Your Halloween Friend For Life

Because for William Burroughs (1917-97)
when 'Nothing is true [then] everything is permitted'
- a phrase which describes to describes the present,
and maybe departing, President of the USA
who, whatever he does, is going to cast a long shadow.   

 

You Are Who You 'Own'

or who you depend on for your wealth.

When slave owners accepted 'compensation'

from governments for the loss of their slaves

it was not just the ultimate in property values

repeating themselves over the value of humanity.

 

Those compensated became immeasurably wealthy

twice over again when they invested their wealth

in the trade in goods from the countries 

where former slaves remained tied to the lands

where before they had been owned as slaves,

this time owned by the debts 

that made them indentured labour.

 

In completing this cycle

of ownership without responsibility

the new 'traders' in human misery

became the ultimate passive citizens

of where their wealth came from.

Active citizenship of where the wealth was made

would have meant the rich dividing their riches

among the ex-slaves who had made 'the traders' so rich.

No such investment was forthcoming.

The truest solution for all those once colonised

was an independence via 'The Commonwealth'

where those peoples and countries could start again 

to rediscover what being invested in actually meant.

Charity, Cynicism, And Self Interest

The difference between the worthy poor
and the unworthy as they were in the England
since the founding of the welfare state
was rarely one of self-identification.

However poor and dependent anyone was
everybody identified themselves as worthy,
as compared with the unworthy poor
who were always somebody else who lived far away.

But there was a guide to the difference
between the worthy and the unworthy;
the worthy gave to these shops
thinking their gifts, however worn and used,
still had enough life left in them yet,
whether such life was there or not.

The unworthy would be the buyers
of this clothing, the ones with worn lives
looking for life in the goods they could afford
which they hoped would have just enough wear left in them.

To always be the last to buy those clothes
before they were fit only for the bin out was a duty;
how else were we to hide the poverty of our ambitions?   

Are Friends Electric?

In old age you bet they are!
Because that is when stillness
means the need for a warmth
that comes quickly and to order
from outside of yourself.    

 

Sympathetic Magic

One habit I have s an adult that I cannot stop
is that when I finish using my laptop
and press to turn it off  I will wave it goodbye.

Logically I know I don't need to,
and the laptop does not care what I do
but still the idea that there is something live
that I have been interacting with
that i only know in part
but that part I must respect
comes from a scene I was part of
a long time ago.

I was baby-sitting some children
and their parents had set them
a video of the BBC 1950's series
'Andy Pandy' to watch. As the show
drew to it's close Andy waved goodbye
and the children waved back
I liked that, enough to want to
repeat it, with computers when I use them.

Who knows when they turn their screen off
what they are saying 'Goodbye' to? I don't.... 

Choice Vs Waste

When most of us imagine choice
we don't think of fifteen different brands
of one product on the one supermarket shelf,
all of which are different priced
with different claims made for them.

But when we want choice
that is what is what choice means
to the providers of what we want.

It is not what we need,
but 'need' is want cut down to necessity,
which in supermarket terms
would mean a lot of empty shelf space
and ultimately a much smaller shop
as the inflated language
of advertising and choice
had all the hot air taken out of it.

Modern Capitalism could not
withstand that for very long
before imploding. 

Elections Are Like Planned Accidents

Accidents and elections will be approached
with great caution by those aware of their own bias
and capacity for not seeing all sides of the event.

Those unaware, or uncaring, of how biased they are
will rush in where fallen angels would not set foot,
for not caring how heavy of tread they are
as they make their mark on their countrymen.

Elections are calibrated accidents
where campaigns are planned and timed
leading to computerised calculations
about voters and their values
which make the voter
no more than a series of numbers
in vast calculations by one side
and then the other
where both are desperate to win. 

I prefer real accidents where less reason
and less explanation are required
and there is much less desperation
and much less fear of losing.  

There Is A Draught In Here, Somewhere....

because for as much as going nowhere 
seems fine for a while
 a sense of destination is what keeps us alive.

The Point About Fake News,

and rumours about this or that party leader,
is never just that the story is fake in itself.

The point is that the story generates
further rumour and doubt
like a fire that, once lit, never goes out.

The oldest fake news that most people
half-know about is 'The protocol of the elders of Zion'
a patchwork of documents put together by anti-Semites
circa 1900 to suggest that the Jews, a people then without a land,
had a plan for taking over all of the world.
In the twenty first century it is easy to find.
Look online....

In the UK in the 1924 'The Zinoviev letter'
was used by White Russians against the Bolsheviks
and by the mistrustful British Secret Services
against the first elected Labour government.
It was a lie, but it was a lie that stuck
because of mounting fears around failing diplomacy. 

In the present day business confidentiality
and money that travels with ease and gets itself laundered
is what fuels present day rumours of which politician
is secretly tied to which government well outside
the country in which they are standing for office.

Who wrote the lie? And who did they write it for?
Which of the politicians enemies-at home or abroad?
should be the points that should be answered in a properly working free press. 

