Another year and then you'll be happy

The view from the top of a hill in mid-northern Ukobani looking west into the setting sun in the dying days of 2011.

Well it's hats off to comedian Mark Steel for mentioning Gef the Talking Mongoose in this week's episode of Mark Steel's in Town where he visited Douglas in the Isle of Man. There were reports of Gef  taking the bus and I can just see him sitting with a newspaper on the back seat, using his little nose to flip the pages, reading about the economic depression and the rise of militant nationalism, keenly aware of the mysterious forces beyond rationality or morality that lurk in the background, driving these events and enslaving mankind forever in world of cruelty and lies

Now I'm not sure Brian Dunning has ever done an episode of Skeptoid about Gef the Talking Mongoose but I'm fairly sure he'd give equal credibility to Gef's claims that human history is driven by anything other than humans. He does give an excellent description of a hypnopompic hallucination , his own in fact, in an episode about Shadow People. I've seen one too! Get this though...

"Early one morning, the characters from Sesame Street put on a show for me in the tree outside my bedroom window. It had music, theme songs, lighting cues and costume changes: A full elaborate production, and it lasted a good hour. To this day, I have clear memories of some of the acts. I even went and woke my parents to get them to watch, but by then the show had gone away. I knew for a fact that I hadn't been asleep. I'd been sitting up in bed and writing down some of the songs they sang. Those writings were real, on real paper, and even made sense when viewed in the light of day. It had been a completely lucid, physical experience for me. But it only existed inside my own brain in a hypnopompic state".

Cool eh? That's a hypnopompic hallucination which happens when you're waking up. The going-to-sleep version is  Hypnogogia. We've all had them right? I was so excited when I heard this that I wrote it all down but as it turned out I'd just woken up and that Brian Dunning is just an illusion created by the addled mind. You might think there's 2 links to his intriguing output up there but remember you are quite tired.

So yes perhaps it was just Gef's incredible brain, trying to create order in the confusing chaos of events that led him to believe that Elegabalus and co were behind the wars and depressions of the 20th century world. Surely Gef of all beings could see that human behaviour as in any system in nature like high-altitude winds or patterns of crop disease, are predictable to the point that they manefest ebb and flow, tipping points and circularity yet are inherently chaotic, capable of throwing up the seemingly impossble and at the very least, extremely inconvenient.

Or maybe that's the just the sort of lies that kind are good at sowing and its only closed-minded credible fools like you and Dunnung who fall for it. More later!

Catching up with the relatives

John Terry is a what now?

Cute little guy, eh? I nicked this picture from the internet's top Mongoose page   and it's of the Mouse Lemur, the smallest of the Primates. We may have looked something like this guy at the end of the dinosaur era when we scuttled into little holes to avoid whatever catasphrophes unfolded then not least those big bastard lizards dropping all over the place. Imagine all the pits those litte paws will dig. We should have stayed in the trees like these agreeable liitle guys.

Coming soon- I'll be going through 2011's posts to change all the groovy spellings on the Oryx & Crake stuff. Margaret Atwood sure goes nuts for wacky corporate names like AnooYoo or Rejoovinessence. I think I got that one wrong actually. That's the trouble with listening to books as opposed to actually reading them. Sorry Atty! You don't mind me calling you Atty doo yoo?

So it's Krismas time again Koos-pals. Time again to bow our heads and think for a minute about the real meaning of Krismas, about the laughing sprinter who was on Record Breakers after Davrosesque apartheid-lover Norris McWhirter had pegged it.


Tonight we drink to absent friends.

Nearly time for pulling Crackers! I should be so lucky.

Happy Krismas, Future Koos!

Lots of love,
Past Koos 21-12-11

Er here's the link to my favourite Wedding Present choon in memory of John Peel. Absent friends and that.....  It should be followed by Tunic (song for Karen) by Sonic Youth like it was on my old C90 cassette all them years ago....Ahhhhhhh. HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC YOU SCUM!That's why there's no music now. GOO!

Why have you stolen my name?

Heeeeeey! What the hell are Koosdays?! Hey that's my word you bastards! Well...and a few people's names and well lots of things. All the same! I just found a leaflet for this KOOSDAYS thing (in a pile of damp leaves I was collecting) and it appears to be an events promotor or something seemingly promoting really awful-looking clubbing nights and gigs from performers I've never heard of. I was going to post the link to their website but it has no explanation of why they've stolen my name. Or at least the name of a not-much-missed cartoon character voiced by a  man who is greatly missed. So why should i give them the publicity?  (er...what?) No! instead I'm just going to repeat a link I've already linked to when I did less elegent linking.
Oh I'm sorry Koosdays, whoever you are. I'm sure what you're doing is really fab. I just wanted to be Koos. All I ever wanted was Koos.

Let's build a snowman

Hello? Hello? Is there anyone there?  This is the voice of Koos calling planet Earth again to ramble on about some old crap or other. David Icke was right about there being extra-terrestrial (pan-dimensional if you must know) lizards in human form conspiring to rule your planet but what he's not telling you is that their conspiracy has fallen somewhat short of expectations and is behind a long line of better-organised conspiracies trying to mess things up for you poor innocent defenceless people. For example there's the now immortal 3rd century God-King on whom Kahn (Kahn!) was ultimately based , not Imran Khan like you thought. Er...there's also the also extra-terrrestrial black-rock entity, not quite as benevolent as the film 2001 would have you believe and given how 2001 actually turned out, who are you going to trust? Anyhoo, that thing, the black thing has been a malign influence on your development since, like, forever. That bit was right. The bit with the unconvincing hominids and the bone. That's just the sot of thing he likes. Anyway evidence presented in this blog proves he's behind the banks and  we all know that they're the enemy, right? I was going to call this post BEDTIME FOR DEMOCRACY cos of those ficking fuggers but I figured I'd already nodded to Jello Biafra and the Dead Kennedys enough for now so I named it after a much nicer song. Can you guess how it links to the photo or how I could have squeezed  MARY BEARD into this paragraph? Answers later.

My favourite quote is from Emperor Hirohito as he told his nation that the game was up at the end of World War II:

"We must endure the unendurable."

Now it's been my policy on this thing for a while to avoid any mention of what's really going on in my actual personal, human life. It's generally not relevent and happening at a different level from all this rather like the BIOS thing in this computer that has  to be there but is down there somewhere doing something very basic. It wasn't a good analogy really because I don't really know what I'm talking about but then all analogies are a bit overated, despite the faith that strident people have in them.Yeh...anyway I'm experiencing...well something unpleasant at the base level right now so please  forgive me if there's even more darkness and cynicism in this blog at the moment but actually it seems strangely appropriate given that there's a lot of it about. These things are sort-of connected.

We don't need a worldwide conspiracy to create suffering. We generate ourselves in everything we do at every level. It's like a side-effect of biological processes like generating heat. EXAMPLE! Money. It's a great idea that really helps us build our complex societal structures and then does its level best to undermine them mostly because of the interaction between the present and the future it involves. It seems to run out of control and change everything as it goes. Incidently, on the subject of analogies, there's still a widespread belief in the idea of trickle-down economics whereby money flows downwards from the rich to the poor and that's why you have to cut taxes and  reduce the burden of social security etc. As good, if not better an analogy that also treats money as liquid in nature is in Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr Rosewater where money is described as trickling down to the rich who sit slurping greedily on the banks of the money river and are taught how to slurp more efficiently and employ others to slurp even more for them. The rest of us are high and dry thirstily watching it flowing away from us down toward the far rich water-meadows of our social superiors.

Hey this is  going really badly tonight. It's more formless than ever and I really should give up but I wanted to get this out. The crazy world situation reminds me of how I was convinced when I was actually studying geo-politics that there was going to be another world war between 2015 and 2020. I'm not sure I still agree with that conclusion as there was a lot of things I really had no idea were going to happen but the general thing was that the west would have to employ its last trump card, ie high-level coercion,  to stop the east from getting control of the board and of course by that point the accelerating environmental crisis would make it obvious that something dramatic would have to happen, that something would have to direct the course of humanity one way or other.

The financial crisis that caused the depression that caused the last world war began in 1929. While things have gone differently this time, theres still more snake than ladder. If we were running to the same time-table then we're in about 1932 now. What does 1933-1939 make you think of? What happened then? What will happen in 2018?

