of a book I haven't read
has gone viral.
The likes are (apart from
one guy in Slovakia) mostly from
female American Millennials.
Similarly, it has been
young women who most appreciated
(but never bought) my paintings...
I'm glad that I'm a socio
not a psycho.
on the thirteenth of November
whether I'm alive or not,
or in a coma :
(many of those who registered
blogs and vlogs and websites
and broadcast True Wisdom or Real Trash
have subsequently 'passed away'
to earth or ash).
I wrote and scheduled it today.
means much the same as
'take the piss out of', formerly
pull someone's pisser, pecker, peg
peter, pizzle, prick, pillicock
or middle leg...
(meaning most people with homes
including lavatories)
would rather re-build ugly
Notre-Dame de Paris than build ugly
houses for the destitute –
just as in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Only recently I realised
that when Normal Men
look at lamentable sex-scenes
(now obligatory on screens)
they look only at the Normal Women
writhing and moaning breathily,
and never register how repulsive
the male may be.
Although I am, as is well-known,
ashamed to be even a tree-loving human
and decry the cowardice of hope,
I am, mostly, a fun and friendly misanthrope.
 |
| Why did he stop shaving ? |
Curious as to the origin of the word,
certain that it had nothing to do with opium,
chicken-rearing or flower-arranging –
but might possibly be genital –
I was surprised to learn that it
had no ancient heritage,
such as (the unlikely) pop-a-cock,
but came via America from Holland
as recently as mid-19th century.
"trivial talk, nonsense," 1865, American English, probably from Dutch dialect pappekak, from Middle Dutch pappe "soft food" (see pap) + kak "dung," from Latin cacare "to excrete" (from PIE root *kakka- "to defecate").
I have, alas! been unable to find the origin
of cock-a-hoop...
and haven't yet looked up nincompoop.
are essentially
religions of selfishness
(have I said this before ?)
which may be why they preach
but minimally practise
alms-giving, 'charity'.
Instead of churches and mosques and temples
may there be spinneys and copses
Instead of banks and museums
may there be marshes and meadows
Instead of malls and halls
may there be thickets
Instead of government
may there be fastness of forest
'The Enemy' is not a nation nor a state
but Religion.
(Idolatry, of one kind or another,
is now the commonest human condition.)
*
from The Gospel According to Pertti Linkola,
possibly edited by George Monbiot :
Heal not the sick
for the sick are exhausting the earth.
Yesterday's luxuries
are today's necessities
hence inflation Yet
in much of Europe
(especially in rural areas)
people dress ever
more samely
more drably
especially
(as ever) the elderly
few of whom
rejoice in their old age
I have rarely felt better
I wear bright clothes
and criminally
go on cheap flights
to Morocco
where many people
including the poor and the old,
dress joyfully.
I liked to think
I would have liked
to have been raised by bears.
Of course I remember
the Northern Irish 'Hen-house Boy'
'hitting the headlines' in 1952.
I fantasised about him.
I wanted to be his brother.
(I don't know what's the matter
with you, said my mother
after every minor punishment
and censure I received at school.)
A long time later,
I read a poem about him
by a worshipped Northern Irish poet.
Its second line is 'A yolk of light'.
Oh no! I shouted, hurling down the book
with its razorly-crafted lines about a boy
'sharp-faced as new moons'. Aaaaargh!
Predation!
A humdrum book about 'Wild' children that I read
yesterday praises this poem for its sensitivity.
Goodreads
(where you can read my outrageous outrage)
is full of praise for many others, too.
All I find in it is poetic
exquisitely-literary exploitation.
A hundred years ago, great pianists
were French, Polish, Russian, German
(often Jewish). Fifty years ago
great British pianists appeared. Last night
I listened to a splendid live performance
of Debussy Images and Chopin Etudes
by the Kazakh pianist, Alim Beisembayev.
And how amazing that Nicolas Chopin,
a Frenchman from Lorraine,
happened to marry a Pole,
went with her to live in Żelazowa Wola,
and sired Poland's most famous son !
and yet one of the chief causes
of conflict and world war:
RESENTMENT.
(The Seven Deadly sins were originally Nine, then Eight...
but never included Resentment, which, in recent times has been thee main reason for perpetual war in Palestine-Israel and for the Second World War as reprisal for Germany's humiliation in 1919-21.)
that having no shoulders,
pectorals or biceps
is only slightly
better than having a hump.
