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.