Popular Doom Loops

permiate the news we watch and read until we wonder
'Is the future worth the effort it takes to get there?',
when it has to be. How else to think outside the present
without us returning to pasts many of us barely remember?

But as more media companies save more money
in the pursuit of wealth for the Commander in Chief
and the shareholders who live beyond the wealth of Croesus,
the news rooms will be more operated by semi-autonomous
AI operatives where the human viewers of the news
will seek to ask each other 'Is this real? Did this happen?
Or is it some AI fantasy built on what happened in the past?'

The truth will only hit the fan when enough of the viewers
turn away from their screens and seek to recognise each other,
collapsing the revenue stream of the channel, from advertising.

Even then channels will change owners, be relaunched, 
with promise that the AI is checked more thoroughly,
where the evidence of such claims will be witheld,
because 'The information is commercially sensitive.
Such is it's value, it would affect the shrinking markets
for information that is not adjusted by hype and AI.....  '. 

'If I Were You I Would Not Start From Here.... '

One of the phrases that was quaint,
nearly funny, in the town I grew up in
happened when a stranger asked a local

The local would reply with their hands
pointing left and right into the distance
telling the stranger which way they should go
without saying the street names of the places
they will have to pass through which their guide
preferred to avoid thinking about as if
they were lost in the stream of local consiousness.

At some point the guide would yield to their usual habit,
and stun the stranger using the phrase 'If I were you
I would not start from here, to get to where you seek. 
I would start from somewhere else.'.

I eventually felt lost in the town
that gave the people who lived there
that rather circular sense of direction
that led nowhere else. I found my way out.

I have not looked back since, 
whether I was lost, had mixed directions,
or was travelling using dead reckoning,
pure guesss work to get to where I thought
I was meant to be going to, I got there in the end. 

Anid in the end found the place I never found
when I had to ask for directions for it: the place
I can call home where whether I am active or inactive
I can rest and I can give myself clearer directions.   

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes And Innocents.....

Meanwhile the pupils in the theology class
are studying the text of Matthew Ch 6 verse 21
'Where your treasure is your heart will be also.....  '. 

 

The Forgiveness Club

Chosen family are the ones we forgive,
and who forgive us our trespasses
within finite degrees of mutuality,
whilst keeping the language light and easy.

Unchosen family are the people
we find it wise to keep at the distance
where we can observe what they do,
and balance knowing their character
and knowing the flaws in ourselves
whilst wishing that with both
they were someone more malleable.

Originally Recorded 100 Years Ago

    'I've Found A New Baby' is filmed being sung here in the mid 1974/1975/1976 by the original Dixie Nightingale, vocalist Eve Taylor, in a sprightly recording made in Denmark and Sweden, where she was celebrated, even in the twilight of her long career.   

Seeking Absurdist Employment

I never thought to turn to the existentialist playwright
Samuel Beckett for advice for job interview technique,
when I applied for the jobs that I did not get,
and then applied for more jobs I did not get.

I missed the opportunity when I was before an employer,
to paraphrase Samuel Beckett, as I explained to them
'With each application for a job where someone else
got the work, I was training myself in how to fail better.'.
I did not give the employer the whole Beckett quote

 'Ever tried. Ever failed, Try again. Fail better.'. 

Employers are not reknowned for their absurdist,
existentialist, sense of humour. If they were,
and I had used my explanation, I might have got the job.    

'The Angel Of History.....

   ....must look just so. His face is turned towards the past.
Where [what] we see [as] the appearance of a chain of events,
he sees one single catastrophe,which unceasingly piles
rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet.' 

 - Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940). Benjamin was a German philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist.
To find out more about him please left click here.