Before and after Jazz

It’s a picture of Quetzalcoatl eating a bloke. I’ll get round to why you might want to look at this slightly unpleasant, slightly manga-phallic image later on. To take you there here’s an overlong anecdote about the 2001 UK census. Enjoy!

 

Here in the UK (that’s UKOGBANI’s informal name btw) it is mandatory at 10 year intervals for all adult citizens to truthfully complete a census so that the government is able to form a realistic picture of for whom they are to devise policy. Amongst the information compiled on employment and marital status etc is a section devoted to religious identity. Now when I filled my 2001 UK Census, where I should have ticked the ‘No Religion’ box I instead started to fill out the ‘Others: Please specify’ box (if that indeed is what it is called, I can’t really remember). I got as far as the letter J then stopped abruptly as I quickly re-thought out, not my deeply-held religious beliefs of which I had none but my relationship to this entire human insitution. I had intended, like many others like me, to write ‘Jedi’ in that box as we believed that if enough of us wrote that we subscribed to this fictional monastic martial discipline then the authorities would then have to include ‘Jedi’ as a box on its own alongside Christianity and Hinduism and that lot on the next census form in 2011. Perhaps we were too immersed in our science fiction belief system to realise that the authorities were not some giant unthinking machine that would easily allow our student prank to slip through its logic programs or whatever.

 

Anyhoo I wrote the letter J and then I thought about what I was doing. Even if I had no religion, was I to be so dismissive of thousands of years of human culture? Even classical Marxism, where religion is viewed as part of the structure of oppressive class-based society and therefore to be abolished, acknowledges that religious writers have been a positive and progressive force in advancing human society and that in many ways the Communist Parties that followed Marx’s lead were inferior tribute acts of the institutions of Christian collectivism that had sustained stable (if violent and violently unfair) societies for hundreds of years. Plus I fucking hate Jedi’s. Actually that was the main reason. Yes, the only reason. I think Marxism had been pretty much debunked even in my slow-witted 20^th century brain by then. Don’t worry. It’ll be back.

 

So I was left with this useless letter J and it was irrevocable. I had to find another religion quick and it had to begin with J. I could have gone for Jainism which is a perfectly good religion but given my general ignorance of it and failure to even begin on the Jainist path, it seemed a little dishonest. In the end I plumped for Jazz. Now I’m well aware that Jazz is merely a kind of music but it did seem to offer at the very least a lifestyle and a set of core values that aren’t entirely dissimilar to a belief system. There is a vague notion of personal freedom, of living for the moment and the ambition to achieve states of extra-normal ecstasy and self-abolition through immersion in the music. None of this applies to Trad-Jazz of course. You know, the straw hat thing. It’s nice and everything but….you know what I mean. Even you Trad-Jazzers out there.

 

It was a bit thin I’ll admit but it was nonetheless mine uniquely and this was before I’d even heard Coltrane play. I felt pretty smug then about the 2001 census I can tell you but somehow knew in my heart of heart of hearts that even that pure evocation of whatever you humans call spirituality was not going to see me through to 2011. Jazz had pointed the way but to what? I followed its path through the dark times after the emancipation, emerging in its recognisable form between the wars and infecting late industrial culture changing everything it touched, merging with pre-existing folk culture creating hybrid forms glowing with colour and freedom  that continue to proliferate and evolve into forms beyond even my understanding.

 

The Afro-European cultural renaissance with Jazz at its core altered our visual as well as our audial culture which provides me with a thin veneer of continuity with which to explore my next religious awakening. Now I’ve probably talked about it enough in this blog and elsewhere so to cut a long story short, in the 2011 census I filled in the ‘Others: Please Specify’ box with the word KOOSISM. Which, as we all know, is the worship of the trans-dimensional rainbow lizard whose appearances in the 90s cartoon show DEXTER’S LABORATORY are like beautiful 2D shadows of the multi-dimensional reality human apparatus cannot yet perceive. (Dexter’s Laboratory of course was an allegorical drama of the eternal conflict between order and chaos played out in the texts of many a human religion). The Rainbow Lizard in the form of the serpent was venerated on the continent of Australia by the pre-European population, as was Quetzalcoatl the feathered serpent in Mesoamerica (or QC as he likes to be known) and another cold-blooded friend still makes an early appearance in the holy texts of the Abrahamic faith who fail to acknowledge that he rightly calls out their invisible deity as a big liar and frees the new human race from his direct enslavement, ultimately setting them up as masters of the Earth. We still debate the rightness of that policy, you know.  

