Get your cold dead hand off my dirty ape gun!

Nope. Not going to talk about it. Not any of the issues implied in Charlton Heston’s assertive ‘quote’ there. You can make a nice audio file if you want.  Be surprised if someone hadn’t and perhaps that’s how it came to appear in my mind. Wha-tev-ur! It’s yours now to do with as you will.  I would request that you treat Mr Heston’s memory with some respect as he was a tremendous cinema presence regardless of what you think of what he came to represent; firearms & stuff. It’s certainly not for me to say as I’ve never had any need to touch a gun. Of course, I can simply raise an eyebrow and make your testicles catch fire (and not in the good way) so it’s pretty much a mooot point.  Just show the ‘Hes’ some res-pect, hear! More than I have here anyway. 

Did I happen to mention that when I get bored I like to imagine that I’m an extra-dimensional  Sauropod deity? Yes well obviously one can see why you might tactfully not want to press the issue of why that would be. Well maybe you should have because the reason why I like to imagine that I’m an extra-dimensional Sauropod deity is, as it turns out, because I actually am an extra-dimensional Sauropod deity! I was surprised too, frankly, but there you go. All the evidence fell into place and in one of those slightly suspicious moments of revelation, all the falsehoods of terrestrial life were peeled away and the glittering rainbow ‘candy mountain’ reality of the multi-verse shone out in all its dubious glory. I was so over-come by this vision, I immediately beheld my task to birth a new religion of the light that is lovingly curled around the darkness, to confront and extinguish the authoritarian hierarchies and mental repression afoot on this world, to re-unite all life-kind in one consciousness and get a load of money off some loser feebs and spend it on drugs and ladies and generally having a good time before I drop dead which is likely to be soon; too soon anyway, for my liking. You may feel differently.

So -Thanks to the unknowing help of your foremost scholars, I’ve been able to reconstruct the ancient history of your species’ occupation of the surface of this planet and worked this into the religious narrative I’m erroneously constructing.  It goes like this:

Before you lot showed up, your world was a battleground between 2 factions- the lizard people and the amorphous deities. Their almost complete absence of matter makes the deities seem kind of ethereal and superior but really they’re not. Just like you and me they evolved from less complex organic forms, in their case from common unseen elemental forces like the ones you so often see kicking up piles of dry leaves in the woods and tossing them round in a little spiral for a bit,  generating  energy in the form of friction to sustain themselves. Well that’s all the deities do really - they harvest the energy they generate by getting people to do things for them.

Anyway these deities were an extended family group who won a terrible military encounter that all but extinguished the lizards on this planet and thus went setting themselves up as overlords of what had survived their apocalypse. As humanity emerged from the confusion and innocence of animalism, the deities directly enslaved them until agents from lizard faction were able to communicate to these wide-eyed naïve apelings the truth of their situation and henceforth all manner of chaos erupted. Firstly between the rebellious humanity and the deities then among the deities themselves, then among the humans and for a long time everyone was at war with everyone else and you couldn’t tell what was going on.  This would have carried on forever were it not for the intervention of the peaceful Fish People from Po Tolo who brokered a truce that has lasted ever since. Naturally the conflict continues beneath the surface on all sorts of subtle fronts and we all have our particular allies and enemies but outright meltdowns are rare or at least containable, most of the time.

 

Hey, while I’ve mentioned it I’ve got to tell you about Po Tolo. You must go, it’s a lovely place, hence the reason the fish people from there are so nice.  It’s an Earth-sized dwarf star in orbit around the star you know as Sirius but it’s as  heavy as your sun so all sorts of material ends up in its gravity-well creating the possibilities for a lush diversity of environment and life forms. The aquatic habitat, for example, where the fish-heads live is just about the best beach destination in the universe. The strong gravity has odd effects on time and light so that not only do the nice sunny days last longer due to time-stretching  but the bending of the light makes big old Sirius A look like a giant glowing Banana in the sky - or a big bright smile as some would have it. Yes it’s a great place, all sorts of funny creatures hail from Po Tolo. In fact Michael Portillo does, the clue’s in the name. Yes that’s why he has that funny walk. All us off-worlders have funny walks.

So yes, in the week where once again chemical weapons have been used on this planet down there in El Gabul’s old stomping ground it’s pretty apparent we need a new general settlement rather than the new proxy war we’re actually getting and this time there’s no sign the fish-heads are going to turn up and help out. Chances are they’ve been exterminated by the Heron people or just a bigger bunch of fish-people. That’s the problem with pacifism, when somebody isn’t in the slightest bit vulnerable to moral ju-jitsu it’s kind of rendered redundant. The same is actually true of Charlton Heston-style coercion as well of course. All your hardness is of no value to you if somebody much, much harder comes along and flattens you. There’s no easy answer. Never has been.