The reason I'm convinced I'm wrong, that the abandonment of democratically accountable governance ( Europe lets it go as the rest of the world demands it) isn't going to lead to the end of our civilisation, based on the fact that this is our last go at civilisation. We can't let it slide and have it get even better again. We've used everything up that you can make an industrial revolution out of. If we go agrarian we stay agrarian. Besides as Dan Carlin pointed out on his poorly named 'Common Sense' podcast, we may just be on the brink of a whole new way of thinking that'll quickly make this seem like the dinosaur ages like how the Age of Revolution moved political thought to from the world of Divine right to that of Constitutional government. My money's on the AGE OF CRACKERS where hierachys and nations dissolve before our eyes and consciousness expands to encompass the human world and beyond. Only my money's useless and so is yours.

 Erm ok. That was good. Some or all this of all of this might go later as I am a little tired and emotional, Not a euphanism for pissed but actually dirt tired and emotionally....er...whatever. Nevertheless it was fun. Fank Yoo!

Answers! Richard Wattis appears in wonderful film The Abominable Snowman with Peter Cushing. I can't recommend it highly enough and it's also got something valuable to add on the whole science v religion thing.
Mary Beard, a Classics Professor from Cambridge University did a 10 minute 'Point of View' last week that mentioned Elagabalus the Roman Emperor from the line of  Septimus Severus named after El Gabul the Syrian God  who was, of course, a black meteorite. Not a monolith as such but he may have had a Gok-Wan style makeover at some point to become the obsidian rectangle of despair we all fear today.

You'll want a link. . Screw this post-democratic pan-human consciousness shite, this is what the internet's really all about. My record is about 10500 secs. See how you do:

Check out the retro piano skin!

Making the compromises

Er... I havent yet but I will! I'll post the Kanishka material this weekend. I promise. It's for the wonderful Dan Carlin's forum. Its so nice to hear someone with so much knowledge and enthusiasm telling stories of stuff that actually happened. I pinched this rather excellent picture from Viz-bothering God-hater Christina Martin's blog which is here! 

" Turning a blind eye to real life just to keep it all together
But sometimes when I'm alone like this
I wonder whether its worth it. "

It's a quote from the only melodic bit of the 1983 album 'Yes sir, I will'  by the anarcho-pacificist band Crass. Is it worth it? Tuffee.

The 'Ardship of Canbury, Dr Rowan Williams suggested on compromise on the spivs v hippies confrontation that's currently happening outside St Paul's Cathedral. Some sort of financial transaction tax was his suggestion. Not going to happen Churchy! Firstly every nation would have to agree to implement it or else no-one could possibly agree to it and even if by some miracle they did, it would hardly satisfy the hippies given that they believe that the government is merely the PR arm of the financial-military-administrative complex. Probably.

Has Greek PM George Papandreou put a gun to the head of the world economy just before the G20 meeting with his sudden referendum announcement? It may be he's trying to force Germany and the IMF to compromise on the fiscal reform/austerity plan imposed on the Greeks or else they'll just stop playing ball, messily default and see what happens. If it works out he'll be a national hero but more likely he'll be forced into a humiliating climbdown or be a name in the history books that always comes up when you try to find out the factors that led to world war 3. Get me! Books! Whatever rats and/or cockroaches will have instead.

I see Benjamin Netanyahu's not in the mood for compromise either today despite being told by Ariel Sharon's advisor that you can't just keep playing hardball with the moderate Palestinians without a) empowering the more militant Hamas and b) pushing Fatah back into all-out intifada. I expect the Al-Aqsa Matyrs Brigade is dusting off its many guns and bombs. Does the IDF use drones like the CIA is so popularly doing in Pakistan? I expect they'll be more evil robots in the air over the holy land in the months to follow.

Phew. Death is all around me.

Best lighten the mood a tiny bit.

Check it out! Anyone (from all those thousands of you hehe) recognise this cartoon? I'd like to know what's being said here. The music is from the Jasmine Minks who were clearly way better than Primal Scream and most of the other bands on Creation. Other than Teenage Fanclub of course. Were Teenage Fanclub on Creation?

Odd little cartoon

English Settlement

Now this may look like another pic of our monolithic pal Elegabalus but it's actually the odd chimney thing at the Lion's Claw on the moors above the Woodhead pass (see previous post Oct 09). The odd-shaped lumps on the moors that form the Lion's Claw must be generated by humans but I wonder why and when. Nice pic eh? Good movie too.

I came back at this increasingly grim time for western civilisation to pass on some good news. Everyone's favourite Canadian (everyone!), Margaret Atwood is writing another novel in the Oryx & Crake/Year of the Flood sequence. Yippie! Maybe we'll find out if the Crakers do follow their adoption of abstract thought with the violence that Crake predicted.

If we are 'living in the last days' the apocolypse is looking like a wet flood rather than Crake's rather dryer one. As I type this the nations of Thailand, Burma and Cambodia are experiencing catastrophic flooding and within the last few days lives have been lost in Ireland and Ghana and of course Pakistan and India are still counting their losses from only weeks ago. Flash-flooding has to my knowledge occurred in both Italy and the south west of the UK in the last few days. Cheddar Gorge! How terrifying seeing water flowing down there. I can't swim neither. All mammals can, so you lot should be alright but I'm more like some kind of  lizard.

Margaret Atwood also mentioned liking 'Darkness at Noon' as well. How nice is that? Quite pally too with Ursula Leguin by the sound of it. That's so pleasing. I was thinking of her tonight watching the St Paul's anti-capitalist protesters. There was that story where the earth's dispossesssed leave their homes and join together to form a vast leaderless nomad army marching from continent to continent in all their civilisation-embarrassing shabbiness. If Churchy and Boris boot 'em out that's what they should think about doing. You can keep moving around and around but unless you can be bothered to machine-gun the lot of them,they'll always be there.

The lady (um....sorry nameless lady) speaking for the protesters on the news said something along the lines of that they were seeking to explore ways to live without capitalism and organise a new society from the bottom. Funnily enough, late on in my Marxist days I'd developed this theory that the socialist society would not replace capitalism in a big dramatic red flash but would develop in it's litter and gradually replace it as the system controlling  transactions between the world's human beings. That's all it is by the way. It isn't a thing in itself after all, it's a notion. Anyway, as a post-communist sell-out businessman criminal, I now hold pretty much the same opinion, albeit with the Thatcherite rationalisation that choice and competition are good things even in terms of civilisation-defining economic systems; if one really believes competition raises efficiency then the capitalist system (no such thing-ed) is only made more efficient by the existence of a planned collective model alongside it. No? Don't worry the water will wash it all away.

DD said a good one. Remember how Liam Fox approved the use of close-on shouting by the military as a form of interregation (especially pointless and cruel on someone who might speak little english)? Well that's how he should have been questioned about his little friend who's dodgy dealings cost Doc Fox his job. Andrew Landsley too, the fucker. Selling off our health services to US providers, that's his game. He's surrounded by them like Fox and his defence chums. The NHS is fucking history and the Liberals have just watched it happen. Never fear! Chris Huhne's going to make it easier for us to switch our utility bills between the providers he knows full well are effectively running a cartel! Yes!

 Look... (Tony Blair-style palm-inward hand motion) it seems likely that all of us decadant western types are all seeing our living standards drop a bit as those of millions of people in China and India etc rise. The planet can't possibly sustain us all having a slap-up meal every day so this is all possibly for some greater good. Possibly not....but all the same. It just seems like the rich are really taking the piss round here and people have a right to be angry about that especially when they've done the right thing - worked hard and lived honestly. Not like me.

er.....maybe more later. Sorry I don't post more. So many reasons. Anyway the next thing I'm going to write will be about Kanishka for somewhere else. Perhaps I'll post it here too.

Mesa Verde

The Mesa Verde sequence in Sergio Leone's Giu La Testa (1971) is the greatest cinematic depiction of the phenonoma of disappointment of which I am currently aware. Juan arrives in Mesa Verde expecting lots of lovely gold but instead finds a city full of soldiers brutally repressing a peasant uprising.

Some of us know this feeling. We have arrived in what is recogniably the future - the computer in every home, the 20-lane motorway and the instant connections but it is a world as full of suffering as it ever was. We curl up in our possessions, our prejudices and our peccaddillos (sp?) unwilling and unable to imagine what collective dignity would actually be like. We might not even like it! I like being a bitter crazed loner , I know no other way to live but in all honesty I'm a complete dinosaur and I'm sure human beings can do a lot better. If not human beings, then Donkeys. Always liked Donkeys, who doesn't? Some too much apparently.