It did occur to me that my conversion from to Jazz to Koosism was also a happily alphabetical progression that I intend to continue in the next census assuming by that point I haven’t succumbed to proper faith or orthodox atheism. Next time I intend to write LAGOOPINISM in that box which is of course an extremist and currently heretical form of Koosism. It will be the job of you, my one follower (thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks!) to at that point assume the leadership of mainstream Koosism and try to erase my influence in the development of that one enlightened religion while I spend 10 years working out what I can believe in that begins with the letter M. If I and UKOGBANI are still going in 2161 I’ll finally give in to a proper religion like Zoroastrianism or Zurvanism which are kind of where it all began anyway, especially in terms of the still currently dominant monotheism. It is dominant too and will doubtlessly remain so as long as I live regardless of the disrespect I continue to show it. If I am entirely wrong and there is one God then he can practice what he preaches and bloody well forgive me. He wouldn’t give a shit anyway, surely? If there is an entity which created all of this do you think any human mind has the power to comprehend what it might be up to? As I have stated elsewhere you might as well throw cheese down the well to appease the thing as it makes as much sense as anything you do. Or you might just try and be nice to your fellow life-possessors as Koosism teaches.

Well that was a long and pointless ride wasn’t it? Well heres some music that is as the title suggests an ancestor of and a descendent of Jazz. Firstly there’s this instantly recognisable melancholy classic from Erik Satie and secondly there’s a cracking song from the first album from Firehose whose punky-jazz influences are probably more evident on other tracks on this album but this is my absolute fave. Hear me!

 

 

Still falls the rain

 

This month's pic is a portrait of Dame Edith Sitwell by Wyndham Lewis. If you aint never read a Dame Edith Sitwell poem, you aint no friend of mine. She reminds me a little bit of a character called Chiaroscuro Schist in a story called A Hole to China what you can read here. No not here, back there. 12 words ago.

Phew! Made it. Nearly didn't get one of these out for June, not that there isn't a lot to comment on in a hilariously lop-sided way for the entertainment of virtually no-one. Actually it seems increasingly likely that while I may be practically unread by actual real people my ridiculous output is being stored for possible future scrutiny by the covert intelligence agencies of several nation-states including the one I'm parked in right now. How exciting! This is all real you guys! If you were high enough in your organisations you'd know that already, of course. I actually did know chap who was recruited to work in GCHQ and I must report that he was a complete shit-wipe. If GCHQ are any good I'm sure they've sacked him by now but you never know. He could be reading this right now with the knowledge of who I actually am. Hello! Shit-wipe! It's not absolutely impossible of course, after all I did back the Soviets and am therefore still potentially dodgy. Yes I am embarrassed by it as it happens but hey buddy, history aint over yet! Besides, while communism may have scored low in realising human potential, it certainly scored high at winning wars.

It is worth remembering of course, in the light of the Snowden revelations, that The German Democratic Republic, that is communist East Germany, failed as a regime despite being, by reputation, the most intrusive state in history. In those days of course, information was analog and there was only ever as much as human beings could process. Today's intelligence trawlers are too large and unwieldy to be of any use to their human captains and they should bloody well concentrate on their own business, which of course, the next world war. Besides, as I have spoken off on this virtual publication before, there's a monster growing in all that stored intelligence, dark as the world of man, black as his loss.

Here's the music bit- Morricone at his most sweet and succulent:

Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Yeh!

Welcome back to the RAC blog! Your one-stop-shop for on-the-road auto-care do-it-yourself pick-me-ups.  Nah. I’m only kidding, fella! This RAC is the Revolutionary Army of Crackers. Your one-stop-shop for …er….a load of made-up shit. Never mind! Now you’re here we might as well make the best of it. Anyway my shit is better than your gold. Truth.

 

What I try to do, now on a monthly basis apparently, is to convey, (usually unsuccessfully) that while this may look like a nonsensical ramblings of a mad person or a sarcastic idiot taking the piss of who-knows-what ineptly, this is actually a wonderful gift from an entity whose dimensions you have not yet built the machines to measure. In fact it will be machines built by machines that will able to achieve this and you only really be able to understand what they present to you in your meta-form where you exist as a unitary-organism outside the confines of your individual physical lives and concerns. Don’t worry, it’ll come and be much more satisfying than you’re imagining. The analogy I like to use is of the mushrooms on the lawn whose relationship seems to be that of one between autonomous entities whereas in fact they are merely manifestations of a single almost entirely subterranean organism. The trouble is that I’m very old, a bit confused and a very much  reduced version of the meta-entity I’m ultimately part of, so I forget of what use to us that analogy is supposed to be. All I do know is that in the analogy I’m supposed to be a different type of mushroom altogether. Or maybe I’ve just taken too many mushrooms. That sounds likely. It definitely involves mushrooms.  Hmmmm mushrooms! I’m hungry now.