Did you spot the hidden cow? Here's a Stevie Wonder link from his best album:

 

Voice of the Beehive

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! I’ll explain later! Got some housekeeping to deal with first:

My delight at actually having some viewers in the stats section of my blog dashboard crashed to earth when I was contacted by the trans-dimensional Buddhist 'Beings’-rights' campaign organisation OMNESTY INTERPLANETRY about some things I’d written about abducting children and livestock in Dragons, Communists & Fairies. To clear up this misunderstanding as best I can and so as to not get in any trouble with your terrestrial authorities I’ll tell you humes what I told them. Well, not exactly what I told them as it would be impossible for you to comprehend fully the language and concepts of their transcendental compassion in which the discussion was framed. Don’t beat yourself up about that. Honestly you’re much better for being the belligerent, cynical and unpleasant cuties that you are. You know the look that Kittens get when they’re fighting? It’s like that. Way better than the snooty superiority of the infinitely compassionate ones.

Anyhoo, while it is true that I do occasionally unethically abduct beings from the naïve, I absolutely guarantee that none of them are harmed. Not really anyway. The children are invariably given back to their communities after a brief indoctrination so that when they return as star-children or whatever, they grow up to be leaders of their communities and develop their future civilisations as I see fit. Admittedly sometimes they are crucified and stuff but that’s not my doing is it? It only happens in a very small, statistically insignificant number of cases. I know none of that is totally politically-correct but to be frank, there’s way worse than me doing it - as well you know from the history of this planet alone. I could name names but it might get me in even worse trouble.

As for the livestock, well they generally get a much better deal than you would expect. As a consumption-culture it’s very hard for you to imagine a lot else to do with, for example, a Cow, than drink its milk, eat its flesh and wear its arse. Well for starters, while eating is undoubtedly pleasurable, it’s at the bottom end of sensory experiences and is a laughably inefficient way of obtaining energy for sustaining life. The best thing that can be said for it is that it does produce shit which is a wonderful substance if, so I’m told, a bit smelly. No, there are lots of good uses I can put your cow to.  There are some places (there even used to be one here on Earth) where cows are venerated. So if I turn up at such a place with a cow then I’m immediately recognised as semi-divine and so me and the Cow can take it easy. There are even places (possibly future-Earth!) where Cows have evolved to be the dominant life-form so their scientists are absolutely fascinated to see a primative Bovinate. There are so many variations in the near-infinite universe that whatever you’ve got, there’s a world where someone will be pleased to see you. The Chicken world, for instance, is highly irritating.

Naturally the Omnesty types were totally unimpressed with this but other than some tutting and more looking down their noses , there’s not a lot a lot they can do to stop me. Obviously I’m not allowed to enter Nirvana but from what I hear, it’s pretty boring. I can still listen to this and this so what else do I need, Nirvanawise? Other than the disapproval, it was nice to see them, despite everything, as they are exceedingly beautiful. The picture above was a photo I took with my digicam. It didn’t come out totally flattering to them (always smile for a photo) and I suppose with human optics it just looks like a psychedelic blurry mess. You’d have to borrow my glasses.

OK why Voice of the Beehive? Well partly as it was going to be a way into talking about Quantum Biology which I probably won’t bother with now. Basically when you understand it, lots of mysteries like swarm-communication and post-temporal divination will be cleared up nicely for you. For another day! No, mostly, it was because yesterday I went to work with insufficient material on my MP3 player so had to listen to a few songs more than once. 'Don't Call Me Baby' by Voice of the Beehive-was listened to  4 times, closely followed by ‘Modern Love’ by David Bowie and ‘The Killing Moon’ by Echo and the Bunnyman 3 times and ‘Safety Dance’ by Men Without Hats twice. They was off some dodgy 80s compilation.

Never too late

Time to resume contact with the rest of the world. Your  world, little friends. I've chosen to communicate to you again just so you know that while I do have an appointment with DIGNITAS, I'm constantly annoying their staff by putting it off week after week. The hilarious thing is that they have to maintain the facade of humanitarianism instead of telling me to fuck off and get a life or more preferably decisively terminate the possibility  of ever having one. Ha ha! Go stick it in some holey cheese you white-chocolate cuckoo-clock-loving murderers!