ASAP's Fables: More of an emphasis on punctuality than morality.
I'm claiming that. I just made that up. It's even better than 'It's the minotaur that spoils it for everyone else.' Never found the right feed-line for that.

There's A new Half-Man Half Biscuit album!

Anyone who talks like a pirate on 'talk like a pirate day' should be keel-hauled.

By the way, the computers and the 20 lane motorway are going to stop running within 10 years. The instant connection will be severed forever. The EMP weapons will only be the start of it. It all goes within 10 years unless somebody steps in and stops him !  Help us !

Back to Black

Yeh. They're back. I'm back. We're all back. Back for one last look? Who can tell?

When this object appeared outside a building in a major English city, amazingly nobody took any notice. When I first saw it, all I could think of was the opening bars of Also Sprach Zarathustra and I even commented to the security guard as I entered that he'd have to watch out for monkeys bashing each other with bones. He looked at me with utter bewilderment at this. As it turned out he'd never seen 2001 A Space Odyssey  so I was just wasting my time explaining to him that we may be on the brink of our next great evolutionary leap.

The object is not, of course, a benevolent Monolith from Jupiter and/or the next dimension up/along (the terms are meaningless). No it's actually Elegabalus, the exterrestrial intelligence worshipped as a deity in the near-East a couple of thousand years ago, or at least part of it, seemingly parked outside a building containing several financial bodies. Make of this what you will.

It's still there now, or at least appears to be. Such is the effect that Elegabalus has on localised space-time that human visual perception is unable to differentiate between the millionth of a second that Elegabalus actually materialised in that locality and what could be many years. How this could occur is a great mystery and has something to do with the fourth dimension. As we are unable to percieve this dimension all we have to extrapolate from are these 'solid illusions' that may be analogous to 2D shadows cast by 3D objects.

The other thing Elagabalus does is make men dress up as women. Famously he did this to a Roman Emperor, the ill-fated  Severan Varius Avitus Bassianus. Was this the God's price for helping the elder Severus reunite the Empire? How much else of human affairs has it conrolled? Is this Fourth-dimensional entity just a bit kinky? 

We're all a bit kinky. Look at me...A very minor myopic sauropod deity currently personified as a pseudo-socialist human king in hiding, with a penchant for a fictional pink dog-thing, who will, as I have clearly stated, never be forgotten. Just like everybody else.

It's a dark time here on this bit of this planet. Important events have been coming so thick and fast this year that its been impossible to deal with them all and keep reporting them here to the edge of chaos and eternity that this little blog represents. There seems little point trying to recap it all save to say that we will endure no matter what. The future is merely the germ in the seed in the fruit we carry and as long as we keep walking foward, we'll pass through this barren place to get to where clear rivers flow and the birds are singing sweetly between the rainbows. Believe my little ones! Believe my comforting lies! 

Familiar smells

It's nice to see Heidi back and all slimmed down. Not that I minded having more of Heidi to love, of course. No Opossum body fascism here, but if it means Heidi will be around for for longer, then I'm all for it. Hey I wonder if anyone's ever made an amusing photoshopped picture of Heidi wearing glasses? Watch this space!

Apparently Heidi's species has the uncanny ability, when threatened, to play dead convincingly by lying still for days at a time, emitting a foul-smelling liquid. Now a clever satirical blogger would be using this as a way into talking about current events of which I spoke in the previous post and at least one other in the past- Andy Hayman was a bent copper. Or an easily blackmail-able one. Or neither. Poor Andy, they laughed at him in Parliament.

But no! Nearly! I'm instead going to rabbit on about some other tangential shit altogether. I've said enough already. You don't need me to elaborate on why the archaic, corrupt business of journalism is inferior to the sleek, modern world of the blog where real useful information is showered on you for free by the type of person who claims to be a trans-dimensional dragon entity, who is simultaneously the rightful King of the Britons and a lot more besides. That would be a waste of your time! Why are you even reading this? There's so much else to do! Go and make peace with your father! Make an airfix model! Write a letter to Joan Bakewell. Take your Tortoise to the Opera. Learn to play the Trombone and follow Eric Pickles around with it. Do it! He'll never be able to catch you.

Meanwhile, in a not overly staggering coincidence, Lorelei King who so excellently voiced the audio version of The Year of the Flood turned up playing Judge Hershey and Maria the Landlady in an audio version of an old Judge Dredd story. It was great! Dr Zoidberg was in it, too. It seems to a real skill, reading aloud and making a story come to life. Stefan Rudnicki seems to be about the best male voice I've heard though I once had a tape version of Darkness at Noon read by Frank Muller that was pretty good. I've mentioned John Chancer's brilliant reading of Oryx and Crake but have a listen to this guy, Justin Brett, an amateur as far as I know, reading Chapter 13 of Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon:

http://librivox.org/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-vol-i-by-edward-gibbon/

I like Lizzie Driver too.

Here's Lorelei king's website: http://www.loreleiking.com/voiceover.php?PHPSESSID=4a4668d2b533890bf582521a7ab81a50 If you listen to the character samples, it finishes with her singing as TV Teddy which sounds well funny. On the commercials one, there's a voice-over for the Galleria in Hatfield on the A1 (M). It's a pity she didn't do it in the character of Blanco from YOTF: Hey bitch! Get your skinny ass down to the Galleria in Hatfield on the A1 (M). Or I'll cut you up!

All this talk of Hatfield and the north has reminded me that Stuart Maconie's extra freak-zone show is on at midnight. I often forget. I seem to forget so much these days...it all blurs together as it rushes past me and leaves me behind. I'll never forget you, though. xxxx

You are like a Hurricane

It's that man again! Harry Pollit meets Mao there with 2 gents I am unable to identify. Stalinist shitbags I'd imagine. Pollit probably even met the great man himself I'd imagine. What must it be like being in the presence of such power? Would you be able to remain aware of what a ludicrous monstrosity it is that such a thing could happen? It even does the men themselves no good (it usually is men), they become hideous distortions of themselves, become paranoid, self-obsessed and grow old early. That's how it is with me anyway.

 

A real such example of a power accumulator in our current age is Rupert Murdoch. Now despite the fact he's nakedly evil, you've got to admire the fact he hasn't gone totally statues on everyone. Admittedly he wants to control the world's media but is it really so different from the Oak Tree dropping thousands of Acorns to fill the land with replicas of itself? Well it's a bit different, especially in that Murdoch's got a better chance of achieving his aims. Well actually he hasn't. He's only really got meaningful power in the English-speaking world as far as I can tell. Mao's successors certainly won't Kow-tow to him but I'm sure they respect him, as I do in my way, as one respects something impressively big and dangerous like shark or a hurricane. Still, you can't see Assad appearing in The Simpsons.

 

Despite his power even Rupert (we're on first-name terms) had to emerge today to make a statement in regard to the mess that's been stirred up now the public know about the hacking of phones belonging victims of terrorism, parents of murdered children and even one belonging to to a murdered (then-missing) teenage girl and even worse, the deleting of her messages (pleading family members) to make room for more messages in case some interesting tit-bit should emerge from it. Unaware of this, the family found hope in this, believing the missing girl herself was deleting these messages. Really sick stuff. There's the obvious buying of policeman (they're on their way, Hayman! Funny if your nemesis Ali Dezai is the arresting officer!) and this new allegation of News International operatives stalking a detective investigating the axe murder of a Private Investigator, possibly looking for dirt on him to inhibit the investigation.

 

How come Murdoch hasn't yet ditched Rebekah Brooks? She had got close to Cammers but he'll surely put a lid on that now. Perhaps Rupert really likes her, really really. Maybe she has some top dirt on one of his spawn. You can imagine a Murdoch son being in to some dodgy stuff. Rupert craved money and power but they were raised into it. What do they crave?

Yes, let's hope that we've turned a corner. Let the message go over to our friends in the US this is what's really behind the shrill barking of that annoying old Fox. Those cock-wad democrat scum should be on the offensive with this stuff instead of spending billions of tax dollars on photographing their cocks or whatever it is they do.

