Yes, yes, yes! I know I have no discipline, am a total faliure as well as a criminal and a blaggard! I've just been soooo busy even with other internet stuff like my Youtube adventures and now I'm properly working again after everything came to a halt just before christymas it's now or never to put some kind of full-stop on this fucking drivel. For my own sake.
I was reading today, for the first time in ages the original text that used to make up this blog and it actually made me laugh a couple of times. The summer of 2006, the last very hot, dry one seems like an idyllic time when there was nothing to worry about but the Israelis launching a war that might not end and the increasing gloom over the situation in Iraq. We didn't know then the world economy was on the brink of collapse and that we had no more control of Afghanistan than the Russians had in 1979. I must admit, rather unmodestly, that I had an inkling of both those things but in that lovely hot summer it was possible to blot them out with cute cartoon pseudo-dogs and visions of endless tropical flowers. It was like a little taste of the late sixties, just like 1993 & 99 had been for me but for different reasons each time.
So yeh. after a bit of trimming and putting it in the right order (the opposite way round its original blog format where the latest entry comes first) I present before you the original Revolutionary Army of Crackers which succeeded in it's primary aim of annoying some Americans. The subsequent chapters, the Republic and Empire of Crackers probably won't get a 2nd chance. There was some good stuff in them and some material that makes me look like a proper Nostradamus from the perspective of 2010 but they don't tell a single straightfoward story like the original and both end poorly with all the fun kind of sucked out of them.
Yes before Koosie is led down that dark staircase, his trademark pince-nez falling off the perch of his big colourful nose, let's give him one last look at his glory days of July 2006 before his useless brain is shot out of his big colourful head.
Revolutionary Army of Crackers
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Every night I tell myself I am the koos-moose
According to the BBC world service, a blog is something like a diary. That explains a lot. Better write down what happened today then:
Early this morning I called an emergency meeting of the army council. I was not alone in feeling fearful, most were aware of something evil forming in the air as if we would wake up tomorrow morning and find Aku from Samurai Jack grinning at us in his columnar monsterousness. The authorities and their allies were whipping up hatred for anyone different and given that our beliefs are strange and unknown to even us, it seemed a good idea to head for hills. First of all we called in a favour; Ruiz the arms dealer owed us for getting rid those moths so presented us with a crate of guns. He seemed to think too that fleeing was a good idea for us, a tactical retreat I called it. We'd gather our strengh in the clean air of the hills and woods then sweep down and free the land when the time was right.
After several hours marching we came across a native shaman whose way of life had not changed in many a year. We were able to trade with him some much-needed AA energiser batteries for our C90 cassette of Hinge & Brackett routines recorded off the radio in 1983. Cross-dressing it seemed was still regarded in these wild parts as the highest form of culture. Those batteries were a god-send, we were now able to operate our only form of night-time illumination, a Scooby-Doo torch that projected a faint image of a ghost on surfaces up to 10cm away. There was much rejoicing that for me was rather bittersweet. I remember when Scooby-Doo was merely a vehicle for 70s nostalgia rather than a multi-billion pound industry. I feel nostalgia for those days of innocent nostalgia.
After another couple of hours marching we made camp and like all good revolutionary guerilla movements we discussed ideology and theory. Sadly we knew little of our ideology so we cobbled together all we knew about our mysterious leader:
1-He is pink
2-He skips along in an endearing way
3-His name may be confused with a starch-rich foodstuff.
One member pointed out that this wasn't enough to constitute a revolutionary philosophy. I was inclined to agree but revolutionary discipline has to be hard as iron so I ordered him to be shot and opened the crate. It was at this point we discovered tht our guns were made of chocolate.
posted by Koosie at 10:39 AM
Sunday, July 23, 2006
You're never alone at the bottom of the pile
Political power, wrote Mao, grows out of the barrel of a gun. I wonder if he would have made that statement had his guns have been made of chocolate. This was the position the Revoultionary Army of Crackers had found itself in. The only thing that would grow out of the barrel of these guns was that white fungus stuff. Nevertheless I felt it was important psycologically for an army to have some kind of guns, even if they were novelty confectionary. Of course we could not carry them like guns or strap them to our backs as they would melt so we would continue carrying them between 2 soldiers in their crate as if they were real guns. There was no point consuming them, I cheerily told the army, they were totally the wrong kind of carbohydrates and fats. For our bodies to work effectively we need our fats from fish and nuts and our carbohydrates from complex sources like potatoes, rice or cous-cous. Sadly we didn't have any of those things.
