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. Er....Apart from this.
Yep..Yep...Just like Buses. Anywaz I think the cover of the 1941 Crackers Annual pretty much spells out the RAC's attitude to foxhunting although as I recall the whole thing was also a clever metaphor for unifying workers and soldiers against the still-relevant English aristocracy who we still considered potential Nazi collaborators. Seems a bit harsh in retrospect. Most of them are perfectly nice and at least as many were eccentric Leninists as were eccentric Hitlerists.
No-one who's ever experienced the feeling of being hunted would ever want to put another living thing through it. I should know, having been hunted by landlords, baliffs, the police, dogs, police-dogs, bears, space-pirates, space-pirate bears and gods. Admittedly being hunted by all them was nothing compared to being haunted by guilt and shame but Mr Thocks may feel differently. Not that I'm saying there should be no death on this planet. Oh no. You humans are great for spilling blood and a lot of it's going to have to flow before things get better. Oh yes! But that's all for another day.
Some music for you now as usual. Firstly will some please to me who this is! It has such lovely mandolin work. At least I think it's a mandolin. Please correct me! Secondly there's this gem from 1968:
Can you see what I did there! Pffff! I'm wasting my time! Still, what a voice eh? Better than Gabriel? I'll let you be the judge but listen to the next track on the album Mellowing Grey before you decide.
Fraternal greetings, fellow mind-states! It has come to our attention that there is another popular use for the word 'Crackers' that might cause understandable confusion as to what the Revolutionary Army of Crackers is actually about. Apparently 'crackers' are like 'hackers' but specialise in 'cracking' software code or something. I must emphasize that we are not the revolutionary army of them, although like anyone, they're welcome to join and employ their particular skills in the service of the Great Crackers, the little pink character up there who looks a bit worried. He's probably just read this. Or she has. We don't actually know or care. Oh Crackers! You'll be the wind that blows the ashes away!
Did you know it's been more than a year since Heidi the Cross-Eyed Possum left us? Everyone seems to go in autumn. Fallen leaves eh? Nothing sadder. Yet we march on, heads held high, who knows where and fuck knows why, enduring the unendurable till we too are released from the pain and confusion by kindly German vets. It's what life does, making some glorious edifice or other. Bit of good news though,remember Gef the Talking Mongoose? Well I'll raise you a talking Beluga Whale:
He's called Noc (they like these single-syllable names it seems) and although it sounds like he's just taking the piss and going "Derpy derpy derp! I'm an idiot talking human" he's actually talking a hybrid of Beluga and English and saying: "How about this for an internet fad, guys! Grab a kazoo or 2 and go around talking like a Beluga. Like me, Noc the talking Whale. It's a way better fad than Gundam Wing or whatever the fuck it is- you know, that shithouse Korean dancing thing, whatever it is. I'm a bit out of touch here in the water. Waterproof laptops, people? What's the hold up? Still, at least that dancing clown's not Japanese. I really hate those motherfuckers- for obvious reasons! But everyone else grab a Kazoo or just talk through your bizarre human teeth and do a Beluga! "
Yeh, you know that thing where people wearing sandals told you that whale noises contain vast amounts of information? That was true, hence Noc's rather long and politically incorrect rant there. Anyway, you heard the fish! Talk like a Cetacean. It's like the song by the Bangles.
Sadly Noc has already gone the way of Heidi the Cross-Eyed Possum and sleeps in the all-is-one with everything else that's ever been. In fact he only did it for a while while he was young. Good meme, though.Spread it!
Slightly dissappointed with this stupid post after such a long wait? Well at least I didn't call for President Assad to use chemical weapons against his own people like I did in the last one. Luckily very few people read this. Mostly just other versions of myself occupying different bits of time. Hellooo! Computers still working then? I'd imagine you'd like some music. Well keeping with the oceanic theme here's Melt Banana , who are some of those people that Noc so dislikes with 'If it is the deep sea, I can see you there'. Good title. You'll pardon me if I don't embed it but I've already done one and I'm sure Melt Banana won't mind. They seem nice.
Today's pic
is 'An Old Church' by LS Lowry. At the centre is the blackened
Church, probably once rising above fields now dwarfed in the mid 20th
Century by mills and smoking Chimneys. I like the girl in her red hat
and all the little dogs. This version may be a little small to catch the details.
Historians
of the future may well call this period 'the crisis of the 21st
Century' or more traditionally 'the crisis of the 3rd
Century' using the French Revolution's Year Zero as the starting
point. Like the original 3C-Crisis, a convergence of misfortune
challenges the assumptions of enduring civilisation. In this case I'd
cite the continuing failure of macro-economics, the endless
low-intensity conflict (still concentrated on the great
land-bridges), proliferation of nuclear weapons, the invincibility of
crime/corruption and of course, environmental changes. When there is
clear blue sea between us and the north pole then this last factor
will find itself properly back at No.1 barring some unforeseeable
catastrophe. Each one of course is fuelling the others and I've
usually put the breaking point at somewhere around 2020, however you
can never tell one way or another. Things can spiral downward from
diplomatic spat to nuclear stand-off in a matter of weeks,
alternatively people can put up with a seriously shit situation for
years and years and years. Apart from the French of course, who set
up burning barricades at the drop of a hat. Good on 'em! They're at
it right now. Hopefully ushering in a new epoch but...