 

Okay that's the boring writing bit done. Link time! I finally worked up the courage to go sniffing around Deviant Art again for pictures of Koosie and Crackers. I wasn't to be let down! There's some great work out there and I can't possibly link to them all so I've picked 2 favourites:

http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=crackers+imaginary#/d2urhjj

 

http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=koosie#/d2zkn56

 

 

The Phantom of Fairpools

What's that? Today's big prize for guessing why this is here is a GP Taylor novel. If you can't guess you win 2 GP Taylor novels. Haha! No I'm sure they're great really. I tell you what, you can have their ashes and a deeply satisfying vid of me burning the Jeremy Vine-bothering, disturbing vicar-cop's shite book, which I own by a tragic accident. No money changed hands. Anyway I'll give you clue, it has nothing to do with The Phantom of Fairpools which is a top-notch creepy tale of the supernatural. Look it up if you don't believe me. Not sure why I brought it up really, other than to muddy the already muddy waters that were muddied enough by Muddy Waters, the legendary blues guitarist, for some reason.

Nonsense, nonsense nonsense! I must be a bit 'tooty'. Actually I'm a bit hyper and excited because this is my big, busy weekend of the year. Pity we're past the longest day.

I changed the 'Oh's' to 'O's on the last awful post because it seemed more likely in retrospect. This is, I must confess, becayse I'm not reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, I'm actually listening to it as that was the only version the local library could get me. It's on Audio Cassette. Imagine! Sure they had CDs in 2004? Still I'm happy. It's read by someone called John Chancer, who's pretty good. His default voice is slightly crisp and hissy (maybe that's the tape) but when he does Crake he sounds like a cross between HAL and Norm Sherman. The Craker's speech is the best. Maybe I should lose a 'C' and make this the Revolutionary Army of Crakers. It would actually make slightly more sense. Joking! I'm imagining poor little Crackers crying at this final rejection. I was nearly crying today on Tape 15, the bit where Jimmy is watching old Alex the Parrot videos. Phew. I mean I've enjoyed these 2 novels immensely but it always takes you by surprise when something really burrows into you like that, I had to stop what I was doing. Suppose that's how you get nominated for the Man Booker Prize, whatever that is. It is funny in places too, like Year of the Flood, which I'll have to go through again now to spot all the ironic bits, especially with Ren's descriptions of Jimmy and Glenn. Two 'N' Glenn named after the piano genius, as it turns out. Fudgefuggingmonkeys.

Er...there was more but I've forgotten it. More debate on Libya and Afghanistan. Debate is a start, especially when we've got into that American thing of almost fetishising military personnel. Heroic or not, it's still worth considering whether they're actually solving the problems behind these desperate situations or just obscuring them with action and perhaps even creating worse ones. The Gadaffi thing is a case in point. While it is undeniably desirable for the Colonel (why didn't he just promote himself to General or Supreme Commander?) to leave office, it does seem that all attempts at a cease-fire and allowing a face-saving exit for him have been ruled out. The longer the violence continues, the more acrimony builds up between the army of the State of Libya and those engaged against them. The army come to be seen by their opponents as criminals to be excluded from maintaining their role in the post-Gadaffi Libya (seen as a major error in post-Saddam Iraq) whilst the rebels come to be viewed as western puppets and risk alienating whose whose circumstances are not improved in a newly free Libya. It's true someone needs to do something about the world's fascist regimes but let's face facts, if Mubarak had massacred his own people, no bombs would have fallen on Cairo. None are falling on Damascus and definitely none in Bahrain. Why not? Because they don't really solve anything other than saving us the money we'd have spend looking after those bombs if we weren't using them. As it is we'll now have to buy some more but at least they might kill more people or be a nicer shape or colour or keep some workers employed somewhere and their bosses nice and rich. The ones who went to school with the guys at the top of the bureaucracy and the guys at the top of the arts and the guys at the top of industry and the guys at the top of the finance and the guys at top of the crime.

Defeat, defeat the power elite!

Linkees: http://www.perdador.com/f6update/illustration_f9.html

Sorry! Especially to Snowman (O Snowman!)

Hiya! No pic or link tonight. Soz! I'm slightly in a hurry as usual. Oh when will I stop? No time! It was going to be:
Berbers on C4 news
Gadaffi problem. All the reasons the war is wrong. Isn't it an insult to the people gadaffi killed before Feb 2011? Syria, Burma etc Mention of Tony Blair- Man of Destiny.
Comments on tonight's conservation expose prog - More Oryx & Crake related stuff
Apologies to Jimmy for calling him a douchbag. Felt sorry for him today...etc
Maybe link to the guy with the pix ee dun from it.
It was going to be called 'That's the way the money goes' with that as a thread running through it and mentioning the Euro crisis but ultimately I thought better of it. There's £13.48's worth of Wexford Cheese to anyone who can guess why.
So yeh why not just get on with the ironing, chill with some sounds and then settle down with Snowman O Snowman! a bit more instead of writing more of this shit, you pretty old Koosie. Yes! Of course its very rude to Ian Blogspot, future me and possible you to leave tonight's attempt in this state but

Here Comes the Flood

Dee Dee the creator. It seemed appropriate, having her dancing on the beach, after the flood perhaps. This will be the last in this little run of blog posts as I'm off to the seaside myself tomorrow and after that, well who knows? It's been fun.

The future? I've enjoyed Margaret Atwood's vision of the future in The Year of the Flood and dark though it is, I think I'd be better there than in the one described in her The Handmaid's Tale. YOTF reminded me a little of Dennis Potter's last TV play Cold Lazarus as the RONs (Reality or Nothing) have a similar attitude to information as God's Gardeners have to nature.


Hey there might actually be more of this musing added later as I did have a list of things I wanted to get in but I've just realised how late it is and well....the woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. Still, here's the link: It's not 80s tonight but 70s and I didn't go for the obvious one neither.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=3cISzi4fXN0

Thanks for still being there! Love you! Bye bye!

I love you, Big Bird!

Koorosh, known in the west as Cyrus the Great, may have been the first to march his armies under the Eagle standard, as shown above, and he may have even been the nicest. He was a friend to the Jews and is said to have been the first ruler to have a concept of human rights. He certainly beat Ashoka to it by a couple of hundred years. His life is celebrated on October 29th apparently so remind me at the time and I'll organise a Koorosh party.

I've seen some nice big birds the last couple of days, the usual Buzzards and Herons but also 2 possible Ravens. The first one was in a place I've seen one before and it was mobbed by a gang of Jackdaws who looked tiny by comparison. The second was this evening flying over my house in the city which doesn't seem too likely. It was hard to see the shape of the tail, which is the visual giveaway or make a croak, which is the main one. They're bigger than Carrion Crows but you can only tell when they're close together. Most people up here call all big crows Ravens anyway.
Fools!

BTW It's bollocks about Margaret Atwood being an SF denialist. Dunno where I got that from.
More fun today, Rebecca's still alive, yeah! Blanco's dead, yeah! Nice that Toby got to kill him too, though it was more an act of mercy than a Charles Bronson reckoning. Now I'm getting near the end I figure it's safe to start using t'net to do some around reading. Oryx and Crake was nominated for the Man Booker prize. Er...is that the same as the Booker Prize?All the reviews seem to think that YOTF is some sort of laugh-fest by comparison. I mean it is very funny in places but it is a about a nightmare scenario, before and after the flood. I can see David Cameron's big society going that way you know. Oh shut up Koosie.

Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmGxh1FhtxE

I loved the video when I was a kid and still find the music very exciting all these years later, like yesterday's. Now I used to think that the other singer's voice was speeded up but I seen a live recording of this on a DVD of Whistle Test and I can tell you it isn't. It's just a really amazing voice.

Birds might fall from black skies

Hey Hey! Clouds are whey. There's straw for the donkeys and the innocents can all sleep safely.

Wish!

Some black skies here for the last 2 days. The thunderstorms are the best. Crash! Boom! and hail on metal. Lovely. Sadly the days aren't so hot that when the storms go over and the sun comes back out, steam rises off the land. I've only seen that once up here, in 2003 I think.

I was so exhausted when I came home from toil that I dozed off in front of the Channel 4 news. It is quite an unpleasant thing to do as you keep waking up for a few seconds, hearing about some horror or other then the next bit of information is some other unrelated horror. I think it was Syria and Libya a lot tonight. Hot-heads are saying that if we intervened in Libya then we must intervene in Syria. I can see the point, obviously but how? Should we have intervened in Libya? If not there then how about Kosovo, Bosnia, Sierra Leone etc? Why not Myanmar or Morocco? Bahrain or Bhutan? Actually I've always wanted NATO to have a pop at those Bhutanese Buddhist bastards. Might be a bit beyond the NATO remit. Like Georgia turned out to be. Back away.

