Found In The Stars

I don't mind anniversaries, birthdays
and other cyclic celebrations,
whether they happen four-yearly
like international sport, or annually.
They have become why we have calendars.
Though whether the days are for man
or man is fitted within the dates
is a worthy point of debate.
Comets and their tails are what I celebrate.

Television And The Movies

have always been about kitsch.
Radio also trades in images that fade with repetition.
The more reliable the ease of reproduction
and more increased the means,
and the more those artful  images
that promptly have to pay for themselves,
promptly wear thin the minds of those taking them in.

The BBC reporting on The London Olympics
has truly raised the bar on cliche
-to the level of being unwatchable.

Is It Real Or Is It BASF?

In 1935 BASF were major manufacturers
for the Third Reich and produced both Zyclon B 
and the worlds first tape recorder.
 According to the Third Reich
 this machine and machines like it
 were going to tape all of Hitler's speeches,
 for playing for 1000 years,
 so that when Adolf hit his high notes,
 even when replayed on tape,
 they would break glass.
 The pictures above of Krystalnaght
 prove that he had hit the right notes live, early on. 

Gay Pride Reaches New Heights

Or reaches a new low, depending
 on your point of view.....

In The Forthcoming Olympics

it will be my greatest pleasure
to witness on the winners podium
competitors from Vatican City,
Nauru, Tuvalu, San Marino, Kirbati,
Liechtenstein, St Vincent and The Grenadines,
The Marshall Islands, Micronesia,
Dagestan, Turkmenistan, Palestine
and most welcome of all,
competitors from South Ossetia.


Any country bigger than these
does not need my support.

Modern Industrial Food

with it's abstractions of science,
it's way of bending legislation,
and genetically modified marketing,
squarely aimed at children
-the rest of us merely get caught in the crossfire-
lends itself very well to the term 'Edible Science Fiction'.

Illustration by James Courtney, inspired by
 'Oryx and Crake' by Margaret Atwood.

Self Unawareness

Why is it that the people
who think themselves most adept
at telling others to pull themselves together
are the ones most apt to tear other people apart?

 

The Not So Socratic Life

Whether an exam result is worth
more or less than the printed certificate
at the end depends on whether the candidate
taking the exam believes that passing exams
is a process of tricking their way
past appearing to be ignorant
or whether they know that knowledge
is best when it is matured through slow ingestion.
The better for the self to know itself
as it is lived and shares experience.

When Plato quoted Socrates on the unexamined life
surely neither of them ever took an exam
in their lives and commend their followers not to.    

The Entropy Of Belief

Saints were once living people
who's lives became stories of being vehicles
for miracles and martyrdom,
the recounting of which became legends
(narratives with the reality removed)
the oral transmission of which renewed human hope.

The lives of the saints were later written down
and  finally replaced the gods as subjects for statues.
The life that was once more than the sum of it's parts
in the telling became in words and stone the hope of petrification.

The Fronts We Put Up

to make good fences often shut out neighbourliness.
Every night the sun descends on the fronts
we have erected, only for the following day
those same fronts to leave us shut in,
leaving others further shut out-
until we see what we cannot accept;
a cumulative dishonesty which repeats itself ad nauseam
which then becomes the retreat into escapism.

The ebb and flow of weather fronts is self balancing,
a cycle in which, dependent on the wind,
rain in one place means sun elsewhere.
In the flow of how we behave
rain from one person means 
rain on another, a monoculture!

If I were not so leaky, and full of holes
I would like to be someone's umbrella.

The Rolling Stones

have survived fifty years of each others company,
whilst enlarging the world's stage,
on and off, and on again, playing stadia
and selling T shirts, as befits them and their bank balances*.
As the blackest white men on the planet playing the blues
they love to share their bruises,
and live by being a public provocation.
They love breaking as many petty laws
and offending minor public morals as they can.

Do they prove in any way that the morals and laws
they break are pointless? Or does their dotage,
intact, point instead to how the life
of excess leads to the place of wisdom?


*More money is made from the selling of T shirts
and other merchandise than ever the music makes
in royalties, or from ticket sales.

Evil And Evolution

Edmund Burke said
"for evil to triumph all that is required is for good men to do nothing".
Alas, he could not foresee how as societies evolve
through technology the future would prove him wrong.

For evil to triumph in the 21st century
all it takes is for enough 'good people'
(everyone wants to be seen as good)
to set themselves tasks that match
their aspirations and for each act to be so slight
that it can only be seen as good in itself, or at worst harmless.
Because of the slightness of the tasks they credit themselves with
the effect becomes an active collective passivity,
where the individual good becomes a collective evil.

The Long March From Open Capitalism To Disguised Monopolisation

The ten brands/companies in the middle own the 396 companies on the
 edges. Few of us would realise this from the way the supermarket
 shelves look.  But if the ten labels in the centre replaced the 396 that people
 saw as they shopped then the narrowness of our actual choices would be
 exposed. We would see how much  modern (post modern?) capitalism 
is tightly led and cuts down diversity, even within itself. Like many
 people I find myself stunned with the range and choice of goods in
  supermarkets to the degree that I think at half my normal speed,
 but I suspect I am actually stunned by the covert
monopolism going on underneath the labels.

The Way The Wind Blows

Is it any wonder that modern art
is sold in great value and quantity
by a precious few and made by many
for nothing, when live and updated daily
on the internet we can see for free
maps of world weather of stunning beauty?   