"He was bullied almost every day."
And failed to murder Trump.
England has exported
the exclamation Fuck! (and fucking)
to Belgium, Denmark, Holland,
Luxembourg - to name a few.
Because of its language wars
(Walloon v. Flemish) Belgium
has borrowed many English words
to use where emotions might be inflamed.
Through films and World War Two
the USA exported Okay to the whole world –
ironically an inverted verlan*
borrowing from Louisiana French
d'accor' (gacco goka gokay).
that follows the linguistic rules.
Note also the now rare form Okey-Dokey.
*Verlan is a modern back-slang (an inversion of l'envers, meaning the other way round) which (like cant and local dialect) is commonly used world-wide in many languages for private communication.
A well-known example in English is yob meaning boy.
and intolerant
when (as often)
I found people intrusive.
Now I know that Homo sapiens
(unlike Bradypus, Cholœpus and Nycticebus –
sloths and slow lorises – to name but few)
is an intrusive species
that favours millions
of intrusive people.
 |
| https://slothconservation.org/ |
The French do not appreciate puns
as English-speakers do
because the language is so homophonous.
Temps and Taons are pronounced identically.
The Time of the Horse-flies
is coming soon.
Finally, I finished my lengthy
brilliant novel. Queer Caliban,
and danced around the barbecue
as I watched it burn.
(said the Duchess)
is what you want it to be.
You never see it in 'feature films'
where filth and squalor
and especially sordid people
are portrayed prettily.
miners of lead, tin, silver, gold
and coal (many were slaves)
wore leather hats with brims
on which lit candles could safely sit
while they hewed rock
in narrow excavated caves
and passages by pick
and wedge and hammer, lit
just by smoky, wavering glims...
I think that instead of trying to write poetry
I should restrict myself to hymns.
Today is the 29th anniversary
of the Srebrenica genocide.
The Prime Minister of Portugal is Luis Montenegro.
The Prime Minister of Montenegro is Milojko Spajić.
The Atacama desert is carpeted with purple flowers due to rare rain.
70% of Indian sewage is untreated.
Below:
Grotesque competitors warm up backstage
before the Mr Afghanistan bodybuilding competition...
"In the digital [world], trust is fundamentally impossible."
– René Walter in a brilliant article on Cultural Memory.
“Social media reward extremes and obsessions"
"...I talk regularly with my father in Zaporizhia [Ukraine] and he surprises me with his calm and dogged attitude in the middle of chaos.
The last time we talked he told me that in his life
he did everything as supposed to be done -
he built a house, planted an orchard
and raised a son (my half-brother).
His village was occupied [by the Russians] and the house was
lost,
the orchard was abandoned, destroyed, and his son was killed.
And
inside the church that he helped to build, they made a morgue for dead Russian soldiers. But he's taking it quite philosophically :
'I had everything and at the end of life I have nothing'."
but no way to it;
what we call way
is hesitation.”
– Franz K.
"Rubbish disposal is one of those baffling areas
in which the USA in general, but New York in particular,
is wildly behind Europe."
Wheelie-bins are only now beginning to appear.
of Redemption abolished true Remorse,
and hence, ultimately, Accountability.
So they trashed the world.
"If you are stuck between resentment and guilt, choose guilt."
is legal in 37 states of the USA.
There are no federal laws against it,
so minors can marry, with parental consent,
before they can vote, drink, or buy lottery tickets
in most of the country.
Some states have a minimum marriage age
ranging from 15 to 18.
Four states – California, New Mexico, Oklahoma,
and Mississippi – do not specify any minimum age at all.
* One or both parties entering a union while under the age of 18
that suicide (and attempted suicide)
are crimes in the nasty feudal and stinking rich
United Arab Dictatorships.
Failed suicide is also an offence in many other countries
including Kenya, Bangladesh, Malawi - and
in France* within living memory.
But the more 'tolerant' (I would say ignorant, condescending)
attitude that suicide is the result of mental illness
is just as odious, and flies in the face of several
ancient and modern (non-Abrahamic) cultures.
afforded by the urge to pursue Truth
are crushed by depressing revelations
which can drive us insane
and from the bloody light
into the sweet hospitalities of night.
We've managed to change the weather !
It wasn't stone circles that did it,
but Getting & Spending Inc.
(much easier, almost democratic).
