Great Marketing Failures Of Our Time

The cooking with Buckfast cook book,
in which this popular tonic wine,
the recipe for which dates as far back
as the1880's, is used in the preparation
of different fruits and vegetables.
Alas, the sales of the wine went up
but sales of what to do with it 
other than swig it from the bottle 
whilst on the streets, and leave the bottle
lying about after, remained stubbornly low.
Update; I should have known that the idea
of The Buckfast recipe had been been taken up.
Here is a thirty minute radio programme
about the gentrification through food
of this bracing drink.

 

Fear Does Not Need Logic

What fear needs is cover
to hide behind, as it thrives
on faulty human synapses,
to drive their owners
to new levels of in(s)anity.

If there is reason in the cover
that it uses, that does not validate,
or invalidate, the use of reason;
it gives reason a bad reputation. 

Communal Disbelief

I would believe in community more
if I knew what it was for,
as it is, 'communities' seems to exist 
for the tabloid press
to make up stories about
which feed back to their readers
the worst in myth and misanthropy.

Instructions For Heavenly Objects

 

Short Term Relief

I was relieved when I read
in the broadsheet press
'Covid destroys tourism',
the story may not be new;
tourism has always destroyed
much more than it ever built up
and there had to be an exit from that,
somehow. But I had felt hard pressed
to find the upsides to what,
generally, is a bad situation.

Bad as it is,
the virus is more honest
than what it has destroyed.

Hugging Trees

was not a joke, nor was it lies
told by closed mind urbanites,
to diminish the impact
of the nascent hippie movements
that was mushrooming
underneath parents feet
in the small towns across England.

The original tree huggers,
were women in Northern India
who lived on the margins;
they were poor and depended
on the trees for how they lived.

They did not hug the trees
for the sake of it, but to save
themselves from an even greater
marginalisation and poverty,
as the male idea of the future
threatened not just them
and their dependents
and what they depended on.

They were tough women
who like most tough women
in a male centred world
whose strength and determination
was always being underestimated.   

Be Yourself Tonight

Call me shallow if you want to,
but when I hear the word 'deep'
as it is applied to relationships
I am unsure about how apt it is
for saying how we are for each other.

I have seen possessive people
'deepen' their relationships with others
where the other party does not see
how they are slowly being remade
to be the person their possessor
would like them to be. It scares me.

I like people enough
to not want to possess them,
but rather help them
to be more themselves,
as I hope they will do for me.   

Mis/communications

When did free speech became costly lies?
Long before twitter WhatsApp and Instagram

and other 'touch me not' long distance methods
of impersonating ourselves where what we say
is often 'in emit mode' only; any try for mutuality
only results in more 'emit mode only' communications.

The best solution is to meet to share a meal,
and enjoy eating out and the conversations
that comes with it where part of what you pay for is
not having to the think 'I will have to wash up later;

this helps us reflect more on what was shared after.

.

For Pessimists

Evolution is either 'a false science',
which leads to a false sense
of the world around us
and our place in it.

or.....

The news is real news is that bad,
that the narcissism of non-news,
and news that is anti-scientific,
is the only way to feel better. 

A Soft Answer Turneth Away Wrath

Recently I went into a shop
to get repairs a bit of kit
that electronic in nature,
feeling that it ought be
renewable for future use.

I showed it to the staff,
only to be told 'I am sorry
we cannot repair your item.
From the look of it, it is old.
Other customers have asked us
to refurbish similar aged items,
from the look of it we know
that we would be unable to give you
the customer experience we would like to.'.

It is rare to receive
such a gracious refusal,
I left with the goods
I brought for repair
returned my bag,
feel strangely honoured
and curious about how to get
such satisfying honour in future.      

Brief Autobiography

When I was young I was a rock
hardened by being overexposed
to hostile elements that trapped me,
and bare of growth whilst in disgrace.

Now I am an island, supporting wildlife
who shares with other islands the reliability
of being that distant but reliable neighbour.

Anti-Government Ancient And Modern

The version of 'The Boston Tea party'
that most people are taught
is that the tea was thrown
into the water of the port
because the citizens wanted
to be represented,
they wanted to have an MP
because they all paid taxes.
This is the Tom Paine argument,
though one reason for Tom Paine
to be abroad was Parliamentary reform.
Many areas of the UK,
England Scotland and Wales,
that he knew had no more MP's
than citizens of the new colony had,
which is to say they had none.

Some tea may have been cast into the sea
to get the citizens their MP, but not a lot.
The truth was that the customs and excise on tea
were very high. This had made smuggling
a profitable and self protective enterprise.
And smugglers never pay tax on anything
and don't care about laws or representation.

So when the tea was cast into the sea
it was because the law had fallen 
into such a deep state of disrepair
such that nobody could lawfully say
why the tea had to go in so wasteful a way.

Modern tax evasion is endemic,
such that only the poor and fools
pay direct taxation voluntarily.
The biggest tax avoiders
are now the accountants
who run the square mile
of the financial sector in London.

The new pirates live by the pen
much more than they live by the cutlass
     

'How True Even Today.... '

When I read the stories and ideas
created by the great men of the past,
the writers and thinkers, and the rest,
what I want to ask is
'where were the great women
from way back, whose wisdom
was clear and self evident?' 

But of course I didn't account
for the bias in being able to write.
Then I get my second disappointment.

So much of what those men said
was engaging in the matter of choice.
The best were generous and inclusive,
but their advice mostly went unheeded.

Wise words are fine
but wisdom comes from listening
and then acting on what is said.

Why I Don't Have What's App

or leave my mobile phone on all day
when I am at home and doing 
what normal folks do in their homes,
compute, eat, read, and attempt
to keep their house clean and tidy.