By yesterday morning the discomfort was showing and even the army council were besieging me with questions most of which I had no effective answers to. One did ask me a question I could answer though and that was, as I recall 'What is the deal with you being called Koosie anyway?' The reply is given under the title Koosalagoopagoop below. I thought for a second this had gone down ok but there was just more shaking heads and gritted teeth. 'Why then are we the revolutionary army of CRACKERS then?' someone demanded. When I replied that Koosie represents my religious beliefs and Crackers represents my political beliefs, there were heads in hands and people kicking trees.
I misinterpreted this as a secularist attack on my authority and challenged as to why they were following me anyway given my peculiar and ill-thought out beliefs.
I think it took several hours to really get to the heart of it. These people, my 'followers' as it turned out were people with chronically low self-esteem. Such was their belief in their own wothlessness and need for punishment that they were prepared to follow me, clearly an insane idiot, to the most uncomfortable destruction possible.
We packed up our gear and continued marching deeper into the wilderness. Behind me were an army of weak-willed self-haters who at the last resort would make ideal suicide bombers. I'll try my best to avoid that, maybe this whole thing will end justly and neatly. They will recover their self-confidence and overthow me and return to productive, happy lives. I'll try and get them to that but it's more likely I think I'll end up alone again with their lives on my conscience watching the sun go down on the lot of it.
posted by Koosie at 7:09 AM
Koosalagoopagoop
"Your love keeps on lifting me higher and higher"So sung Jackie Wilson, probably about some human female. Personally when I hear this masterpeice all it brings to mind something created by the Dexter's Laboratory people. This fine body of humans will never know what they did to a doomed ukogbanian in 2003. In reality (pah!) they are no more responsible than the cable or electric companys but they get hard cash so no gratitude. It a long story and boring but is sufficient to say that endless repeats on the cartoon network are no bad thing! I had missed this stuff 1st time round because of the whole becoming an adult thing so when I did catch up: WoW! It was like watching BRUNO BOZZETTO toons and Yellow Submarine on a sunday afternoon. Ah! The Oceanic Sense! Koos a la goop a goop (imaginary friend of Dexter's sister Dee-Dee) isn't even real in the cartoon world. He's a bit of nothing created by some mammels given a ludicrous shape and a splendid voice and unleashed into my consciousness by flickering light. It's as near to a god as i'm going to and would actually like to get. Therefore I take his name and add it to my own and march into the world as a little peice of the light that is lovingly curled around the darkness.
What's wrong with that? You don't call Mohammed Ali by his old name, do you?
posted by Koosie at 6:06 AM
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Pearls before swine / Balaklava
I was awoken last night by ugly noises and opened my eyes to an ugly scene. Gardeners are well aware that plants under stress often produce more flowers and fruit, Mr Dawkins will tell you all about it I expect. As death approaches the reproductive imperative kicks in and energies are diverted thus. A similar thing was happening to the RAC. The army had formed themmselves into pairs within and without our No-Frills tents and were writhing naked together, moaning and squelching. There was quite a diversity of sexual activity on view that might have been enertaining to observe were it not for the fact the humans engaged in it were deeply physically repellent. There were no alphas in the RAC. This, however, did not stop these monsters, the real orders all living things obey had obviously become more shrill and urgent for them.
Seeing this gave the impression of pigs having fun in a particularly muddy sty but I was struck by the unpleasant thought that these were in fact Pearls before me. These incredibly complex primates engaged in the most beautiful act life can provide- the act of life itself. I was the swine gazing at this beauty with a mix of disgust and incomprehension.
It was a nice warm night with bright moonlight filtered under the trees so I decided to take a nice walk up the steep hill we were camped under. Soon I found a little clearing with a view above the wood into the endless sky tainted orange by distant cities. The moon, my long lost friend, was full and smiling in the sky. I wanted to howl at it like a dog but did not want to disturb the lovers below so I sat and munched a chocolate gun, thoughts and the void merging together to provide new perspectives.
Clearly I was killing the Army of Crackers, which was what they wanted but achieved nothing. Some idiots dying in the woods isn't going to inspire the next step in human evolution (the abolition of hierachys and nations) but would merely consolidate all our existing mistakes. If doom was the way then it should be a vain-glorious gesture so at the very least aliens and future historians would know that somebody said no. It would be like the charge of the light brigade at the battle of Balaklava reminding the world how fragile and stupid we are so all of Earth's minds can get together and deal the whole future or extinction question once and for all. Best of all it would rid the world of all this unwanted DNA for making machines that go marching around the woods with chocolate guns and a scooby-doo torch.