(On Watching a Thriller)
I always wanted to be able to pick locks,
though I've no idea which locks I'd want to pick.
I have a master-key for French mail-boxes
(as do thousands of others, probably)
but there's not one I would want to open
or even put a bomb in
(if I could make a bomb).
"...experience this feeling of having watched from the sidelines
as someone disguised as themselves
spoke their way through a bad script." ?
– Donna Leon: Doctored Evidence, 2004
In my case, the awareness of having been a bit peculiar
doesn't arrive until five – or thirty-five – minutes later.
in Britain, Mauretania, France...
Today. polling-day in the French Republic,
I saw crude placards
which declared ¡No Pasarán!
and do not bode well for the result.
The very fabric of our democracies is false.
Those who are voted for (or not) stand
as our representatives, which they are not
and cannot be.
There will be more elections shortly
in Rwanda, Georgia, Venezuela, Syria (!)
In autumn: Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Moldova,
Romania, Mozambique, Chad, Lithuania...
¡No Pasarán! (They will not get through!)
was the futile slogan of the Republicans
in the Spanish civil war, which resulted in
a very nasty dictatorship that lasted 35 years.
Another banner (in my home village) declared:
Non à la R-Haine ! - pronounced the same as R.N. (the neo-sub-fascist party of Marine le Pen);
haine = hate
Faceless
they wear masks,
and their faces grow to fit them
and they vote
and are voted for in their millions
to make evil more powerful
and they are not devils
but faceless and heartless
and aspirational.
...but happy caimans in Brazil.
Not a mud-fight...
...but happy rice-planters in Nepal.
photos from The Guardian
Fear is the most expensive
lodging in the hotel,
the paradise suite where dead
laboratory rats and vivisected dogs end up.
Love is the disused boiler room.
Corporeal friends are
spiritual enemies, said
Blake, masturbating naked
on the roses while his wife
copied his manuscripts and wept.
The ocean's getting saltier, not from
half-melted human glaciers of human tears
but from the weeping dwarves of Ragnarök.
The Book of Things & Hope is planet-thick
and we get more insubstantial every day.
We all know God is Dead.
Nietzsche was rather slow to realise
that God had become just a Black Hole
in the infinitesimal human consciousness.
Jesus just a legend, Mohamed a
testosteronal war-lord.
God was rumoured to be Love
but Love never existed, either.
Now it's rumoured
by the ultra-intelligent and rich
that Black Holes are also dead...
I guess it's time to take a pill and go to bed.
 |
| Akbar |
I wanted to wear pirate's ear-rings
and grow a beard
like an ogre or some similar fiction
such as Captain Hook
or Blue-Black-Redbeard
(I have always identified with outsiders)
and when I was 20 my ambitions
were realised....and normality
but not reality I finally forsook.
 |
| The guy on the left is my Very Best Friend. |
The problem I find with Christianity
is that it has no philosophy
except for vague but limited do-goodism
tacked on to Judaic pseudo-history
and rejection of simple sexuality,
especially that of women.
These things it shares with Islam.
I sort-of-believed the nonsense for almost a year
but have subsequently remained puzzled by,
fixated on why anyone believed, believes it.
I went on to study the finer forms of Buddhism...
but Marx won out, by his affirmation of fairness,
fair play, dislike of greed, acquisitiveness.
Now Marx has also been sent to the abattoir.
He's bloody dead.
We now have the world-wide
religion-web of acquisition and envy instead.
Once upon a time, in 1945,
a shy Prime Minister of Britain
and its frayed empire drove himself
around in a battered little Morris 10
– at least when it wasn't his wife who did the driving.
He oversaw the greatest social revolution
in Europe since the beheadings
of 17th and 18th century kings,
He initiated the dismantling of the empire
(in unfortunate circumstances) and installed
the world's most advanced welfare state
and the only health service to offer
free consultation and treatment to everyone.
Despite the capitalist and American grip
on Britain, it became the most truly-socialist
country in the world has ever known,
and was not a failed experiment
(at least not until tower-block machines-
for-being-isolated-in were built). Since then
the turbo-capitalist, plutocratic and American
monopolistic jaws
(Thatcher-Reaganomics devised by evil men)
have hollowed out its Welfare State, and the rich
are many more times richer than the struggling poor,
more people are homeless and ill-nourished,
than in 1945, back when
the visionary, shy socialist Prime Minister
drove himself about in his battered Morris 10.
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