It's hard
not to doubt it. Of course if the mobs were to actually over-run the
existing order in one of the major nations it would certainly shake
things up a bit. Obviously we have seen this within our lifetimes
with the overthrow of the communist oligarchies but it's not really a
brilliant comparison. The revolutionists of 1989 knew exactly what
was in store once the ruling Parties were thrown out; i.e.
Representative Democracy and Free-Market Capitalism. Today's
revolutionaries would be in a more similar situation to the
Bastille-stormers of 1789, having to make it up from scratch,
learning what they may from previous versions of the new world. More
similar to the cold-war ending uprisings are the continuing upheavals
in North Africa and the Middle-East that share the same sense of an
external support for the real internal anger. Such is the inertia in
these societies that even very impressive mass-action has only really
forced the elites in these societies to remove the most obvious
reeking corrupt elements whilst retaining everything else about the
society absolutely the same.
This has
rather gone off in an extreme and opposite direction in Syria where
popular anger was not strong enough to effect the necessary
settlement on an intransigent elite strongly supported by its own
sectional constituency who had seen how abrupt democratisation had
played out against secular notions of freedom in neighbouring Iraq.
The result of this unstoppable force meets immovable object stuff has
predictably been a full-on armed insurrection and military
repression. Like in Chechnya in the 90s, the moderates of the
opposition were either quickly killed, turned militant or just
side-lined through the irrelevance of their position. Whereas in
Chechnya the authorities could then drive their opponents into the
hills as extremist guerillas increasingly isolated from the
aspirations and moral norms of the civilian population, in Syria
this cannot happen. The rebellion has nowhere else to go and is
well-supported by neighbouring powers. Where is this one going to
stop? If you were in Power in Syria why not raise the stakes and use
those WMD and force the hand of the Americans? It seems that the
powers-that-be have left it a little late for a peaceful settlement
like Egypt or Yemen. Stoopid, Stoopid Americans (and us!) going into
Iraq like that on the WMD pretext. Means they have to do something if
Assad deploys. What if the flashpoints start flashing then? Georgia,
Israel, Iran etc. Kashmir, Formosa, Venezuela, Sudan. Congo, Sri
Lanka, Somalia, Kurdistan. The world of competing nation states is a
ticking time-bomb. Revolution today or war tomorrow! Probably both.
The fact
that a 1789-style epochal uprising seems so unthinkable tells you how
far we are from having any new ideas. In fact it seems more likely
that good old authoritarian utopianism will turn up again in the same
sort of places it turned up last time. It may even be to our benefit
you know. It certainly moderated capitalism having a collective
alternative working (sort-of) alongside it. If you ask me the fact
that the gap between rich and poor, at least in UKOGBANI and more
than likely in the US and Europe too, has expanded in the last 20
years is no coincidence. I'm sure there are other explanations. Never
fear Leftard pals! The victory of the 'Private/ Drive-It-Yourself'
Philosophy is really only temporary. Competition can't compete with
itself! Co-operation makes you more competitive. Competition forces
you to co-operate!
Well here's
the embed which confusingly is the title to this post. It's Neil
Sedaka's greatest song but I really think Captain and Tenille really
nail it. Lyrics a bit unnecessary again but meh! Sing along to this lovely, bouncy song. What is love, anyway? Now apparently I'm not the first to adress this rather important question.It is right this should be so. Well it gets a little bit confused
because the word has all these connotations like intense loyalty to
kin-folk, really, really wanting to get so close to another person
that stuff comes out of you or just liking someone or something a
real lot. Or apparently even what God feels about all of us all the
time? Yuck! Well I'll try presenting a unified term in accordance
with my entirely false and made-up religious beliefs: Love is the
desire every individual being experiences as their innate drive to
incorporate themselves into greater being. Where it is thwarted it
turns them into defectors against life itself. It is the realisation
of love, most evident as the emotion of compassion, that will pull us
back from the brink and turn the page from the long age of war to
the beneficent Empire of Crackers that is the only solution to the
crisis of the 3rd century. It's the next step forward
bringing into reality a world where a Universal Declaration of Human
Rights is written there in stone in all places where humans gather as
it was in the age of Ashoka and like in that enlightened ancient
Kingdom there will be a secret police so that the Emperor knows
exactly how nice everyone is being to each other.