Signs Of Greater Age (8)

1-preferring reviews and trailers
over the programmes they point people toward,
because you know the subject
from older programmes
and feel that the same ground
was covered better in the past.

2-finding that 'the chase is better than the catch'
now applies to pursuing your neighbour
for good will between you and them
as much as in the past it meant the pursuit of sex.

3-ultimately realising that where ever
you are going your journey
is going to be better your destination
and it is best to enjoy life on the way.

Selling And Being Sold

'Heroin is the only product you sell people
to, rather than sell to people'.-William Burroughs

He was discounting methadone,
the antidote to heroin dependency
which Mr Burroughs never escaped alive.

Dependency and selling conflate  acutely well.
Marriage is one state that people are sold into, as dependents.
Many feminists argue that women
were and are 'sold in marriage to men',
as if they were mere property.

In arranged marriages both partners
are sold into marriage long before the event takes place,
to the benefit of the the tribal elders
who claim control the young as reward for their longevity.
That the young are always young enough
to be manipulated, unawares, is the point.

Slaves are sold people too, and like drug deals
the transactions in which they are sold
are often reinforced with lies and violence.

For all who conflate being sold to
with luxury and civilisation, wishing
is the beginning of the sense of not having,
which is what leads to us all being sold.

A Scottish Landscape

'In Glen Isla'-John Duncan Ferguson

A Philosophical Question

Q-How many exceptionalists

does it take to change a light bulb?

A-Ideally none if the light bulb

is sufficiently exceptional
then it will do it by itself.

Did We Invent God

whilst overdeveloping ourselves
as complex multi-tasking beings?
God is being who is omniscient,
omnipresent and omnipotent.
Ontologically speaking
that must be the ultimate in multi-tasking.

In more deferential times
God used to be the person
with whom the most able people
dominated others with,
and preferred to be compared,
and take cover behind
when their aim proved further
than their reach.

Man may be the measurer,
and God the ultimate measure
but I still say my life is no more
and no less than the sum of it's days.

Sense And Absence

We are never more alive
than when we are
in the presence of a corpse.

Understanding The Weakness Of Indebtedness

'We don't know what debt is, the very flexibility of the concept is the basis of it's power. If History shows anything it is that there is no better way to justify relations founded on violence to make such relations seem moral than by reframing them in the language of debt-above all because it immediately makes it seem that it's the victim who's doing something wrong. Mafiosi understand this. So do the commanders of conquering armies. For thousands of years violent men have been able to tell their victims that those victims owe them somethng. If nothing else they "owe them their lives" (a telling phrase) because they haven't been killed.'
-'Debt the first 5000 years'-David Graeber  

Facebook Is Easy

to join. First fill in the form.
The junk mail arrives soon after
they spread your details to other users.
Time how long  it takes before
it seems like you are  feedng
some on screen tamagotchi
with all the bells and whistles
and it's need to be fed more trivia.

Watch as the junk spreads
and does for the online life
what Catholicism once did
to Christianity-turns the hope
of inter-connectiing above and below,
within and without, into combining
self importance with avoiding life.

Signs Of Greater Age (7)

1-Disliking fake jeopardy
as popular entertainment,
because of how it manipulates
the viewers desire to care
when really there is nothing
there to care for.

2-Looking at books
I might like to read
because of the synopsis
of the story and deciding
against reading them 
when the print proves
is too small to sustain reading.

3-Preffering the effects of caffine
over the effects of testosterone
and only much later realising
that was why I had lost
my taste for pornography.

The Truest Unpopularity

is having nobody to share with
about how unpopular you are.

Solopsism Is Us

In a recent Swedish survey the public were asked
'What sort of neighbour would you like to have most?'
The most popular response was 'One I would not notice'.

I like the platonic detachment behind that sentiment.
I would admire this distant ease more
if the means by which it were achieved
were as light upon the resources of the earth
as those surveyed wanted their neighbours
to be towards them.
The Earth is the most supportive neighbour
human beings have. Guess who
is the noisy one in that relationship?  


.

To Chew or Not To Chew, That Is The Question

The combination of complexity and aggression
observed in Old Testament story telling
is peculiarly chewy to Believers,
and indigestable to everyone else.
To both, though, the more luxurious
the the present day life the more
The Old Testament 'disagrees'* with us.




*From being young I remember aunts saying
that certain foods 'disagreed with them', as if
the food was had a mind that could argue back,
when they were the only ones to have a mind.
But the aunts preferred  to be seen as passive
and their food cast as the disagreeing element.

The World's First Committee

and indeed the first trinity
were the three wise monkeys.
The chairman spoke no evil
the treasurer did no evil
and secretary heard no evil
and the minutes of their meetings
can be found scattered in the debris
of every holy book, shrine, and religion in history.

Enduring Unpopularity

To be honestly unpopular with the vast majority
with whom you could never agree,
and instead be accepted by a few,
who are stragglers like you could seem quite sad.
But strength that is authentic will be well tested.
And each time it passes  it still means more
than all the empty cheer in he world.

Truth Decay

Progress means change,
change means technology,
technology means increased complexity.
Complexity is sold to the public
as luxury and ease,
built on apparently infinite credit.
How much is this ease
the advance it is sold to be
when selling hides entropy?