The alternative was that the desperate scenes below would, as they were meant to do, create more human life. It does happen.At this point biology would kick some sense into these idiots and force them to act responsibly. I would wait a little while to find out before taking my own future/extinction decision, not that it mattered to me one way of the other. It felt odd being the only one not involved, well certainly not the only one, there were individuals in the RAC who wouldn't have been compis mentis enough to understand what was being offered them if someone had been sick enough to do so. It was strange because here was the only game in town and I wasn't playing. Looking at the moon under which I had known romance myself under in youthful bursts, I wondered if I would ever play that game again or whether I was another dead end to be washed down the plug-hole. I soon put aside these problematic thoughts because they all lead to the answer zero and there was nothing left now but to join with Crackers and enter the nexus forever.
posted by Koosie at 5:56 AM0 Comments:
Friday July 28, 2006
It's a song
There was no afterglow apparently. The next morning the faces seemed even more miserable than usual and no-one was speaking at all not even to come up with any better ideas of what to do. I, on the other hand, felt fine. I woke up with the taste of chocolate gun still in my mouth and it was delicious. If I do prevail, I'll ask Ruiz where he got them from before he is killed in a painful and undignified way.
I attempted to raise morale with a comedy song I'd written to the tune of 'This Land Is Your Land' by Woody Guthrie. It illustrates the underlying problems of territory and ownership that we must overcome in a post-revolutionary world. See! Learning can be fun! Anyway, it goes:
This land is my land
It is not your land
So get your own land
Or I'll raise my hand
I fucking bought it
I fucking own it
This fucking land belongs to me
Won't be mine someday
But thats not today
So get on your way
Get out of my way
I will defend it
But will not mend it
This fucking land belongs to me
Did they like it? Did they fuck. Usual response of blank sheep-like acceptance or just hostility. For a bunch of 'followers' they're not exactly adoring. A sympathy laugh or two would help. Come on! I'm really trying here! Perhaps this is the deal with leadership generally. Nobody actually likes any leader just do what they say out of fear or just lack of imagination. Was it like this for Churchill? Is anyone reading this old enough to actually remember him or his leadership? I bet they did wanker gestures behind his back too.I suddenly feel sympathy for Saddam Hussein. Yeh, this lot had better do something about old Koos or he'll make them pay!
posted by Koosie at 12:08 PM
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Sunday, July 30, 2006
Koosie thinks about a pizza
Does anyone fancy become one of my followers? I've had it with this lot. Now I can cope with crying, that's fine. Crackers had a bit of a cry when somebody did not want to adopt him and Cheese, it provides an escape for all those useless emotions. Hank Hill was right when he said emotions are your employees but he should have taken a more European view of employees. Let those tears come, hey! I would join you but I feel just great. All the time.
No, anyway, what gets me is mumbling. And moaning. Mumbling and moaning about being hungry and not having mobile phones. Well there is one but that's exclusively for putting blogs on the internet about cartoon characters. Priorities people! Screw them, all they need to do is beat me up and they can have the phone and the chocolate guns. Bloody losers. Next river I see I'm going to order them to march straight into it and see what happens. Then I'd go find a TV with cartoon network and make myself a pizza. With Olives and Anchovies. Yum yum!
Actually the living up here is good. I'm healthy as ever. Thanks to my encyclopaedic knowledge of plants I can pretty much tell what roots, shoots and berries are safe to eat and you find out pretty quick when you're wrong. I've never eaten so many nettles. Perhaps a butterfly will burst out of me. The followers don't like eating plants. Fools! Everything we eat comes via plants, you don't need Ray Mears to tell you that. Does this mean I'm a survivalist? I hope not, because as Rich Hall says, no-one survives. And Ray Mears gets fatter every year, surviving his way round the world. Stop eating these people's food, Mears! If your stuck in the wilderness with Ray Mears just eat him, you'll last for months.
posted by Koosie at 9:05 AM
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Stop it, he's had enough already
It's been raining in this part of Ukogbani for the last couple of days for which I've been very grateful. Its such a pleasure to see all the living things looking fresh again after those parched weeks. Of course this means there's been little to do in the woods but try to stay dry which is totally impossible. Damp and bored, the followers have been getting tetchy. There was even a outbreak of violence but directed against each other rather than the real source of their problems.