But by the time the story is that clear
neither the politician nor their enemies,
or the popular press, want to hear any more
of what was never even slightly true in the first place.

Owning A Gun Can Make You Insane

and owning one in a nation
that sees liberty and freedom
as growing from the barrel of a gun
the trigger may well be your straitjacket
and the thing that makes you as near normal
as historic mass racism has ever let anyone be. 

You don't believe me? Look at the conflation
of ideas of  'freedom' and the right to bear arms
in the present day United States of Amnesia
where the 2nd amendment is read out in public
and the masses cheer at the idea
of being being part of a militia
set up against the government they voted for
where there is no obvious means of reform
without defeat for political rivals
who can't retreat from positions
that they have adopted.   

How Many Elections Are Happening In The USA on November 3rd?

It is not just Trump vs Biden for president,
the following is a full list of candidates;
Jo Jorgensen, Libertarian party,
rapper Kanye West of the Birthday Party,
Howie Hawkins of the Green Party,
Don Bkankenship of The Constitution Party
Rocky Da La Fuente of The Alliance Party
Gloria La Riva of The Party For Socialism and Liberation
Brian T. Caroll of the American Solidarity Party
and last but not least independent Brock Pierce.

And in the tier below the Presidential vote
forty one senate seats are being contested,
with the Democrats potentially taking control.

In the tier below the senate there is
the House of Representatives
where all 435 seats are open to change.

Eleven governor-ships are to be voted on
eighty two Supreme Court seats will be voted on;
this is a quarter of all seats across the country
though these elections will take place
across only two thirds of the many state courts.

There will be twenty four local ballots
across the whole of the United States,
the majority of them proposing
the legalisation of marijuana.

Twenty five mayoral elections will be taking place,
and last but not least
three Native American Tribal Governors
will be voted in.
Total posts/positions voted on; 599
local ballots for changes in law; 24 

Where Contrariness Disguises Both Strength And Weakness

When we are sold something
we expect that thing to be the best;
part of the point of pitching it to us
is that it is the best that it can be.

That is what sales pitches are about.

And yet when I look at modern politics
I find the opposite; working the process backwards
from what they say to how their strategists might think,
what the strategists do is work out the weakest point
in the position of the party and the politician
that they are working for and coin a catch phrase
to describe it as a strength and make it
why the party should be in power.

Book Disease

Is nothing to be ashamed of,
though people will resemble
their reading habits, so it is better
to choose your books by the people
you would like to be liked by. 

 

Literally Speaking

Book are my best friends,
and the people who like books
also make good neighbours
as they share their experiences with me.  

Impulsive Living

Supermarkets are well known
for positioning some goods in their shops
so that when shoppers see them
they will unthinkingly buy them
as an impulse purchase, not reflecting
on how much the impulse came from the shop.

Would that such open impulsiveness
would strike shoppers more often
as they pass the beggars sat at the exits
with their worldly goods around them.

The poor are are always worth more
than present themselves to be.        

Signs Of Greater Age (47)

Where pets were once important
because they made us feel wanted
plants replace pets in the hierarchy of pleasures;
they are quieter than animals and vastly preferable
to bizarre demands made by other live human beings.   

Just As The Obvious Is Never Obvious

We are the last to recognise true savagery
when it is too close to us for us to recognise it.

Self Realisation

After much trail and error
I wrote a memoir
and I got to chapter 23*.
There I stopped;
I could finally see
that whoever was/is 'me'
I was very different
from who I thought I was.

*If you are curious about this memoir start here. 

1948-ish

Before the NHS*, before the war
'Peace' meant an inequality in health
where the wealthy divided the poor
into the worthy and the unworthy.
Where the latter were unworthy
because they disagreed
with enriching the already wealthy
as part of  'bettering themselves'.

Meanwhile in America
'good health' meant buying insurance
where the insurers and the hospitals
were a powerful cartel who held their customers
by where they hurt most-either the wallet or the body.
Hospital and employer based insurance
were there to be had from the 1920's
but only from the 1950's was the coverage
anywhere near even partially complete.

In the 1970's attempts were made
at making insurance coverage go further,
but the worthy wealthy still disliked
their not-worth-paying-for-poor.

Only in the 21st century
was limited care made to seem
anything like fully affordable.

As of  now a Covid test can cost
anything from $20 to $850
depending on where you live,
and still it probably
does not have to be
100% accurate. 

*Founded 1st July 1948.     

Smart Phones

are Tamagotchis for adults
the hand held 'electronic pet'
that demands to be fed
where in the process of feeding it's
ever expanding capacity
the adult decline into the state
of continuous partial attention
towards their surroundings. 

Fair Sexual Exchange Does Not involve Robbery

I was raised in a highly Masculist society,
but in an apparently gender neutral way.
It was natural that whatever I learnt about sex
it was wrong and inadequate and that was just
what we schoolboys were officially taught.