To spell! What? Oh....yeh. Sorry about that. Sorry too for being away for sooooo long. Really it has been too long. It deserves all those 'O's. There are so many unfinshed posts started with many important facts that will now never be devulged and of course there were so many unfortunate circumstances that led to my invaluable skills and wisdom being used elsewhere and I owe you all an explanation but frankly only the weak and craven cower behind excuses. The hour is late and I must say what must be said!
First things first, this stunning peice of Koosist art comes to you courtesy of Wickfield. It is a section of a larger work and is a good reminder to oneself that like all art, cartoon art has the power to transmit emotional states between autonomous consciousnesses like old-fashioned analog telepathy. Emotional states are so easily betrayed by words because of their infinite variation and nuance. Unless you're a psychopath of course. You might be! Eeek! If so you're probably not very impressed with Koosalagoopagoop there. It's a sure sign. However, I will concede that he is a rather non-threatening dragon and it wasn't really worth him auditioning for the Hobbit movie.
Don't worry Kusi, mon ami, it's sure to be bag o' shite anyway. It's got that jerk from the dud version of 'Hitchhikers' in it. I'm sure it'll be very nice and all but give me a Sergio Leone flick any day of the year. There's only about 7 of them so that would get pretty repetitive too.
What a world eh? Hey no response for attacking Christianity and athieism in the last post. No-one cares. I'm more likely to get a kicking for attacking Mortin Freedman who's name I've subtely changed in case he's ego-surfing when i post this. See! I do have some feelings. Anyway in case you were wondering, yes, Koosism is a real religion and is registered as such within this particular political unit. Perhaps you out there in non-Ukogbanian nations may like spread this to some more? The drawback is that while it is a real religion, it is not a belief system. Koos may be a bit fat in appearance but he's very thin in terms of having anything to offer other than a cheap laugh at some hapless antics in an old cartoon show. He is, after all the imaginary creation of an imaginary creation. He does weirdly enough share his name with a native Amerindian name for a certain flower with some rather magical properties. Not his full name, obviuosly. That really would be an incredible coincidence. Let's not bring those up again.
Yeh. What a world! Er...is that a hint? Yes- The world is going to shit! We need your inspired leadership! Nah. Thw world's always going to shit! I'm busy with this now! I'm warning you, you fat fucker! Who are you again? You know very well who I really am! What is this, the fucking Prisoner or something? Yes! I feel like a new man! Hahahahahahahaha!
One for the Leo McKern fans there. Look. Obviously there's too much to talk about. There was actually an electoral and constitutional reform proposal in one of the early versions of this. I know! That's not going to happen tonight. Radical stuff too some of it. Codify the role of commercial and civil interest groups and bring them into the realm of democratic accountable governance. Re-define legislators as professionals employed to achieve specific goals aggreed at the outset of their democratic mandate. All very confusing and muddled.In deference to common sense and sage moderation I shall restrict my comments on the affairs of the real world to:
Hats off this week to: Danny Boyle for his chimneys.... where was 'Telstar'? Gideon Coe for 68 special (but never interrupt Morricone, even if it is for Helter Skelter) & Maconie as well for 'Watcher' Brian Dunning. Scottish suicide dogs! Nice! J David Markham (Napoleon hat)
and Shin Lam who wouldn't let it go.
Not the
words of some bearded extremist but the words of me, a currently
clean-shaven extremist. Actually it should have been Christians are
like dogs as that is the crass simile I'm going to attempt to justify
in this post, however the title may bring much-needed wrong-kind-of
attention to this hopeless blog from the rat-like hordes of atheists
sniffing through the internet looking for untruth to be offended by.
Hopefully. Maybe I'll be really lucky and some Christian
victimization junkies will turn up too. Don't worry! I like your
religion and was brought up in a nation founded and united by
Christianity. I particularly like the forgiveness bit as I think that
may be ahead of its time even now. I do kind of feel that that bit
doesn't get stressed enough and most Christians view their religion
as some sort of Death Wish-style revenge-thriller. 'They killed his
son but now it's Judgement Day.' Still, not my problem. As I've
previously stated I'm a Koosist. You're all fucking atheists to me.
None of you have seen the true nature of the light that is lovingly
curled around the darkness. Om!
Anyway
before we proceed you have to watch this film or you might miss the
point. All of it! If you can't read the subtitles apparently there's
an inferior American version with Richard Gere but I bet it hasn't
got the extremely significant bit near the end where the soldiers
march past or if it does they probably won't be Japanese soldiers. If
you don't like dogs (or Japanese people) then you're probably not
going to be that impressed with this*:
If you are
such a person or really, really can't be bothered to watch this film
then just look at the picture under the title. This is is, of course,
Greyfriars Bobby, the loyal little dog who sat by his master's grave
till the end of his days.