Seriously though the first thing to do is work out what we mean by 'we' when we're discussing some nation's fate. The western military alliance? It's a concept that's had its day, as is the UN Security Council as its currently arranged. For one thing why is UKOGBANI permanently at the table with a veto? Is it because of our nuclear weapons? Fair enough, then let's have Pakistan up there too and Israel if it wants to come clean. North Korea if it can prove it. OK that can't be it. Must be something to do with winning the second world war then? Well that's stupid. How did France get there then? They certainly didn't win other than in the sense that they were liberated from fascist tyranny and in which case Germany should have a place too. Let's face it the UK/France veto should be an EU one but not even that's not really getting to the heart of what's wrong. How come PRC with a population of 1.3 billion has the same voting power as UKOGBANI with a population of 70 million? These numbers are guesses but they won't be too far off. When you start bringing in your Luxemburgs and Sikkims it gets ridiculous. If representatives have to get together at New York to decide our fate they should at least be representative in all the ways that word implies.

See what happens when you start him off. Jeez.

In other places....Shacky denied that the Mad-Adam's ( militant God's Gardeners splinter) had anything to do with the waterless flood. Still can't rule out Glenn. Today's section was a real emotional roller-coaster. I'd love to actually see the bit where Amanda and Ren are dancing around in bird outfits in Scales & Tails. It looked as if it was going to turn into a terrible scene but turned beautiful when, in another ludicrous coincidence, their observers turned out to be the rest of Gang-Green. I was briefly blissfully happy at this outcome but it wasn't to last long. Dammit! Curse you Margaret Atwood! You could have ended it there and that would have been nice. However that would have left Toby with her maggots and she deserves better. Actually I think her and Ren have both gone a bit nuts now they're both moving around outside their sanctuaries. They were alright all the time they were on their tod remembering stuff. The flood's going to get you one way or other.

Funnily enough, like a gardener, I also have an Ararat. Although mine's pretty much all ____________ which is one of the great disaster commodities. It lasts a long time without degrading, kills pain and stops you dying of Dysentery which is always around whenever things fall apart. Some dried foods might be a good idea too, now that I think of it. Dear oh dear. What am I like? Why the hell should I survive? I'd be doing the world a favour if I didn't 'survive' till the morning.

Link! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9gq-ANfjc0

Sorry about the big gaps again. Not sure why that keeps happening. It seems to happen when I upload the picture and then they can't be removed. Help yelp!

Hey you!

It's Stewart Lee on BBC2 tonight so I've got a deadline. Would you believe I spend hours writing one of these things? I know, you really wouldn't think. Hey weirdly enough there was a Diane Fossey song in Year of the Flood today, when she'd been a major thread in the Adam Curtis documentary on Monday. I must admit I didn't quite get exactly what he was getting at with that really. People began to believe that they were no different from animals. Really? Well that's not really new or controversial. Therefore people believe that we are programmed organic machines and therefore have no control over our destinies, being merely vehicles for immortal genes. Well even if they're totally right it doesn't preclude the possibility of re-programming ourselves and over-riding the wee little fuckers. Hell I've been doing it for years, in my own secret way. Smiley Emoticon.
Maybe a wink.
Nah just write the words.
So anyway I've been immensely satisfied with the progress I've made on Year of the Flood since last we spoke. Its really coming on. Ren and Amanda are back together but poor Toby's been reduced to eating maggots. There was a very interesting bit where the slightly enigmatic but nonetheless likable computer-geek Glenn remerges in Ren's past. Now he has to be significant as he's sympathetic to the Gardeners and is intersted in finding scientific solutions to the problem of humanity, plus he and his new 'plank' call each extinct animal pet-names Crake and Oryx, which is apparently another Margaret Atwood novel. Well that's just shot up my to-read list. Or to listen to. They're both good formats.

There was something on woman's hour the other week about why science-fiction is a male preserve. Sadly I missed it and I hope to god it provoked the response I will give here (to myself). Whaaaaaaat?! Margaret Atwood and Ursula K Leguin are among my favourite SF writers. OK Atwood doesn't actually want to be an SF writer ( like the IRA didn't actually want to be British). Also....Rachel Swirsky just won a Hugo award or a Nebula or whichever one it was for one of her short stories....oh go look it up on Escape Pod, they're all good and I'm sure the M/F writers ratio is fairly even. That last one by Mary Robinette Kowal was good, it was like a horsey-girl story. It was a wee lassie called Kameron Hurley who wrote the most disturbing story on the site called Wonder, Maul, Doll. She must be a well sick lady. It pretty much gave even me nightmares. Anyway I've linked it before. http://escapepod.org/ I should also mention Pamala Zoline's The Heat Death of the Universe which is actually online somewhere. I did have a link on 'Empire of Crackers' so I'll see if I can dig it out.

If I thought there was one weakness in Year of the Flood, I've pretty much persuaded myself that it's actually a strength. Ren's first boyfriend Jimmy becomes Glenn's best friend when she first encounters him in the Healthwiser Compound, then he's Bernice's disgusting roomate at the campus, then after that he turn's up as Amanda's boyfriend. He is inexplicably drawn to Ren's former friends. But then life's unfair like that, because poor Ren loves Jimmy he'll just keep showing up in various ways. I really enjoyed the way Ren describes her love for this douchbag of a character:

"It was like being haunted. Maybe I've imprinted on Jimmy, I thought. Like a duck hatching out of an egg and the first thing it sees is a Weasel, so that's what it follows around for the rest of its life, which is likely to be short".

"I tried to forget all about him but somehow I couldn't. Beating myself up over Jimmy had become a bad habit with me like biting your nails. Every once in a while I'd see him drifting past in the distance, which was just like having just one cigarette when you're trying to quit. It starts you off again. Not that I was ever a smoker."

Aw. Hope she gets over it. Now me I'm in love with Nanette Greenblatt who is the female vocal on the following track from AND THE NATIVE HIPSTERS. You'll soon see why. She's terrific and manic and cute and strange and scary and confusing. Just the way I likes 'em. The male vocal is Clem Curtis of the wonderful THE FOUNDATIONS who's original track has been greatly enhanced by Blatt's deeply rational narrative and what seems to be the death march played on a toy saxaphone. Yes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX4pqUe-AnE

Inside a stone of cream there is a language

Look at that. Typical fucking mammal propaganda. Oh yeh lizard kings are always diabolically-laughing, scimitar wielding, crazed despots. Boo! I do have a cat though, so at least they got that thing right. See! That proves us Sauropodeans can co-exist with you milk-bearing furry types. Just as long as you know your place. No 'Sauropodeans' isn't in your wikipedia (or wicked paedophilia as I hilariously call it). It's our word not yours. You know nothing. It isn't even an Island, (everybody now!) it's a ........

I'm so lonely.

When I'm bored in times like now, I tell myself a little tale...

No don't carry on with that. It's the fist line of a highly disturbing poem I wrote with my brother years ago, that gets more misanthropic and racist as it goes on. Frankie Boyle would be shocked I'm telling you. I tell you what, I'll write it and the Britain Now! song in the private bit so only top hackers can find out what a sick little puppy I am. Or at least I was. It was just a phase. I've gone all mushy nowadays and get all squeamish about any kind of violence, even that I'm forced to inflict on my enemies. It breaks my heart to see them crying out in such pain and uselessly clawing the air for breath, it really does. Poor me.

This whole thing has become even more demented than usual. Where's the promised Mongoose manifesto? Eh...? I'll probably leave it for now. It's too explosive for you bipedal lactatiforms to cope with. Unless anyone actually wants to read it, of course.

This blog, like a big chunk of the t'net, comes under the general category of 'Why are you telling me this?' which is also a terrific punchline in an episode of Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends which obliged to mention more regularly as it where Crackers originated from. No not those Crackers. Read the 'my profile' bit. Yeh, a whole show turns out to be an anecdote being recited to someone who doesn't understand its point and very likely doesn't care. This whole blog is an elaborate tribute to that episode. The title of which momentarily escapes me.

I'm on to Ch 52 of The Year of the Flood now and it's really got me hooked. I only came and did this to stop myself getting back into it tonight and using up the whole experience of being totally immersed in a novel too quickly. I gather Ms. Atwood isn't too keen on her work being labelled as Science Fiction, which is something I can understand. Any genre fiction is easily ghettoised and dismissed by the semi-intelligent reading public. This is especially true for science fiction because of the way it's been thoroughly fucked-over as a genre by hollywood. All the same, it is definitely science fiction. Defi defo.

The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man

Does that say Isle of Marr?

