said Medea.

I look back more than fifty years and see

a pauper poet
unemployable
prostrate in bed
planning petty acts
of shoplifting and parsimony.

I have got out of bed.

They can't be completely and utterly evil, can they ?

Maybe, like Christian missionaries,
the Taliban are kind to kittens.

What is the decadent, perverted Western Press not telling us ?

Every crowd

has a bloody lining.

 

Getting figures straight (white people don't like too much reality).

In 30 years of civil unrest
just over 3,000 people died in Northern Ireland,
where there is a road called Kennedy Way
named after the American president
who started the Viêt-Nam war and invaded Cuba.

Over 30,000 civilians were killed in Viêt-Nam
plus an uncountable number of Viêt-Cong fighters.
Another 30,000 were killed in Cambodia.

Just over 3,000 people died in the amazing, unprecedented suicide/aeroplane assault upon the symbols of economic power
in Manhattan, and the 'military-industrial' complex
condemned by Kennedy's soldier-predecessor*.

In reprisal
47,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan,
and 66,000 Afghan military and police
and 51,000 Taliban.

This rather exceeds an eye for an eye.
And I do not mention the thousands killed
in "proxy wars" waged by thge USA
in Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua,

nor the forced removal by the British at the USA's request
of the entire population of Diego Garcia and other
island of the Chagos Archipelago

reminiscent of Stalin's deportation of the Tatars from Crimea.

*Eisenhower

The curse of 'The West' :

self-righteous
colonial evangelism.

'Experiments suggest'

that low and soft voices are thought sexy
by both men and women.
So why do the anti-musical millions
choose to listen to screechy female
and whiny male popular singers ?

Well, folks,

 

It's stationary, invisible
and cannot be pursued.

"Ursine invaders trash popular tourist destination on the California-Nevada border after evacuations."

Rather than making trash harder to get at
and root through (thus leading the bears
to break into abandoned houses instead)
would it not be sensible to bring some of the kilotons
of 'spoiled' Californian fruit to help the bears
store up nourishment for winter ?

When I was a child

I liked going with my grandmother
to visit her old friends, also widows
in houses with massive sideboards,
upholstered chairs, fringed velvet tablecloths,
antimacassars and ticking clocks,
stuffed parrots, china ornaments -
and in one a Victorian jack-in-a-box.

I have always liked wrinkles
on the faces of women and men.
I am almost 80 and almost without wrinkles,
not even on my belly: I remain immature to the end.

There is no need to wonder why

the commonest words in
'popular' commercial songs
aren't you, or love, or cherish,
but I, me, and my.

The Excitement

over paradoxical Artificial Intelligence
reminds me of Khrushchev's glorious
almost-algorithmic 10-year plan of the early 1960s,
which promised that the Soviet Union would outstrip the USA
in plenty, equality, opportunity and, of course,  fraternity.

Red Plenty >

Bills and Bill's.

It's obvious to me that the apostrophe
in English is a tiny but effective weapon
in the class-war, the Hundreds-Years'
War of Snobbery.

('Full marks' for spelling in primary school
 was the height of my life's achievement.)

How do you define 'pornography' ?

 

In almost every country

 the cleverest are the racketeers.
the stupidest are the military,
the responsible are irresponsible
and the happy are invisible.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne.

Catholic women in Catholic Ireland
were more oppressed than Soviet women
in the USSR, the only difference being
that Irish women could escape
to low-paid jobs in England.

"Truth...

...is revenge
because we live in a world of lies."

- Édouard Louis

read more >

To put it another way: 

The reason why men hate truth
is because it tends to jump up
and kick them in the balls.

“Every gun that is made,

every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies … a theft
from those who hunger and are not fed,
cold and not clothed”.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

The global threat from China

is more environmental
than political or military

as species are wiped out
by the mindless demand for magical
mumbo-jumbo traditional medicines
(not to mention shark-fin soup).

The hump-head (or maori) wrasse,
also on the point of extermination by the Chinese
has facial markings

(A Thoughtful Wrasse)

which are unique to each individual.

After orgasm

I want to give
the electric-kundalini feeling
to all the pigs and dogs in the world.

Advancing age and the pandemic

have demonstrated to me
and perhaps millions of others
that old dogs can learn
at least one new trick.

 

Thoughts on the 2,500th anniversary

of the Battle of Thermopylæ.
'The Media' love anniversaries.
It is a cheap cliché that history is written by the winners.
This his-story was written by the losers,
and, like most history, and most anniversaries, 
is also propaganda.