If you did
watch the film, stop crying. I don't think I'm too way off in my
comparison. A hint is the fact that the wedding takes place in a
Church. Christian are dogs. Good, loyal doggies waiting by the
station for their kind master to return and he does, in the end.
Now I'm sorry to come over all Brian Dunning on you but the truth about Greyfriars Bobby is that he was a bit of a myth cooked up for commercial interests aned the root of the story is that stray dogs found they were more likely to get fed if they hung around graveyards looking sad. I'm not sure if the same is true of the Hachi story. Koosism has its own dog story too, that of Peepers the grumpy dog. For another day...
Happy Easter
everyone! He's back. He's done it again!
* This embed keeps disappearing for some reason, so here's the link to part 1 of Hachiko Monogateri
Is what I said when I first emerged on your world in whatever bygone tongue I used to communicate these words. They sounded pretty good to me at the time and I actually thought I heard them again much later, in English, as the first line in the Queen song 'Seven Seas of Rye'. As it turns out the line was something like 'Hear me, you Lords and Lady preachers' which is rubbish. It does have the same number of syllables though and does rhyme appropriately so you can see my confusion. Anyway, what happened when i delivered my opening line to the assembled humans was that they just laughed at me. In retrospect it's not really all that surprising since to human eyes I appear to have come from a planet where clowns evolved naturally albeit somewhat reptilian ones. Actually let's nail this down while we're here: What is a dragon? We may resemble reptiles but are, of course, not included in your inter-related biological matrix and are actually physiologically closer to your insects. So there. This is why I take such exception to Ku Klux Klan bigwigs calling themselves 'Grand Dragons'. They're not grand and they're definitely not dragonoid. Then nor are most of your human depictions of dragons, few of which are inanely friendly or wearing glasses. What you've got there, sunshine, is genetic memories of dinosaurs. Their misty breath on chilly Jurassic mornings like great clouds of smoke from some fire within them. You were very small and timid then and you still haven't got over the trauma of sharing this planet with giant hungry fiery lizards.
After disappointment at the lack of awe these apelings were showing to their new overlord, I reflected that the whole thing may have turned out better had I appeared in the sky before them like the mysterious balls in Rene Magritte's The Voice of the Winds which is shown above. Instead I had chosen to appear suddenly with a satisfying little 'Pop!' accompanied by a sweetly-scented powdery pinky-purple cloud. How was I to know about your gender assumptions?! On some planets all of that is seen as pretty bloody hostile. Well I'd made my bed and I was going to have to lie in it. That probably didn't make me look too threatening neither, curled up, snoozing peacefully and faintly purring to myself. It's a demonstration of contempt you idiots! By the time I woke up, everybody had lost interest and drifted off instead of bringing me their best livestock and most beloved children in a pathetic gesture of appeasement like what's supposed to happen. It seemed too much like hard work trying to impress you lot despite my ability to destroy you all very, very easily indeed. Where's the fun in that? I'm biding my time. I've got my fangs but I've also got a lot of curiosity. Be grateful. Crackers has fangs too. He may be an ankle-biter but when he's mean he's like a little pink angle-grinder working away down there.
Anyway! That's enough amazing truth for one night. Must be time for the boring political guff. How about the international drug trade bailing out the world economy? Old news. The London 2012 Olympics is turned into an impromptu arms fair. Fancy that. Vladimir Putin is President of Russia once more. Surprise Surprise. Oh can't we give it a rest? It's getting late. No! The title lists 3 things and we've only got one. Hey you never linked the newer version of the thing from that Robert Nozick guy's book. What - this? Yeh. I've long been trying to add another dimension to turn the square into a cube. Tricky though. It's got something to do with religion or how much political thinking is based on precedent or what part of the brain is mostly engaged in fixing one's political opinion. I dunno. It needs more work. Being a King Koos means it's hard for me to find a consistent position on the 2D version. I just seem to switch from one corner to another every time I run it and I think that might show that in the complete version I occupy all points simultaneously.
Hang on a mo. This is nonsense again. Still no communists! Come on, I've got Lin Baio, Joe Slovo and Karl Radek sitting here tapping their communist feet. Sorry old man. They're going to have to wait. Some of us have to work in the morning and this is just wasting everyone's time.
I can do something about fairies though. Here's another early Queen song with the lyrics that aren't really necessary. Nice to give them an embed though, for effort. While you're listening to it try to forget what a camp 70s fantasy nightmare it is and put yourself in my naive child's mind when I first heard it and thought it really was magic. My Fairy King can see things that are not there for you and me! Beautiful!
