........................................................................................ - a weBlog by Snowy and me.

Wednesday 31 August 2011

Language Inflation

Any advertising man will tell you
that anything that is worth selling
is worth even more when it is oversold
and they should know, by how much
they oversell themselves and their industry.

Tuesday 30 August 2011

The Secret Of Happiness

is knowing our own transience-
that is what makes for the lightest,
and most powerful, self renewal.

Monday 29 August 2011

Caution; Journalists At Work

The tabloid press are seen as benign,
but their agenda was always
to reinforce the immobility
of being born working class
and having low social status. 

Sunday 28 August 2011

The Life Beyond Contemplation

We all consider suicide
at some point in our lives.
But actually taking our lives
away from our being overpowered
by others takes a courage
that goes beyond contemplation;
it requires acting faster than you think.

Saturday 27 August 2011

Indirect Language

'Euphemisms are unpleasant truths
wearing diplomatic cologne'-Quentin Crisp

Friday 26 August 2011

Out Of Scale Thinking

The more the amount of money
that is thrown at us,
the less we understand
how its value is sustained,
compared with the value
of being a good neighbour.

Thursday 25 August 2011

You Can't Be Too Thin To Be Spiritual

Incredible? Man 'Survives Without Food' For 70 Years


Indian doctors are studying a remarkable 83-year-old holy man who claims to have spent the last seven decades without food and water. Military medics hope the experiments on Prahlad Jani can help soldiers develop their survival strategies.
The long-haired and bearded yogi is under 24-hour observation by a team of 30 doctors during three weeks of tests at a hospital in the western city of Ahmedabad.
Two cameras have been set up in his room, while a mobile camera films him when he goes outside, guaranteeing round-the-clock observation. His body will be scanned and his brain and heart activity measured with electrodes.

"The observation from this study may throw light on human survival without food and water," said Dr G. Ilavazahagan, who is directing the research.

"This may help in working out strategies for survival during natural calamities, extreme stressful conditions and extra-terrestrial explorations like future missions to the Moon and Mars by the human race."

Since the experiment began on April 22, Jani has neither eaten nor drunk and has not been to the toilet.

"The exercise of taking this yogi under the medical scanner is to understand what energy supports his existence," Dr Ilavazahagan added.

"Jani says he meditates to get energy. Our soldiers will not be able to meditate, but we would still like to find out more about the man and his body."

Jani, who dresses in red and wears a nose ring, grew up in Charod village in the Mehsana district in Gujarat. He claims to have been blessed by a goddess when he was aged eight, which has enabled him to survive without sustenance.

Wednesday 24 August 2011

The Taste Of Lost Arguments

When courtesy sours
from politeness into deference, 
extracted through implied threat,
then however logical agreement
might be, it will always taste of humbug
.

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Humility Through Learning

'Just because some of us can read
and write and do a little math
that does not mean that we deserve
to conquer the universe'-Kurt Vonnegut


Monday 22 August 2011

The Currency Of Being And Thought

St Paul said that 
'the love of money is the root of all evil.'.
His opinions on the practical uses
for money went unrecorded. 

He would agree with me
that the distance from 
'Evil be to him who evil thinks'*
to simply 'Evil be'
is shorter than we think.

Gloria Mundi Sic Transit.

*HONI SOIT Q MAL Y PENSE in medieval French,
it was inscribed on pre-decimal, Carolingian, coinage
£.s.d. in the United Kingdom since the middle ages.
On the 15th of February 1971 decimal coinage
became the currency and the phrase rarely appeared again. 





Sunday 21 August 2011

Car Crash Turbo-Poetry

The car crash economics
of Cynics Inc,
fuelled by self belief
and schadenfraude,
howl against the laws
that they have not yet bought
and corrupted.

The best the poor can do
to confound the fears
in which the rich invest,
is to endure, and not riot that often.

Saturday 20 August 2011

When The 'Almost' Speaks Most Loudly

As a non-member of a non-society
whose most dynamic industry 
is producing evasions of being,
may is I am almost glad to be here?

Wherever 'here' is...

Friday 19 August 2011

Thursday 18 August 2011

Do I Want To Meet Reality Today?

With solipsism we act, or we don't act,
as if our thoughts are our greatest strength.
Sometimes we might be right. 

Whatever we do with our solipsism
it  can't withstand a meeting with reality. 


Wednesday 17 August 2011

Tuesday 16 August 2011

Life In Blameland

The fall; the presumption
in the hindsight of faith
of a once unmeasurable
prelapsarian utopia?

Or Satan's literally once
only closing-down sale
of universal innocence
to the most cynical bidder-himself?

The choice is ours, as long as Eve
and women-kind do not take the blame
for us having choices we are saddled with.
Women-kind are half of human kind
thy deserve better than being blamed
for something for which there is not the evidence.

Monday 15 August 2011

Pigs And Humans; An Orwellian Comparison

George Orwell wrote,
somewhat reductively,
'Advertising is the sound of a stick
rattling inside a swill bucket'.

Sadly, his quote demeans
the sensitivity of pigs.
Though it is accurate
about the vast expanse
of human passivity.

Sunday 14 August 2011

Consequences

Thinking the unthinkable is all very well
but undoing what should never be done
will always lead to the road to hell.

Saturday 13 August 2011

Where Does Theft And Violence Start?

If 'Shopping with violence'
accurately describes looting,
then how much more at peace with the world
was the process of making the goods
that eventually came to be stolen?

 

Thursday 11 August 2011

Reform Through Consumerism

In the midst of a riot
the Sky News reporter
shouted at the looter
'Where are you going
with that television?'

The looter replied
'I am taking it home,
to 'believe in better'*
through watching
Sky satellite news.
If they show this clip
we will both be on it.'.



*Sky's advertising strap-line.

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Edgar Alan Pooh

Putting the menace of E.A. Poe
into the innocence of childhood,
where it already more present
than we realise.