The tall tales we told each other that hid fantasies
of sexual omniscience that were thoroughly toxic,
as the actions of some boys on each other proved.
 
In a media as sexist as the one I was fed by
the media were what took away our virginity most-
it was the hammer that posed as mirror
smashing young minds into the condition
of feeling used and unable to wash off
the feeling of being falsely spoken for.

The best part of it all was finding later that women
did not need my sexuality as a hammer or mirror
any more than I was told that I had once needed
the media to be the same to me.

Nobody needed me to help make their baby  
     

 

The World Green Energy Revolution

has definitely advanced a notch;
heroin producers in Afghanistan
now use solar energy
for extracting the water
for their heroin production.

If only they could take 

their renewing-the-planet ethos

a stage or two further in the process

and cause more of the users

of their product to die clean and soon

of their habit/denial, which at present 

are accepted as a corollary 

to modern capitalism.

Then it would settle
the overpopulation problem as well.

The Brighter Life Is Not For Us

Talk of miracles and saints
is like talk of 'the golden age',
the brightness of the idea
seems enhanced by the distance
we are from when we say that it was.

No present day life could fulfil such promise.   

Weakness Seeks Strength

Whilst war is peace and freedom is slavery.

The more I hear cries for strong leadership
the more I fear a weak people
willing themselves to further weakness
as they seek leaders
who will make them more captive
through the temptation to pride
in the strength of who they choose
than ever they thought they could be.  

Some Warnings (2)

Never seem to  be observed
in time for them to be useful.

 

Two Nations Divided By A Long Distant Memory

Some English politicians still lean on the phrase
'The Special Relationship' when they talk of the USA,
but there is no longer any such relationship
and when the USA had 'special friends'
such kinship was never confined to the UK.

There was one though, between 1941 and 1945,
when the richest 'free' country in the world,
the head of the thirty allied powers,
extended its resources to poorer countries
to fight the axis powers, Germany Japan and others.
The loans went to England and the Soviet Union.

When the war ended
the arrangement ended very abruptly
much to chagrin of those poor counties
looking to develop from a low base
and the arguments about the debts
lasted for decades after.

   

 

Elections Are Like Accidents

Both can only be approached by individuals
with partial views, based on where they have come from.

I might well like what the English press
tells me about the president,
particularly when that same press also relates
how his actions are riddled with inconsistencies.

And Trump himself, in a moment of deliberate double-speak
might say 'I am most consistent in my inconsistency'.
to explain away everything from exploding trees
to beauty pageant contestants who find their prize
for entering is for the competition 
is to be secretly groped by the judge.

But if we think we have found
a good man in the shape of Joe Biden
we should beware part of being good
involves us admitting to confirmation bias.

Emotional Intelligence

Sometimes forgiveness
is a matter of emotional intelligence.

That is to say the forgiver
reads the character of who are forgiving
with greater maturity
than the forgiven
can read for themselves.

Some Warnings

seem to be made for ignoring......

When Delivery Is Everything

When anyone (say, a politician)
is described as 'lying through their teeth'
then let us get one truth clear right here;
Through the teeth is the best way
to present lies as if they are truths,
any other way looks too obviously
unworthy of anyone's trust.

'Transformative' Punishment?

Up to the eighteenth century
punishment for criminal activities
was both physical and visceral,
with burning, drowning, hanging,
beheading transportation and more
being some of the many ways
of keeping a society 'civilised'. 

Of the old punishments
only hanging remained on the statute books
of more progressive legislative assemblies
until the mid twentieth century.

Though the electric chair remains
as the way by which
to vent the older, more vengeful, urges.

Nowadays confinement in isolation
is the common punishment,
where how slowly time lapses
is meant to purge us of our crimes
and make us more virtuous.

But how can silence save us
it when, as many systems of justice
have eventually proved, 
many have not committed
any crime in the first place?

Duet For One

I have never understood
how 'traditional' marriages
of the dim and distant past
were expected to work.

I could accept the binaries,
one of each gender,
and the follow up agenda
of obeying hormones
you were expected to deny
whilst having a child
and becoming a parent.

What drove me wild
was where the male partner
expected to be understood
by those around him
without him ever having to try
to understand himself.  

Picture Set Of The Month - October - World Famous Recording Studios

The daddy of all modern recording studios,
Sun Studios opened in 1950 and is still a working studio,
now. For all that modern studios and technology can do
so much more than Sun Studios could ever attempt
Sun studios has the history that can't be bought
or recreated, especially with how recording has moved on. 

Sterling Sound opened in 1968 and it is a mastering studio.
It has an impressive array of digital and analogue
means of processing sound, Bruce Springsteen's
'Born To Run' was mastered there,
and the studio has been running ever since.

The Power Station, opened in new York in 1977,
for more of it's history click here.
 

Air Studios originally founded by George Martin in 1969,
read more about the history of the studio here.
.

Real World Studios opened by Peter Gabriel
in the late 1980's. He designed it as a uniquely
free space to be creative, much more
for other artists than himself.