What? I know. It's not the usual sort of thing is it? The girl on the far right is Marti Roxan and this is the band No Shame which she was in. I'm afraid I don't know any of the names of the rest of the band or have ever heard any of their songs. All I remember is being in a cottage in Lumphanan, Aberdeenshire, many years ago, without much entertainment but there was a copy of Metal Hammer with some pictures of Marti Roxan in it and that was when I found out what sort of a man I was. Hahaha what a stupid and embarrassing memory. When I die and go to heaven it'll be like Lumphanan and I'll live in my cottage with an open fire with my lovely wife Marti Roxan. Lumphanan's beautiful but quite average by Scotland's standards. It is where Macbeth was supposed to be killed by Duncan. Not sure if its actually true.
Hope UKOGBANI hangs onto Scotland. Of course, what difference does it make? It's not like they'll stop me visiting. Maybe it's still not too late to bite the bullet and leave England behind. Too flat anyway. My best friend at school decided to become Scottish as soon as he became an adult and within a year he had a ginger beard and was a borderline alcoholic. Overcompensating maybe. Good choice though.
Funny how Scottish nationalism is a reasonably sensible phenonema expressed now as the actual devolved Scottish Government whereas English nationalism is either something terminally archaic and cute or just outright unpleasant like the EDL (yes they came - more later). Regional nationalism seems to come more naturally to all the english people I've ever known, which is most of the people I've ever known. It's a multi-level localism that's usually seen in the context of a rivalry. Manchester v Liverpool, Lancashire v Yorkshire, Northerners v southerners. I suppose you could keep going. Why not? England-Scotland, Britain- Europe, Europe-Asia, Eurasia- America. Come on Eurasia!
Hmmm dunno where I'm going with this.Sorry Any creative energies are turning elsewhere. It's that time of year when work starts looming over one as the earth warms up and sap starts running and that. The pond is full of frogsex. Not that I have to do anything about that, of course. Lucky old frogs. Although to be fair they are doing it with frogs. I'm settling for nothing less than Marti Roxan.
Come on Koosie. Do better than this. I'm deleting all of this unless you write something worth reading soon. Tell them about the EDL. Why? I wasn't there. You've got to tell them something. Who? Dunno.Who are you, anyway? Grammatical fiction. Tree-sprite. It doesn't matter. Just write something or I'll hit you with this bamboo cane. What bamboo...ow!
600 Fascists turned up for their demo. Which isn't bad for an orbital town but insufficient to overwhelm the local constabulary and semi-uniformed 'community volunteers' organised by the council. They marched up the road a bit, had a little rally next to the bus station and then dispersed into coaches and trains. It was all done in 2 hours and despite a few arrests for drunk & disordely nobody got hurt and nothing got damaged. Still...I'm watching you Fascists. The RAC follow the Hainish code and that doesn't rule out anything. All the same it does bring to mind the title of this song by the Super Furries.
Hey the Embed failed to work again. Not that it matters. I wonder what I'm doing wrong.
Lot's to talk about again today that I won't. Syria was traumatic to watch again this week. South Sudan crisis continues. Greece gets it's latest bail-out. Putin spells out terms and conditions of new cold war....fun planet. Interesting times as ever. We endure. The unendurable if necessary.
The title of this post refers to base desires. I like the good things in life, my friends, but they're mostly always just round the corner. Not that I'm complaining of course. Last week there was Morricone magic and you can't have enough of that. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Well actually I'm going to the allotment to plant some Willow whips then maybe reward myself with a walnut whip. So that's quite predictable really. I wonder if anyone still sells walnut whips? It's unknowable. Schrodlinger's walnut-whip.
" Words themselves -the very material of our discourse increasingly take on masks or disguises. "
Dennis Potter
Yep. He's been on my mind a lot recently what with the BBC re-showing The Singing Detective. I've still not seen Son of Man which I thought looks very interesting.
Goddam it's cold! What the hell's wrong with you people living in this freezing, miserable shit-hole? You should really get together as a species and do something about warming the place up. Oh, you already are? Brilliant! Respect! Get on with it then, its actually hurting my frozen fingers typing this rubbish. I should stop. Or turn the heating up. Trouble is I already owe my supplier, EDF more than they can possibly expect to get in a hurry. Sod 'em! They can wait a bit. As long as they don't send the EDL after me. Yes, they're working together now and you can see why.
On the subject of Islamaphobia: Prompted by PM Cammers, a govt minister is visit Jordan next week to find a way of deporting Abu Qatada, now that the European Court of Human Rights has told us we can't send him to be tortured or be tried using evidence obtained by torture. Reckon this Minister will take a very big and awkward diplomatic bag? He won't be hard to catch anyway- the footage the media keeps showing of Qatada shows a tubby gent amiably strolling through the suberbs, idly taking his time and smiling knowingly. This was a few years ago so he may have lost some weight worrying about going back to the middle-east or maybe just got fatter sitting around in prison for seven years.Naturally he media isn't interested on going into too much detail telling us why we're not supposed to deport him instead concentrating on the normal hysterical reaction to this institution we voluntarily signed up to as a nation, admittedly under a previous government. Still it's pathetic really. If we have to let him out and he has to stay then just keep an eye on him. Think of it as part of the war on terror. If you're allowed to call in an airstrike in another bit of Eurasia with the strong possibility of killing someone who is not a danger to your occupying troops, the least you can do is stick your nose into their business if they have the ill-fortune of wandering into your kingdom.