Anyway! The Tragedy of a Ridiculous man. It's a film! A film I've never seen but I did recognise the fact that the music from this film was used in the Adam Curtis documentary series Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace on BBC2. He's obviously seen the films of Peter Watkins but I'm not sure that great man would completely approve of this series. While the content is certainly highly engaging and thought-provoking you're barraged with footage film, music and authoritative narration, all rather rapidly and flitting between narrative strands that arn't always totally satisfactorily tied together. Still! I liked it! It had Morricone music in it so it could have been a documentary about what a load of shit I am and I still would have liked it. In fact I probably would have liked it more, starved of attention that I am.

Actually it did slag me off. Or at least I think it did. Certain notions that ran through the Crackers trilogy were critically examined by the films such as the vague techno-utopianism and biological reductionism evident in some of this work or the woolly environmentalism that lies behind it all. Now, I hadn't been aware of how far I've fallen into a post-industrial hippy malaise until I started reading The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood which I'm currently enjoying a lot. Is the waterless flood policy rather than prophecy or is that too obvious?... I'm about 2/3 of the way through so I'll soon know. Anyway I was rather startled to find that I'm already some of the way to being a God's Gardener. I'm certainly a Gardener alright though maybe I need to work on the religion bit. I'm no atheist. Only a fool believes in non-existence of God. I merely strongly suspect it- Koosism has at its core divine ambiguity: I don't know and never will. Hallelujah fuckerts! Regardless, I might as well be in a religious cult what with the grinding agrarian poverty It's kind of become, by accident, a whole lifestyle thing and whole areas of my previous life are become swamped with greenery and forgotten. Which reminds me I must read Ballard's The Drowned World again soon.

Yeh I've mentally imploded. It feels ok. Like drugs but less shaky. Kind of stopped communicating with all my friends round the world and will probably shortly stop interacting with this daft thing. It is a form of mental masturbation after all, endlessly talking to myself like this. Perhaps there's nothing wrong with a bit of masturbation? Maybe. All the same it's not even as good as regular non-mental masturbation so I might as well just do that instead. Unless I have something I consider meaningful to say but really it's all been said a hundred times before, often better and is probably all total rubbish and not even worth picking over on BBC2 to the accompaniment of excellent music. The past was pretty cool and I was lucky to have seen it.

Tomorrow belongs to me! You can keep it if you want.

Go Team Mongoose!

Ricki-Ticki Timebomb

Reality: The ordered living universe - a tiny fleck of algae-like scum floating on the surface of an infinite sea of chaos. But there's something dangerous swimming around down there and it's going to eat you. It is the truth. That there is no truth.

What I've tried to do there is reduce an entire scientific-philosophical perspective into the summary on the back of paperback thriller. That's kind of what's going on here. It's like the ultimate Dan Brown style conspiracy thriller with pagan puppet-masters from ancient times competing for planetry dominance while the underground progressive forces spread the message of freedom and co-operation for all lifekind. There's sinister monoliths and a radical outsider film-maker. There's an psychopathic King who's consciousness is loose in the world-wide web and a mysterious pink messiah who may not even exist. There's dragons and Opossums and Afghans and cowboys. I'm even hoping to shoe-horn Johnny-5 in somewhere.

And now there's the talking Mongoose. Now I know I promised the full Buddle transcript last time but naturally since I've boasted about having this thing, the internet-dwelling God-King cyberpet Kanishka has hacked his way onto my hard-drive and deleted all copies of it. At least that's what I presume has happened. He's also deleted half of Aztec Camera's greatest hits, the furry little bastard.

I was well prepared for this eventuality so took the precaution of making several external copies. You will see this amazing revalation I swear on my Rabbit's grave! It's not like I've got to write the damn thing from scratch. That would be unbelievably pointless and stupid. Like believing in intelligent design. Hope you came! I still think my Mongoose is more believable than your nutcase creator-deity.

More likely than not he never took the challenge so it's just me reading this. helllooooo! You're the greatest! I've lost his link (Kanishka again) but here's a much better one from the inspirational Butterfly McQueen. Can you feel her rising?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkUDjcXqyow

Or go and read about actual real Mongooses. Or is that Mongeese?

http://mainlymongoose.blogspot.com/

Sorry about all the big gaps. I've tried removing them but on 'publishing' they just come back. Why?

Fuck you, Humanity!

On such a day as this where there are dramatic things afoot, you can forgive the mass-media for concentrating on a mass-murderer and ignoring the really interesting story of the day. I tried to tell the world but no-one wanted to know as usual so here it is on the blog with everything else of importance to the future of our species and its role in the perpetuation of terrestrial lifekind. Maybe I'll talk a little about this dead fool and the chaos he conspired to create but only when I've finished with the grown-up stuff, ok?

This important development is, of course, the leak of the so-called 'Buddle' transcript by an anonymous person (maybe part of the anonymous network?) to myself following my last confusing and somewhat disappointing blog entry. I am unable to verify the authenticity of the document as, alas, all I possess is a pdf of a photocopy of Rev. Buddle's own transcription of the
short-hand notes he took during his interview of Gef the talking Mongoose in 1936.

In my next blog entry I'll reproduce the entire interview as it makes fascinating and very disturbing reading. Although he never went public with Gef's revelations, Reverent Buddle himself died a mysterious death only a few months later in a suspicious hang-gliding accident and almost all records of him, his visit to the Isle of Man and his bizarre death have been expunged from all public sources whereas his friend and confidant Harold Davidson, the former Vicar of Stiffkey, had become a notorious celebrity and his death in 1937, (mauled by a lion) is a story well-known to all even if it has been obscured with a layer of sleaze.

The story Gef tells of his own remarkable life is incredible but also incredibly sad. He reveals that he is a mere Mongoose, even if a freakishly super-intelligent one and that there are intelligences in play on Earth that dwarf his own and have kept him captive for most of his life. Whilst coming across as a little bad-tempered and impatient with the Rev, he also reveals a a keen sense of humour as shown by his closing remarks :

" Finally I'd like to say, not to you Reverend but to all of your kind - Fuck You humanity! You're all fools. I hope the next war kills the lot of you and my people get a go at ruling this planet. You're the shit of the world and you think you're the cat's cream! Still, that thing you do with those Motorcycles, keep doing that! I love watching that, you crazy apes! Hee hee! Anyway it's been very nice but I must stop now Reverend as my voice is getting tired. Goodbye now! Take care"

Heidi the cross-eyed Opossum loves Gef the talking Mongoose

Who wouldn't? Yes it's the big love-match of year. The Facebook royal wedding if you will.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11118503209
http://www.facebook.com/Heidi.DasSchielendeOpossum

In even bigger, stranger news, tonight on Channel 4 News at 19.38, during a report about the likely traffic congestion on UK roads, an RAC Patrolman appeared named in a caption as Crackers Patel . Weird eh? As it turns out this is none other than RAC patrolman of the year 2009 , Prakesh 'Crackers' Patel. I may be over-using my new found power to make links but read about this modern-day hero here:

http://www.aviva.co.uk/media-centre/story/17604/mill-hill-man-scoops-top-rac-honour/

To counter the unpleasant taste in the mouth left by sending you to a stinky corporate website, here's a better link. Peter Watkins has updated his site with new information about the availability of films which is good news as most of them I've not seen. I'd love a copy of 'Culloden' anyway. 'The War Game' was pretty scary but did feature the inside of Chatham Town hall in the early 1960s. The very room where the policeman hands over the civil emergency plans is where I used to go to record fairs on saturday afternoons in the 80s. My brother even saw Tigertailz there. Is that how you spell it?

http://http//pwatkins.mnsi.net/
http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=58NmAzQzRjk

The RAC is watching you

See. I told you. It was very hard to get this picture as it is forbidden to photograph RAC structures as they do not officially exist. I risked my life to get this pic, even me, the founder of the Revolutionary Army of Crackers. That's how well trained the RAC is, and absolutely committed to abolition of the flawed concept of leadership as set out in my incontrivertable doctrines. I know, I'm an idiot. Plus GROUPTHINK renders committee governance pointless too so how does anything get decided or done?

Just do it!

Or alternatively don't fucking bother. Either is good. It really doesn't matter. I could count my actual followers on the fingers of one hand....of Django Rheinhart. Oh look it up. I pobably spelt it wong anywaz.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I've been so bad today. I finally totally snapped. It finally got to me. Today there was what appeared to be a big tyre fire somewhere in east Manc and I went on to the big deserted car park at sport city and watched the flames occassionally emerging from the thick black smoke blowing north-west, luckily. It's ok, I've got a cast iron alibi but it was certainly mesmeric watching the clenched fists rapidly rising and turning and dissipating. Actually strangely calming as well as slightly frightening. This odd little spell started and ended in flames. What a horrid few weeks it's been.