Of course this violence is nothing to be suprised or alarmed at. Considering how appalled we act when violence breaks out, we certainly spend a lot of time talking about it, reading about it, thinking about it and watching it. Even simulations of it! Now when I left civilisation, the state of Israel had begun attacking Lebanon. Had I not been marching around up here, I would have been glued to TV news reports about it. The problem of violence is well demonstrated by the flow of events around this crisis:
Israel began squishing Lebanese children to destroy Hezbollah after clear provocation from the Shi-ite radicals who had obviously decided to get the reckoning over with Israel at a time of their choosing, given that it was inevitable. Our beloved western leaders had duped themselves into thinking a quick burst of killing would sort these terrorists out once and for all only to discover, as even I could have told them in the first place, that they've merely empowered still further those whose currency is violence. Conventional military power even at a near-nuclear level cannot defeat pissed-off indiginous people especially if they're being funded and trained by people who don't give a shit about anything. Aything except, I suspect, getting their hands on the lands of the middle east and all that lovely money that flows into it. It's peace and prosperity that takes their power away and turns religion back into a stabilizing force.
As a follower of Koosism-Crackersism I generally blame these mistakes on the unproductive elements who insert themselves as leaders, not of a community of individuals known to them personally, but of an entirely abstract concept of territory comprising some land surrounded by invisible lines and composed of a population that, like it or not, is fluid and changing. It is their greed that divides men and is causing the all the world to follow a flawed, uniform developmental strategy.
However, that's just ideology. The truth behind violence is that we're partly carnivourous and it's written into us to want to dominate and kill as those without these traits couldn't exploit the best sources of cell-making proteins as we evolved. Greed, too is from the same source. An animal which survives is one that best controls the resources around it and surplass is rare in nature so when encountered it is best exploited to the full. Survival does not have an off-switch when the ENOUGH level is reached because no such level exists. Who thinks they have enough money? Money is just the form this resource struggle currently takes.
Civilisation will move us beyond money, greed and nations but only if we face up to the furry little animals we are. We need something to curb our natural agression and let's hope it's something better than a drug or an operation. In a Judge Dredd comic, a centre is built for this purpose where citizens can shoot and beat legitimately to get that animal agression out and not suprisingly it all ends badly. It did give me the idea though that violent computer games may be doing the same thing and perhaps this is our outlet, completely contary to what your moral majority types think. Perhaps our best minds can refine this effect and really do something to help us escape this violent spiral before it's too late for us all. Which it probably already is.
My solution with the followers was to promise them chocolate if they stay nice to each other. Working so far, fingers crossed. The way is shown by Crackers. It's pink, fluffy and nice and the only alternative is extinction.
posted by Koosie at 9:31 AM
Sunday, August 6, 2006
Bye, bye. Goodbye. I tried.
Say it loud and say it proud
Lord I tried and Lord I failed
Well it was a new day yesterday but it's and old day now. The Revolutionary Army of Crackers has been disbanded and the philosophy that lay behind it has been thoroughly discredited and rejected. Like a disgraced member of the Politburo I must now admit my mistakes. I have made many mistakes, let's get through them quick before I think of loads more.
Inadequate preparation must be first. Exploitation of weak-minded people. Chocolate guns. Boring cartoon people with news and news people with cartoons. Mixing it all up to make some stupid 'point'.
I'm not wrong about cartoons though. They are a fundamental form of communication that goes back to cave painting. They are representations that are not supposed to look exactly like their real counterparts but rather they concentrate on specific defining characteristics. Recognition of them is universal as if they are decifered on a different part of the brain. Hum it's hard to describe what I mean in silly old English. For example, Bugs is clearly a bunny though he has few actual rabbit characteristics, in fact he resembles a very deformed human being. More so Mickey Mouse.
Whatever rationality lies behind it, the fact remains in my dopamine- fueled wingnut dispersal has not generated the world's next great belief system. Not that madness is necessarily a prohibitive factor, probably don't hurt at all but Koosism-Crackerism is no good and will be forgotten like thousands of other belief-systems that have tried to nail down this mystery. Who remembers Ashur now? That terrible blood-thirsty god of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians have long sinced renounced Ashur and still live in the area we know as Iraq. I'm sure Ashur would have enjoyed the current bloodbath but the truth is that if the country does get ethnically partitioned as is looking increasingly likely, his people will still find themselves between someone elses lines.
There I go again. I'm like Cassandra but with big fluffy slippers.I suppose I'd better tell what happened.:
What's that coming over the hill?