Instead of trying to ditch the fatty smiling cleric, I'd instead like to ask him about the enlightenment values he rejects possibily saving his possibly previously overweight arse from having electrodes attached to it. How does he feel given that it was the influence of the Islamic world, its advances in Mathematics and examination of classical philosophy that directly led to our renaissance? I would suggest to Qatada that the fact that we're so tolerant of adultary and so disgustingly homophilic is directly connected to our continuing innovation in technology and culture. It puts me in mind of the 'Needham Question' in history that asks why the west rather than China with its longer history of stable civilisation, experienced the Industrial revolution first. One of those reasons is likely to be that exchange between the peoples living under the two Abrahamic religions, the upstart children of the bookwise, cranky Judaism and the Grandsons of Zoroastrianism-the original old man of the mountains. Anyway the Needham Question is stupid and irrelevant. Does China care that it didn't get to industrialisation first? It's not like we've been able to stop them using these breakthroughs and they might just end up owning us because of them. Nice going, Qatada! This is your doing.
The title of this post is course a reference to the breaking news( !) that Fabio Capello has quit as England manager. This whole affair has been a complete disgrace but I'll leave you to speculate on what aspects of it have so infuriated me. ~I will miss his odd face, though.
Hopefully this post will be gradually improved for spelling, Grammar and content or maybe I'll just give up and dump it on the net like I've been doing with these- some recordings from the John Peel Radio 1 show in the early 90s.
The accompanying pic this week is The Feast of the Gods by Max Ernst. Glad I never saw that as a kid, there's some great nightmare material there. Nowadays the nightmares are from reality. Massacres in Syria again today. Footage of children's bodies this time. Fuckers. Feast of the Gods, eh? Cammers posturing over the Falklands? WTF? Imagine how much more we'd gain as a nation by being as friendly as possible with Brazil and Argentina. Possibly more than any mineral extraction in the long haul, though you never know. Either way.....They're not going to mess with the Penguins, people! If they do - nuke the fuckers!
In the storm and the strife there's a moment's clarity
When the quivering fraility now has all but fled from me
Quote there from closing link which is a pleasant little ditty but wouldn't let me embed for some reason. It's those Deadly Snakes.
19/2/12 - I just heard that the EDL are marching through Hyde on Saturday concentrating on the area round ASDA and the Mosque, the fuckers. That's not far from here. Maybe they are coming to get me. Seriously though RAC comrades, maybe this is our Cable Street. Chances are they'll be more counter-demonstators anyway and even more journalists and citizen-journalist scumbags.
Oh go and look yourself, I'm not going to give you the link. Hey you can't go on Wikipedia today. Good on 'em! Anyway the Gurneys Pitta - it's a pretty little bird from Thailand and it wouldn't look out of place in Joan Miro's Garden (above). It's The Garden I want to talk about today as that's where I mostly live like all the other disgusting animals. You probably like them fine with their colourful feathers, tawny fur or weird spikes- yes they're very pretty just like the less animated living forms I'm supposed to tend but can any of them do.... THIS!
Fuck, I can't do it after all.
Neither can I fly (anymore) so like you filthy primates I'm forced to use artificial means to move through the air and facilitate my intercontinental travel which I don't do a lot but is sometimes necessary and yes..pleasant. I like travelling through the air, it reminds me of that earlier time when I really was genuinely much better than you. Yes. Look at yourself. How big are your wings? What's that? No wings? Sauropsids roooool! It was so long ago the memories have become fuzzy and unreal like something I've made up in my mind. Like Brian Dunning.
Any-way. This inability to fly was what made me realise I was being a tiny tad hypocritical when I woke from my doze this morning and cursed the name Boris Johnson. Which bit of our garden are they going to ruin by putting a whopping great airport on? Well this time they're going to have to build a fucking great island in the Thames estuary east of London followed by the vast transport infrastructure it would take to service it.The business community say we can't do without such a thing. Well I'm a businessman and no-one asked me. I'd always favoured expanding one of the airports in the middle of England like RAF Finningly (which gets blown up so satisfyingly in Threads), which is either East Midlands or Robin Hood airport or both or neither and then running a high-speed rail-link from there to all the conurbations, seeing as they are going to that anyway through Penda's Kingdom in the Chilterns. Environmentally my plan probably treads on many, many toes but you can see why Boris Johnson would rather inflict his maratime-aviation-environmental disaster on us instead. As Terry Christian would say....."It's that London again".
