'Our Whole Life Is A Secret.... '

All I have to offer to mark five years
of the renewed rule of the Taliban is this,
a thirty mins audio diary that the BBC
gave to the world in November 2024. 

It is one woman's observations of the effects
of the Taliban redoubling their efforts to remove
the presence of women from all of public life,
so that all the women can say to themselves
is 'Our whole life is a secret.....   '. 

And if for whatever technological reason
you cannot hear the report, you can believe
that their lives are now even more secret.....   

An Appeal For Us To Be More Humane

Anyone in the first world, the over-developed world,
who hears the phrase 'dog meat' or 'cat meat'
understands it be something to feed to their pet,
or the stuff of hyperbole in the adverts that pay for
their youtube videos that while away the hours.

But in poorer parts of the world where civilisation
is redder in tooth and claw, and the idea of 'the pet',
the-animal-as-companion has not been invented,
nature, including dogs and cats is fair game
for leaving to live wild, before rounding up and eating. 

Not everyone there sees this as right, The Soi Dog Foundation
does powerful work in Hanoi to end cats and dogs living on the streets,
before the meet a grzzly fate. I admire The Soi Dog Foundation for what they do.
I have given money to them too, and I ask that you will concider doing the same.

The New More-Is-Less

I used to be astonished at how little
the popular music stars of the day
I admired, but not like, contributed
to their latest hits, as I saw what sold a song
was the padding/star power packaging.

But lately I find myself coming up with
my own paucity. My offerings here are thinner
than I used to write. I seem to be unable to grasp
the direction of travel of the new media,
as it heads in the direction of the false trails
laid down by and for the newAI kletpocracy,
which  always exonerates the latest dear leader.

My stake in the new media game cannot count for much.
The best of my old blogs will find other lives though whoever
steals the ideas in them. Nowadays I am old enough to look back
and recognise that I was left behind before I could see it happening
in the first wave of de-industrialisation, in the 1970's,

I have been looking for the present through the past since those times..... .    .  

Does The Cap Still Fit?

The satirist will always be energised
to more humour at the expense of others
by the latest target in the news for their ire,
no matter that in the search for new targets
of their wit will vary widely in quality.

The commentator is less driven by targets,
but nontheless can waver in their search
for subjects fit for their sense of enquiry.
Where they strive to find an even tone
with which to sustain their comments.

Being less of humourist, but liking humour,
I hope that the comentator role fits me better,
and fits me for a long time to come.
   

Superlative Criminality

There is no criminal like an old criminal,
the expert who can bend the law further,
and further still, towards his own ends
where nobody can guess the end point,
beyond how he bends the law into shapes
that it will never be bent back into.

Financially, the lawyers will always do well
out of this sort of thing, the judges will suffer
much more - as they repeat themselves
in judgement after judgemnt, where each time
the client instructs his lawyers 'Disobey that.'.

Nobody know how the history books
will record all this new lawlessness,
how it will end, or what will replace it.

But whilst we all live through this age
of superlative crminality the little people
can only watch how wealth and power
makes the wealthy unmindful kleptomaniacs.

From Tech To Text

Recently there has been an uptake
in technology from the recent past
that has became passe with buyers
of what has replaced it, as tech firms
make needless changes to what they sell
to increase sales and beat their competitiors.

This consumer choice give me hope
that those who are taking up such old tech
might also rediscover the oldest tech of all
 - language and reading, so that old books
get new readers and editors who rediscover
and reformat old texts to make them fit for new worlds.

The Long And The Short Of A Smile

The time it takes for a smile to be shared
can be very long or so short that to comment
on the sharing takes longer to say than it's sharing.
It took Brian Wilson 37 years, and overcoming 
multiple nervous breakdowns, for him to get
his song suitr 'SMiLE', from it being written
and recorded in 1966/7 to it being edited, fit
for Brian to it perform it live. Such was the strife,
and the travails of the times that Brian lived through,
But part of the pay off was that the publishing rights
were much better for his patience with the waiting.

By contrast  it took the Danish humourist and musician
Victor Borge less time than his satires on classical music
to say to the world one of his most enduring epigrams
'A smile is the shortest distance between two people.'.