Friday August 4, 2006 - We saw them before they saw us. They did not see that we had seen them so when they did see us they tried to make sure we did not see them. We saw them form into 2 groups and come on us in a classic pincer movement. When we could not see them we just waited for them to emerge. There was nothing we could do about it as it obvious they were taking things a lot more seriously than us. I thought they must be the army or even a genuine guerilla resistance group with real inedible weapons. Whoever they were, they wer'nt going to be impressed with the Revolutionary Army of Crackers . I was right about that bit anyway.
I told the RAC to surrender immediatly when we found ourselves surrounded by macho-types in camo gear. They wer'nt pointing guns at us however though I did spy the odd home-bow and some catapaults. These, I quickly deduced were either enviromentalists or the liberation army of another time.
They turned out to be university Friends-Of-The-Earth types who'd formed a militia to guard the forest or something. Basically some rich kids on a save the planet kick. Very commendable I suppose and they should be natural allies but I don't believe in saving the planet. The planet is fine. Planet Earth or Gaia or whatever the sweet girl's called will keep doing it's thing, going round the sun till the bugger burns out. It's only the higher organisms like humans and elephants that are threatened by the current circumstances. Still it was nice to meet these Friends. I suppose they kinda all share the same imaginary friend - a really big one.
The Earth's Friends felt terribly sorry for the RAC. They were very good at feeling sorry for their lessers. Nobody said anything to me about my irresponsible adventurism or crass mistakes but I felt like Bendy when he finally get's found out in 'Everybody Knows it's Bendy'. Mostly soggy. Everyone knew the game was up and that the RAC was no more even though I don't think the Friends actually invited my followers to join them. Hahaha! Saps! I bet it killed their fun.
Meeting with these people had also given me a chance to catch up with the progress on the old Third World War. Lebanon still getting worse. Talk of Peacekeepers going in but will they fight Hezbollah? If they did they'd lose too. Iraq still going tits up. Ukogbani troops being killed in Afghanistan. We should buy their opium at a fair price, then they'd forget about supporting the fucking Taliban. The NHS uses tons of it for medical diamorphine, who do they buy it off? Some big landowner probably.
Yes it's a fucked world and even this war isn't the worst of our problems. I'm glad the Friends of the Earth are fighting their corner. Good for them. Just wish they hadn't polished off our chocolate guns, the big greedy meanies. I made sure I had a rucksack full of their swag when I slipped out of camp on Friday night and there's some real nice stuff here. I've been marching for 2 days now and I think I've got away from them so tonight I can relax, have a drink and a smoke (thanks guys) and put this thing to bed finally.
posted by Koosie at 11:25 AM
So What?
Sometimes you just have to smile at it. It's been a perfect evening. The rain stopped an hour ago and the setting sun turned the low heavy sky into a churning-changing upside-down mountain-range, the colour of blood. A suitably Wagnerian scene for the final ceremony of the world's first peripheral cartoon character based revolutionary military organisation. There has never been one before and there never will be again. In aeons to come this event will not be spoken of with awe and reverence. No future generations will be inspired by this last stand in the struggle against fear and intolerence.
The sandcastles were merely sand. As the Imaginary Flag was lowered on this pitiful delusion I made the noise of a trumpet and saluted the memory of a bouncing pink thing with a cute voice and a tenency to cry about not being adopted. It was lucky no blood had been shed in his name which makes him already greater than any other political philosopher in my book but it's really hard to sure as my head is muddled with intoxicants.
Saying goodbye to Koosie and Crackers was never going to easy. I expect the dragon will be coming back again now that i've got his name. I'm not changing GreenKoos now. GreenKoos Biomass is the future. If there is a future.
As for little Crackers, I'll miss that little guy but I suspect it'll not be the last we hear of him. He's as immortal now as the cave-paintings he's descended from, a peice of beautiful light beamed from the nicer bits of an animal mind into the retina of forever. His light is travelling through space so cultures far and long away will know that we were here and we beheld Crackers. Perhaps they will build edifices to him, infinitely greater and more just than what I have presented for you here.
As the last light of the day diminished on the horizon I swear I saw him pause, look back and blow me a kiss before bouncing over it, following the light into the west. Then there was darkness.
posted by Koosie at 3:18 PM
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Turns out I was wrong on a few things. There was briefly another peripheral cartoon-character military force and as it turns out, all medicinal opium is produced by a nationalised company in India. Fancy that. Probably private now anyway, like everything else. Dunno why
BANG!