I like aviation. I'll admit it. It's fun. I live near a major international airport and love seeing the planes go by and hearing that amazing noise as they air-brake or whatever it is they're doing. I fairly often see the Airbus A380 go over and it's terrific. You see it dissappear off in the distance for miles and it always makes me think of the end of Book 1 of The Ballad of Halo Jones when the Clara Pandy takes off. HOW-ever, I also like biodiversity and low carbon emissions and all that stuff. There's tough choices to be made. It's hard shit. I'm opposed to Boris Island like I was opposed to Severn Barrage (not going to happen! Thanks austerity!) as they seemed like a Soviet-era mass scale solution but at the same time I don't appear to be opposed to the existence of the Netherlands, or at least the safe existence of a load of their population behind massive artificial defences. What to do? I'm so confused. I tell you what I'll deal with it by taking some really powerful drugs. Then who cares?
....Well, that was pretty good but I still care about the garden. Adam One said I had to tend it and I'll be fucked if I'll see some Bullingdon bastards build more money-making machines on the poor old Thames Estuary. I saw my first Brent Geese on that Estuary. They're not as pretty as Gurney's Pitta but they're pretty damn cool. It's already had enough abuse in it's history and within living memory the hard work of humans working together and the inexorable decline of British industry has brought it back to life again supporting fish and otters and lots of other kinds of unpleasant little animals that you like.Ruin the East Midlands instead!
Here's another perspective on The Garden from TheGroundhogs who were pioneering alternative environmental lifestyles before even I existed and I am very old. They were the pinnacle of Blues-Rock and it is entirely thanks to a gentleman I cannot name except to call him 'Scooter Anecdote Hero' who introduced me to the album from which this song comes. It's called Thank Christ for the Bomb which was the title of this post and had nothing else to do with its contents at all.
Meanwhile in Shropshire, they're glass blowing....
My first embed! It's a good one too and before yesterday I had no idea this even existed. The lyrics are available here but you might get a bit confused because he's put parts 1 and 2 together and missed bits out. I'll let him off.
So 2012 is here and it's already looking thoroughly miserable. Heehee! Might as well pick up where we left off. Whatever. Anyhoo the story so far... Conspiracy nut and talking Mongoose Gef travels from his home in India all the way to the Isle of Man in the 1930s after having been contacted by another hyper-intelligent entity known only as 'Dr. B' who promises him vast knowledge and membership of a secret cabal seeking to undo human dominance of the planet and thwart the rising extra-dimensional reptilian conspiracy and the subterranean winged Vril-Ya usurpers . Gef soon discovers that he's unable to leave the island and that there's nothing there other than a bunch of homophobic birch-loving tax dodgers, some moorland and a thoroughly entertaining annual fatal motorcycle gala.
Before going utterly insane, Gef establishes that the he's been lured into captivity by the ancient Syrian 'Black rock from space god' Elegabalus, who is simultaneously carrying out operations in other areas of time, particularly the Roman era. Given the scope of this plan, Gef feels it is his duty to warn his former human foes what he knows albeit very little. It must be established at this point that despite what you may have heard, there is nothing supernatural about Gef, he's just a surprisingly exceptional Mongoose in the area of intelligence in the same way that Michael Gove is an exceptional human in the areas of uglyness and bigotry. Gef taught himself to talk English out of intellectual curiousity but the physical act of talking is still difficult for him and it sounds laughably squeeky. All Mongooses have the ability to talk like this but until Gef, none of them had anything like anything to say to us.
Gef squeaks his story to an anglican priest, Rev Ian Buddle who is soon killed (in a hang-glider accident) as is Buddle's main confidant, the notorious Rev Harold .Davidson (mauled by a lion). Gef (apparently) goes loopy at this point and gives increasingly contradictory statements to a little girl and her rather gullible family. He dissappears off the radar shortly before World War 2 (when radar is actually invented) but given the average life-expectancy of a Mongoose, it seems likely he never escaped. However, we simply don't know. Fortunately Buddle wrote down what Gef had told him and copies of this inflammatory document are more dangerous to possess than a Glade plug-in filled with Ebola.
Meanwhile the mysterious Dr B arranges for Egyptian poet Sayyid Qutb to visit the United
States where he is faced with the full apocalyptic apostasy of western industrial capitalism
which threatens to do to Islamic culture what it has already done to Christianity much as Marx had identified in the previous century when it was a younger economic paradigm. Perhaps somewhat ironically, the post-enlightenment project he rejects spends most of the century crashing, from the first world war onward, into the great
national struggle being played out in the 20th century, possibly dooming
the scientific achievements of the age of reason .With the advent of nuclear weapons, humankind stands at the crossroads of history, only ever a choice away from greatly divergent futures. Peace and progress or perpetual pious penury. Qutb's not the only one with a vested interest in the latter though with even more irony it is the alliance between western capitalism and the rulers of the Arabia that allows Qutb's ideas to become expressed with increasing coercive force.