The straw that broke the poor Camel's back was simply losing a reciept to be attached to an invoice i had to submit today. Naturally a small folded peice of paper is the easiest thing in the world to lose but looking it for it made me very angry and very late and I never even found it despite having at some point last week, treated it like a very important object. Seriously, it completely ruined my day, throwing everything off balance and making all my interactions with other people rather askew as most of my brain was trying to solve this very frustrating problem. It was already getting dark by the time acceptance finally freed me from this awful curse. It's gone. The very worst that will happen is that I won't get my £12.50 Key cutting bill repaid and I'll look a bit of a twat but hey what's new? I look a bigger twat from actually trying to go about my business with this evil cloud above me. Aw shit.

Funnily enough though, it's not the only time I've had a day fucked up by a seemingly insignificant little peice of paper. Hee hee.

Chances are it stayed in a pocket and got washed into destruction or was discarded along with other pocket kipple. While I was looking for it, a form turned up I'd made someone resend because I swore I'd never got it. That wasn't all my fault this time but it's me who ends up having to say sorry again and looking a prick. How do these things happen? Who's doing this to me and why? Presumably to drive me nuts. The only precedent I can think of is Audrey Tatou in the film Amelie. I'd better not have one of those bitches in here. I'll have to put poison down and that's something I never do. Who am I kidding? I'd love it if Audrey Tatou payed me any attention, if only to torture me psychologically.

You may notice I put a content warning up. I think that obliges me to say more horrid things. Fetid Badger Shitecakes!

OOOOH - copy out the dog story from The Private Eye - later. Ref to Heidi.

The day everything became nothing

Isn't she lovely? Plenty more where that came from, Heidi fans. As for you fans of semi-serious speculation about the faliures of the current economic-political paradigm, just chill for a mo and enjoy this highly satisfying creature who's never started a war or closed a library. There's nothing dodgy about it. I just want her to like me.

Thanks to NOMEANSNO for the title of this post and to the wonderful Jello Biafra for giving NOMEANSNO their platform. Oh go give it a listen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbS4Caymdo4&feature=related
Then go straight to DEAD SOULS as it's the next track on the EP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8tDrsledJk&feature=related

In Koosism news, you will note that one of our tribe, Mr Moosa Koosa, was rescued from Libya. He may be a bit of black sheep but if there's a Koos in a country being bombed by NATO, you can be damn sure we'll get them out by any means necessary.

Meanwhile the RAC goes from strength to strength, with massive watchtowers being built all o'er this land to guard against the incursions of the cursed ancient ones. Seeing as the top gang (that's all it is) currently is preoccupied with having its hands full while curiously unaware it's all slipping through its fingers, the RAC will now make its benevolant presence felt to the general world population. You can help! Let your neighbours know that help is at hand, that the days of liars, tyrants and hypocrites are numbered and that an Opossum with a retinal developmental disorder is the best thing on this entire planet.

More sense later. Hopefully. Please forgive me! I'm having a rather drawn out odd spell.

I couldn't remember my own name, so I called myself Bob. It's weird being a Bob but I'll get used to it. I have to

Communist Wallpaper

Well at least it makes a change from Heidi the Cross-Eyed Opossum. Don't worry Heidi fans, I've collected plenty more pictures of my beautiful optically-challenged marsupial girlfriend. You heard me.

Well you didn't, obviously. But...

That doesn't matter right now! This is important. Concentrate now!

Now I want you to look at this man. The chap in the picture above there. Yes, above that. I told you to forget about that. Now, this chap, he's called Harry Pollit and we think, well... we have reasons to suspect that he might just be a bit of a red.

Yes that's right, he was in this blog a few weeks back. A lot of nonsense. There's getting to be quite a lot of it about, that Communist stuff. I suppose all that 'Revolutionary Army' stuff kind of invites it. Really, the whole thing's just silly.

Hmmm listen chaps. I've gone and written myself into something of a a cul-de-sac. I started off with lots to say and now I'm stuck in some sort of, what I can only describe as some kind of... Whitehall thing. It's a damn nuisance but that's how it is. I'll get on to those boffins down at the lab and see what they make of it, get a few heads together and the like. Fetch yourself back in a couple of days and I'm jolly sure we'll have this whole nasty business straightened out and Mr blog will be ship-shape, chipper and generally tickety-boo.

Play it again, Yortlebluzzgubbly (2)

There's some really great stuff available as a podcast from the BBC world service.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/


The last 2 episodes of The Forum have been of particularly interest to the intellectual heavyweights (ha!) whose philosophies underpin the activities of the RAC (not that one) who's only official public mouthpeice you are reading now. In the last Forum, Tim Flannery discussed the possible emergence of the super-organism, a new life-form composed of the collaboration of all mankind, solving the global problems he's created (mankind that is, not Tim Flannery) and becoming a planetry consciousness. He states that globalisation could be the beginning of this development and it's certainly worth ruminating on that, particularly as the last blog post approvingly referred to the work of Peter Watkins who slagged off globalisation good and proper. While we're on the subject I'm aware that a line I used in review of his films was lifted directly from the introduction to 'La Commune' I'd linked to. An embarrassing accident that certainly sheds some light on how easy it is to think you've had a clever opinion whereas in fact it's just someone elses you've only just been exposed to and then forgotten. When I say 'you' I mean of course 'me'. You know, that crazy idiot pariah person.

Crazy idiot pariah or not, I'm way ahead of Tim Flannery. Here's a 2006 post from the now defunct EMPIRE OF CRACKERS blog originally titled Play It Agin, Yortlebluzzgubbly, which is of course a quote from Alan Moore's Ballad of Halo Jones. The picture which accompanied this peice is shown here (slightly too big-must fix!) and features characters from the Tartakovsky/McCracken stable:




"
One of the interesting features of life is its tendency to form into more and more complex forms despite irresistible entropy. Like the enemy in our endless dualist world myths that divide the world into chaos and order, evil and good, Ahriman and Ormizhad, physics presents us with a name for the force that causes ordered structures to collapse and diffuse. Perhaps my human brain is too programmed by culture to see it any other way.

BUT the reality behind this is that life uses this constant movement as the source of the energy to build these structures we consume , inhabit and form part of. More and more complex structures develop out of the chaos of these collisions with a kind of ratcheting; every increase in complexity increasing the ability of these structures to accumulate more energy. Of course, being designed by chaos, most structures fail to achieve this objective but they don't last long in the game of course. Accidentally better random forms soon proliferate and find better ways of filling the space and accumulate that energy. Some even work out how to replicate themselves.

Six steps in the history of evolution from non-living forms to intelligent community:

1-Atoms (eg Carbon)
2-Molecules (Amino acids)
3-Complex Molecules (DNA)
4-Cells (Amoebas)
5-Organs/Organisms (Humans)
6-Super-Organisms (Communities)

At the moment, we're between 6 and 7, but what form will 7 take? We've been trying through lots of structures that aint worked or are Homo-Erectus*-like intermediates like city states, empires, nations, monarchies, fascism, communism etc. The United Nations is a hopeful start to a planetry organism but has built into it the inherent weakness of it's own structure, nation states. At its most visible level it is a body for the leaders of humans, or at least, the leaders of artificially-defined areas containing communities of humans. The ratchet effect may not work with such fragile cogs.

The key is voluntary co-operation. If it cannot be obtained find other ways of obtaining it. Ultimately coercion is loosening that ratchet and letting the entropy take us back a few more squares on the big board. (Jesus Koosie! These metaphors are all over the place!) Co-operation exists on every level of life, for example, the Mitochondria in our cells that allow us to use oxygen were originally parasitic organisms that invaded our ancestor cells and well.....love.

Stage 7 is the Empire of Crackers and the germ in the seed has emerged on the continent of North America and is spreading its information round the world on its predecessor's communications systems. The future isn't a military nightmare like Star Trek but an acceptance of the universal truths that what is best for individual is best for the world, that desire is there to help us not command us and that no man should feast while another man starves. I've been accused of having a vision tainted by former communist indoctrination that seeks big truths and big solutions but ain't no-one going to turn me around. I'm going all the way to stage 10 with the little fluffy pink one**and the big stoopid dragon because the universe is love!!!