It's snowing! It's like a beautiful alpine scene here especially if you sort of squint when you look at the bonsai. There's a link here to a nice audio short-story called 'Snow' that's read by the man with the best speaking voice on Earth since Richard Burton passed on. It's on a SF site but I'm not altogether sure what it is. A ghost story? Religious? I think the fact I don't totally get it is something to do with why I like it so much. Maybe I'm just a misery chick like Daria. Yeh. That'll be it. Same glasses anyway.

Well as you've probably figured out by now, I've been away so long because I've got very little of interest to say. Certainly nothing to say with any level of coherence. Wasn't that always the case? Meh! Who cares? I couldn't leave old Crackers to wither and die all alone in this big cold internet. I've at least got to provide some confusing disappointment for all those hundreds of people who search for PLASTIC PALACE PEOPLE BLOGSPOT and end up here instead of whatever it was they were actually looking for. It'd better be Scott Walker related you glombies! He's got a new album with a title so horrible I'm not even go to repeat it. Good to see him and Bowie still working so late in the game. Never too late! XTC may beg to differ. That's today's music link. Those adverts are fucking annoying arn't they? Anyhoo I've linked to one of their songs before, from the same album no less. I'm getting old and repetitive. Which reminds me I must tell you about this amazing talking Mongoose or something. Yawn! This, btw is fun. Keep yours ears open for Nahustan who is a character of potentially great significance to followers of the Koosist religion like me and er...just me.

Seeing as I'm obviously done here and am already thinking about my next hit I'll post some of the earlier aborted attempts to get this post written so they don't turn out to be a 100% monumental waste of fucking time.

1- Free Pussy Riot!

That’s right. Now no-one’s saying that what these ladies did was advisable or even commendable but if Britain in the late 70s can put up with Crass and the Poison Girls then the Russians can bloody well put up with this. The eccentric beards (there’s always eccentric beards) who run the Russian orthodox church should think themselves lucky that my lot (communists) didn’t completely wipe them and their buildings completely off the face of the earth as we started off trying to do.  Return the favour beard-boyz and forgive my femmopunk chums. What would Jesus do?  I’m not best placed to say I’ll admit, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t involve whining to the Russian judiciary and getting them to impose harsher sentences. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone! A risky tactic there from big J I always thought. There’s usually some deluded twat who thinks they’re entirely blameless in any situation.

So yeh. C’mon ZZ Top. Be nice to the ladies.

2- WOOT! Yes we still say woot here. WOOT!

Today’s woot is a woot of celebration as this is actually the hundredth post of the RAC blog in its current post-2009 form. Well it’s actually 101 as one post was completely deleted but at the same time there is one unpublished one that is intended to see the light of day should I ever finish it. Actually it had occurred to me to delete of the first 2 year’s posts as they’re really not all that entertaining, mainly consisting of me whining about how broke I am or some bit of fluff. Too anchored to the real world and not overly pleasant to read back is what it is. Anywayway  I probably will leave the early posts alone as deleting them would make a nonsense of these spectacular centennial  celebrations, which chiefly consist of me typing woot in capitals. WOOT! 

 This is as good as it gets Koos-fans. Now walk-away!

 3- There is a man handcuffed to a Rhinoceros. It is out of control and  causing possibly fatal damage to the man as it drags him along. The man has a key to the handcuffs and could release himself at any time but he does not. Why? The Rhinoceros is charging across a narrow bridge of a ravine. Release of the handcuff means certain death. Why was he handcuffed to a Rhino in the first place? To stop it charging or at least slow it down.  Pretty weak reasoning but what alternative did he have? That Rhino was going to charge.

 
4- The traditional conception of politics as a one-dimensional line between Left and Right is retarding our ability to model policy responses to the challenges of post-industrial civilisation and has led to a fallacious division, particularly in the English-speaking world that has even influenced the language with which political issues are approached.

 Wowser! You can see why that one was abandoned! If anyone can work out what I'm going on about in number 3 they win a lifetime's supply of Terry Nutkin's specialist nut-free Food for nut-allergic Squirrels. I tell you, that man had a heart of gold. Much missed. There is more of this. Is this the right font?

 

 

Tally-Ho!

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.

I'll be back!

Talk like a Cetacean

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.

Love will keep us together

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 20^th 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 21^st Century' or more traditionally 'the crisis of the 3^rd 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 3^rd 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.

'Miscellaneous' seems to be the hardest word.

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:

FREE PUSSY RIOT!  Press Here

    
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.

Christians are dogs!

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

Dragons, Communists & Fairies

FEAR ME YOU LOATHESOME LITTLE CREATURES!

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!
  


   

More Cuban Cigars please!

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.

Bye Bye Fabio!

" 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.  

Thank Christ for the bomb

I want a Gurney's Pitta.

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....