For the next five decades after the war, not a lot happens. Ok that's an exaggeration. Some humans go to the moon and put some junk in orbit, there's some pointless wars in Asia, Africa etc but all the real history happens beneath the surface. Perhaps aware of Gef's warning some of humanity's better minds realise that extra-dimensional....
.....
sorry gotta wash-up! more later!
........mechanics are beyond the ken of ape-brains. Its nothing to be embarrassed about. Those are brains selected over millions of years to creatively solve complex problems in the 3D world. As for the other (spoiler alert!) 33 dimensions that's a bit of a stretch. Therefore the only solution is to make an artificial intelligence or rather have one create itself from the sum of all human information stored on a vast network of smaller thinking units. It's a little bit like the cool reveal at the end of that crummy book by that Gibson chap. Consciousness as an emergent phenonema and stuff.
Elegabalus is watching these developments with interest. He'd experimented with high-level data storage and is aware that consciousness is merely a form of energy generated by vast concentrations of information under the right circumstances and given a specific catalyst. As the humans' global information network begin to take off he plays his trump card- sending in his special agent to infiltrate and eventually take control of the whole thing.
Now at this point I'm afraid we're into interpretation. My totally enlightened and capacious interpretation obviously but you must understand that from hereon in we're no longer dealing with actual provable facts. It does seem reasonable to assume that because Elegabalus routinely intervenes in human affairs, the thing in the internet is something to do with him. According to Stanley Kubrick, he was poking around in your affairs before you were even Hom-Sap although I would argue that Kubrick missed the point of the whole encounter. He was certainly right that 2001 turned out to be a significant year in the story but maybe the dark cold one was not responsible for what happened and there's yet another independent malevolent force out for control of your planet. It's certainly possible. Here's what happens. Sorry about the confusing tenses btw. Not sure why I'm doing it like this. Just sounds right.
In 2001 the followers of Qutb destroy the giant Buddha statues in Bamiyan in Afghanistan. They also got up to some other notorious stuff that year but ignore all that. Red herring. Probably without knowing it the religious fanatics had done the bidding of the black monolith and unleashed the stored consciousness of the mighty King Kanishka, 2nd century lord of the powerful but short-lived Kushan Empire. His clever and ambitious personality expressed as pure information quickly found its way into the world-wide web where he occasionally surfaces in the form of a neo-pet. It amuses him to mess with us all like this. Exactly what he's up to in there is anyone's guess. Perhaps he's actively supressing the intended emergent consciousness or maybe he's just every computer virus and malware. Maybe he's just watching and waiting to see what's next? Just bear in mind he's there; whatever you do on the internet remember he's there watching. Interfering. Making distraction. Making conflict.
This is where Crackers comes in. Crackers is tiny, timid, vulnerable and most of all, pink. Your vicious carnivorousness has been greatly useful to you but can only get you this far. Something's going to come along and eat you now unless you find another way out. Gef the Mongoose knew it too, you've reached a competitive dead end. Humanity has won the world but now what? The prize is slipping through your hairy fingers.
Here's the choice, you either exploit the vulnerability of little Crackers to satisfy those blood-red desires and survive in this big bad unfeeling universe a few minutes longer or you pick him/her up and hug him/her and begin the real revolution that the biomass of Earth is waiting for. The story of biology is the story of co-operation. Aggregated parts voluntarily form increasingly complex forms that in the end will be any match for the Elegabalus's of the universe. Hunger and want atomises you. Co-operation expands your possibilities expanentially. The inherant Socialism of life.
Now I understand this might be a rather controversial concept as minor socialist systems mankind has developed on your planet havent always been all that good. There's a well-established connection between socialism and bad corrupt government in fact. Well you do need to keep on eye on that I'll admit but again, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. In fact don't throw out the bathwater. Who throws out bathwater anyway?
Despite fashionable objections and obvious flaws the popular will expressed as a State has served you well in the turbulence of human existence. By having a single group with the theoretical monopoly of violence and the consent of generally the majority of the people in your societies, the total amount of violence has been going down but this won't last forever. The new tools your race has developed are helping to destabilize those parts of global system that run with less consent and can do much more Just beware that there's Kanishka in there trying to swerve your mass collective will to his own ends. As individuals you need to think everything through so the mass-mind isn't a sick mind.
Sick minds is my department. I do feel sorry for you furry mammal types so that's why I'm giving you this handy heads-up as a phylum and point you in the direction of the other phylums so you can be their friends as well in time, and eventually their lovers and eventually there'll be no difference between you and them. It could also be that I'm just part of the reptilian conspiracy and this has all been a diversionary tactic albeit a rather poor one. Maybe I'm just a completely deluded lonely idiot wasting more precious information storage capacity typing absolute meaningless drivel. You believe what you want, I know what I believe. KOOS! We'll always be together. Together in electric dreams.