 

Another type of mushroom is of course, Michael Portillo who’s obviously got all cocky since I mentioned him last month and has started shooting his mouth off about Europe. Maybe he figures he’s got nothing to lose now I’ve unmasked him as an alien visitor and that he might as well take whatever the city boys are offering to help normalise the idea of pulling UKOGBANI out of le EU before it gets round to regulate their highly profitable fun and games. Maybe him, Lawson, Healy et al are right and we’ll lose the goose that lays the golden eggs but to me, the European project is not just noble but necessary in the evolution of how human society is organised despite its very visible shortcomings. I propose that a voluntary federation of democratic states able to operate as a single unit when circumstances demand is the only model worth following. Sovereignty and identity are lost as a result of economic forces that are inevitable so long as there is a consensus in the world of the rightness of free-market capitalism which for the moment is successfully holding. Democracy on a trans-national scale is perhaps the only tool that can preserve any degree of sovereignty and identity in self-defining communities despite the widespread perception that the opposite is so. I do not see The European Union as looking to or having succeeded in any way in abolishing cultures and identities in even its core nations. Nor do I hear Germans bemoaning working-time directives or health and safety legislation etc as we are so often told here on our island our leaders of wealth constantly do. Naturally one is always concerned to prevent a concentration of power at the centre but in the electronic capitalism of early 21^st century Earth, the whole concept of power is not always easy to nail down. Power exists in mass-culture and flows onto the streets and through the politics and back into the money and into sex and into death and into the future. Er yeh…it’s poetry innit. Basically it isn’t just some guy in a uniform telling you not to do that or else. Human choices make the world. I want you to….I WANT YOU TO SENSE YOUR OWN STRENGTH!

As I say, I might be totally wrong. I’m not that brilliant at reading what you pretty Monkeyforms are apt to doing though I always love finding out through your many various news outlets. It’s like an exciting on-going planetary soap-opera. Some idiot psychologist said on the radio recently that it’s much better for one’s mental health to avoid the news altogether. Well that’s all very well but what if he’d started off showing off his Jim’ll Fix-It badge or something? He must have wondered what those wars were about if he heard about them at all. He’ll certainly wonder what’s going on when my followers take control of his civilisation and begin erecting an enormous statue of a pink cartoon dog-thing with nice ears for all to venerate as only I do today. Lovely Crackers! Bounce back to us, little Crackers! You are forsaken no more!

 

 OK let’s link you to somewhere better. First of all there's this if you want the end of the penultimate paragraph to to make any sense. You have to listen to till the end or maybe just the end if you're not a fan of early 80s pacifist-anarchist punk. Fight war not wars you barbarians! So sad. We end as it began with the fab-four (or was it the pre-fab four?) playing us out with one of their other hits than the one that gave me the title for this incredible and audacious post.

 

Sitting in Limbo

If you write something, you’re allowed some cake. 

I was beaten up by a mouse, a gull, a tortoise and a scampi. But Yuffy didn’t lift a finger.

 

That’s not good enough. That’s just a weak gag that no-one’s going to get anyway except for an increasingly vanishing demographic. Good riddance! Actually the computer doesn’t like me using ‘a Scampi’ it wants just ‘Scampi’. I can’t explain to it that the mistake was Yuffy’s, the stupid bearded memory. Scampi is a foodstuff made from Langoustines which is like a tiny Lobster. See! This is an educational resource! Come back!  

It is the end of April here in northern Ukogbani in 2013AD and I’ve managed a post a month so far this year so I’m loathed to let that slide or the Revolutionary Army of Crackers will fade away altogether. It’s just kind of hard given that there’s nothing very nice to say and pretty much no-one reads this anyway. Those apparent spikes of interest were almost certainly the work of some algorithmic oddity rather than any conscious minds. I have to keep my own flagging morale up by reminding myself that this thing is for posterity not for the now. This is just the wrong time to be Sauropod deity but these things come round like the seasons. There will be dancing and festivities in my holy name again and also will there be mighty thunder and terrible wrath for my quisling enemies. These things are certain. 

 

The picture is Adolphe Valette’s view of Manchester rooftops from about a hundred years ago. It’s not all that different today especially on a damp wintery day. As a pleasant contrast, from the sunny island of Jamaica is this song by Jimmy Cliff from the soundtrack to the movie ‘The Harder They Come’. You might also try his original version of Many Rivers to Cross. Yeh it’s all pretty random. You’re lucky I’m interested enough to bother, you theoretical future nobodies! Actually I’m lucky nobody does read this thing right now given some of the controversial stuff about chemical weapons and suchlike. Really, humanity, it’s time to build a general settlement that ends these wars altogether. It’s closer now than ever but still hard to see through the fountains of blood. Start with small agreements and keep building on the back of them till you have an honest global dialogue between the many shifting and overlapping tribes of man. Nuclear stalemate has provided a window of opportunity that is starting to close. WMDs are back out of the box albeit in uncertain circumstances. Situations like state actors being pushed into corners and fatal misunderstanding of the positions of one’s opponents are scenarios that become much more dangerous when extraordinary military hardware is in town. Those who still can must ask those who have some leverage over belligerent parties what is it worth to gain a compromise that ends the fighting? Let them know that victory is unobtainable and that they must accept the best defeat possible that gives them a stake in the future and a guarantee of security. Despite all the violence left over from the grim struggle of a semi-carnivorous evolution, the active warriors are somehow a minority. Most human beings are now working and trading peacefully with other human beings and attempting by these means to improve their situation and by extension that of their communities and of humanity in general. Later on as interconnected beings in a pan-organic global identity but that’s quite a lot later. One thing at a time, eh? Can I have some cake now?

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