*This sounds gay. Seriously, it's one of our antecedents.
**This sounds gay. Um it might be but I ain't. Like I care! Don't give me that feminine side crap. Only 1 chromosome is sexual. Therefore I'm 22/23 a woman. So there.
"



I'm well aware there's a lot wrong with that post. For one thing there are 23 pairs of large linear nuclear chromosomes in human cells, though I'm correct in pointing out that only 1 pair differentiates males from females. You get the point. The Zoroastrian truth-god Ormizhad is actually spelled Ahura-Mazda, a confusion in my mind originating from Philip K Dick. As for the 'emerging in the North American Continent' bit, I'd probably be less inclined to include that now, though that was where the internet begun which may be a significant tool in this evolutionary process. It was also where Crackers came from so...er....good. This is still his army! Or her army. Whatever.

Now going back to Flannery v Watkins globalisation- good or shit debate, I'll try and sort this out as best I can now. Globalisation is obviously a necessary process in the formation of the coming super-organism but it is a globalisation of univeral self-interested solidarity rather than the existing model of a global free-for-all that increases the rate at which all aspects of human life is commoditized. Free trade between humans and their associations must be the basis of the enlightened world-community (communism, I'm guessing, comes much later when the term no longer means what it does now) but in no sense is the current globalised world market 'free trade'. Free associations of humans are normally stamped down by the arbitrary, hierachical and immoral associations like nation states and multi-national corporations, which may be reasonably successful systems of control, manufacture and distribution but exist merely to perpetuate themselves and will seek to abort the coming super-organism as a function of their own survival consciously or unconsciously by their actions. Yes that makes it all clear. Um. As for the justified concern that globalisation is creating a global monoculture where the diversity of human and non-human systems is being eradicated, this I believe also a result of the flawed competitive national-capitalist model whereby all human communities are forced to follow a uniform developmental strategy with a fixed single outcome. Within the coming super-organism where co-operation rather than competition resumes it's place as the predominant evolutionary driver, a diversity of form benefits all componants of the super-organism and this era will begin to see more interesting forms of life develop where the divisions between male and female, human and animal, material and spiritual will be questions of day to day life choices rather than the oppressive monoliths they are at this time.

Participation and complicity

Oh yeh, incidently, we're at war again. What? How did that happen? No wonder I'm having some kind of pathetic emotional breakdown! Hopefully the military action begun today in Libya will conclude pretty sharpish one way or other. Perhaps a temporary partition between the government of Libya and a UN-administered mandate until public participation can began in either or both bits of Libya. There's been some worrying talk among politicians today about no longer tolerating a rogue state just south of Europe. Well I'm sorry but that's not our business. Perhaps some Libyans do support the current regime but we know some don't and in a localised area they're supposedly under UN protection whatever that means. I'd still rather have seen the Idi Amin solution, whereby the neighbours intervene to restore stability to their borders but given both Tunisia and Egypt are both undergoing dramatic political changes themselves, it wasn't very likely.

It must feel pretty nice for PM Cammers (soon to be Cammo?) to be attacking a regime so publicly courted by the previous government, Blair's especially. Will this international coalition go on to support the democratic rights of all the oppressed in the middle east? The unrepresented majority in the Kingdoms of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia etc and the Republics of Yemen and Syria? How about the Palestinians? Hamas in Gaza responded to an Israeli assassination bombing with an attack of dozens of rockets today. Which side does our coalition believe is the aggressor in this case?

Wattoo-Wattoo never used violence to solve problems. Hence the picture. See.

I hope at the end of all this we at least find out whether Al Megrahi really did carry out the Lockerbie bombing as the evidence against him did look pretty weak. That silly trade-off where we pretended we felt sorry for a dying man really didn't clear anything up. I'm all for releasing terminally ill people from prison but it would have been nice to have had to have gone through the evidence again in a court before releasing what may have been a mass murderer.

Anyway I promised to talk about The Monoform. I think it's best left to be described by radical film-maker Peter Watkins, where I'm getting all this shit from:
http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7PfaY9B27s

The second one, from 2001, is his introduction to La Commune which is an extraordinary film. A probably incomplete version in about 20-30 parts was available on YouTube till fairly recently and it really was an engaging peice of work. The enthusiasm of the participants (it seems wrong to call them actors) was so evident that at times it really felt as if you were watching live, current events. Something it shares with another classic Peter Watkins film 'Culloden' from the mid sixties and its contemporary, the masterpeice 'Battle of Algiers' which is actually a fictional film but filmed in a very similar style.

Anyway one of things I was very impressed with in this film introduction was how Watkins is aware of the paradoxes of his own position whilst being utterly certain that he's right. Most people on a the screen telling what you should think try to intimidate you with dogmatic authority but his own informal almost improvised style invites you to participate and ponder ourselves whether we're having our consciousness fragmented to keep us feeding (with junk food and junk information) or whether the media trend he's flagged up, and let's not for a moment deny he's onto something, is actually a symptom of our late-industrial highly captalised interconnected civilisation. Is the monoform just a highly-sucessful meme co-evolving with the mass-information-culture?

Personally I think that the Monoform has got a bit boring. It's totally ruined BBC2 for one thing and I'd love to see a diversity of informational culture. I'd like to think that new forms of participation are evolving in the rich primordial sea of the internet. It's all dependent on our own sense of responsibility for our own lives and the life around us. We have to face up to what we are including recognising our complicity in the suffering of others whether it be from the weapons being used in our name or the raw materials clawed out of the ground by slaves for our talky-magic boxes. Possibly including the one you're reading this on.

More likely you're reading this on the screen I'm looking at right now. Hello! Don't go nuts, you.

It's late. Better stop.

*********

It was too late and I'd long stopped making any sense. It's now Sunday night going into Monday morning at the end of this odd weekend. I don't feel I really got to grips with the enormity of this 'Monoform' stuff. Once you start looking for it it becomes ubiquitously apparent. Perhaps that's just because of the looking? What is communication? What happens when it fails? I think we're seeing it all the time.

One thing I certainly liked about the introduction film, though which the film-maker critisised himself for was the simplicity and honesty of the talking-head monologue. The best playwrights have always made use of this, of re-personalising communication. Today information exchange is often devoid of emotional context and is vulnerable to catastrophic misunderstanding. I suppose it's better for those who are classified as having autistic spectrum disorders and I've encounterd many on the internet who thrive communicating in a way that is less ambigious. I wonder if labelling them as disordered is really that useful. They certainly present divergent cognitive models and it may be in some conceptial environments those models may work better.

Anyway I'm rambling again. So much to say. To nobody. Who cares? I'm reading this back and smiling at my shortcomings. Maybe I'll try the monologue myself. After all I can't fail to participate with this captive audience. I think he thinks I'm mental. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong. Maybe both. Who cares? Everyone else just dismisses it or medicalises it. Fucking idiots.

I never got round to saying how much I've missed the Biography of Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore since the library got it back. Some fucker requested it! I've got him back though by requesting it myself again. Now he'll face dissappointment when he comes to renew it. There's no way he (or she)will finish it all, not if he's got a job anyway. There's too much information. Here's a little nugget I never knew: Palestine only has the name because Emperor Hadrian renamed it that after the Jewish revolts of the first century in a failed attempt to eradicate the people and the faith. The name refers to the Philistines (Goliath & co) who, centuries before, had been the major competitors to the tribes that were to become Judeans and Israelis. Also our old pal Arthur Koestler was wrong about the modern jews being the Khazars. DNA doesn't lie (Unless it's being used by the cops). The modern jews are the ancient jews and we've got to bear that in mind when we impose a settlement on those troublesome cuties.

Oh well back to the dog-shit again tomorrow. Great! I probably think I deserve it on some level. Last week I snapped and wrote PLEASE CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG in algae-remover on the paving slabs near a really bad bit. Sadly the algae was thicker in some places than others so i expect the only legible bits will say CLEAN YO DOG which might not convey exactly the right message. Next time I'll go for PLEASE FLING YOUR DOG'S BROWN EGGS DIRECTLY INTO THE GARDENER'S EYES AS HE'S A PREPOSTEROUS JERK AND WOULD RATHER GO BLIND THAN SEE ANY MORE OF YOUR UGLY PROLETARIAN FACES AND YOUR IDENTIKIT BULL TERRIER DOGS ALL WITH SOME KIND OF DISGUSTING BOWELL CONDITION APPARENTLY. If there's enough algae killer.