I receive very few messages from anyone
and the idea of the mobile phone ringing
whilst I am on the landline
whilst I have paused my activity online
would simply be too confusing to imagine.

I would feel like my home
had become a call centre
and whilst I would take the calls
I would not know who
the calls were ultimately for. 
. 

Love vs Use

It is through using people rather than loving them
that we have refined the love of control, through ideas
like 'slave' and 'master', such that it is hard to escape them. 

 

Nothing Is For Free

What we get for free
is rarely what it seems to be.

What we get for what we pay
gives us more say,
but is often unsatisfying.

What comes free of advertising
does not come free
of consumerist values
-we are still consumed
by our own desires
through our buying into it.

Sunday Sermon From Jimi Hendrix

The good news is that the message was the right one,
the bad news is that it may be a long time
before the realisation of the message will be accomplished.

The Seen And The Unseen

In these days when face masks
are used to cover nose and mouth
in enclosed spaces, and in public,
then reading people's faces
can seem rather difficult.

Smiling seems illogical
when you know nobody can see it.

But if you smile behind your mask
where nobody can see it,
then you are more likely
to smile with your eyes
which people will recognise
to which they will respond to quite readily.  

'It Is Not Me, It Is Them Others.... '

It is odd how human beings
go through the evolving labels
of what they see as subhuman.

From 'slave' to 'robot' to 'computer',
the latter a term first applied to women
who counted what men set up
for counting/being accounted for,
typically tallying elections
where the candidates and voters
were always male and rarely sober.

Now we have a new label to worry about
'Lethal Autonomous Weapons',
computerised weaponry to you and me.

Perhaps analogue wars seemed less lethal,
though the dead would disagree with that,
if ever they were asked,
and they could give their answer....
   

Irreversible Paradigms

It is only since 1990's
that mental health matters
have been 'democratized',
in the wealthy West at least.

A new language about mental health
was devised where the language
is more precise, and it defines
a variety of complex symptoms,
that where they cannot be fixed
they get nearer being manageable.

Many people must have had 
many of these conditions,
growing up in times well before
the new language was coined.

The biggest symptoms
they surely recognised
was that when they read
any national newspaper
that was not a tabloid  
and their brain would not process
the reasoning the newspaper offered,
and that was in the analogue world
where arguments about life
were presented fairly slowly
through movies, television, radio,
and through the national press.

How ironic then, that when 
people could have a diagnosis
for their being slow to reason,
the media they had to rely on
became digital, and sped up.

But good reasoning went no faster
as the new media went ahead.
So the digital media pre-set
becomes the new tabloid-ese
where we cry 'fake news'
when we dislike what we read
or we detect a lack of reason.

We deny that we were always slow to reason,
and not just because of our varying mental health,
not that poor mental health was ever any help,
though improved definitions have improved us.

The fakery remains in us, in how we pretend
that we are the Masters of The Universe
when we refuse to be servants to the seasons
and do our utmost to reverse global warming.

I'm Saying Nothing

A well observed life will generate comments
from others, my life is well lived but too private
to generate much comment, on this blog particularly.
I am happy for it to remain that way. 

 

The Fake Newsroom

When I hear the phrase 'fake news'
I do not think of Donald Trump,
the most famous exponent of the phrase.

I imagine a situation comedy
about a news room which doubles
as a 'big brother' style laboratory
where what the staff say in the room
is funny to television audience viewing it,
who are led to accept that it is a fake newsroom 
where for the viewer the ultimate joke
is on the newsroom characters
who think that hey are real
and what they write reflects a serious reality.

What nobody except the writer appreciates
is the double puppetry effect in the writing,
where the audience are directly manipulated
through the manipulations of the characters.

Such a complex piece of work
about the manufacturing of news
and manipulation of people's views
has yet to be written, and when it is,
it can only be written once
and has to be written well to work
before the mass audience tire
of knowingly being played with
and the press try to reclaim their superiority.

But then again it is not for nothing
that there are very few TV documentaries
about the workings of the print press news,
and with good reason, secrecy preserves their primacy.

The Tent, The Urine, The Rivalry Test

When Lyndon Johnson became President,
after the death JFK, he had to choose a cabinet.
He is famously quoted, well after he left office, 

"It's probably better to have him 
inside the tent pissing out
than outside the tent pissing in.".

Regarding whether FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
was fit for the office that he would not be removed from.  

Now another Johnson is in power
in another country; he has decided
that Britain should so far removed
from the EU that it is in no position
to negotiate anything of substance,
thus letting the greater bureaucracy
of the EU take care of itself and the UK,
whilst UK pisses on it's own people
for not knowing where it is aiming.  

Godwin's Law Of Public Discourse (2)

Mike Godwin stated that when an online discussion
reaches the stage of one party calling another
a Nazi, or finding some apparent consistency
of virtue in some part of Third Reich regulations
-say their virtuoso book keeping skills-
then the argument has reached a level of absurdity
from which agreement cannot be retrieved.

But the same is now true for right wing
populist governments of a more modern hue,
as democracy and progressive government
seems to be part of a tide that is retreating
and government take more control
of what the public knows about them
as they put more public services online.

Tired citizens who disagree with the media
under these right wing led governments
find themselves unable or unwilling
to find good in what their government does
and find saying bad things is useless;
it does not make the government go away
and does not change the (lack of) reason
that is the principle by which they are ruled. 

Wars Don't Start Themselves

Nor do the resources
with which they were fought
come out of nowhere.

The early Crusades were fought
with borrowed Christian money,
supplemented by the sale of indulgences
and requests/bequests for the church
to pray so many times for the dead.

But from 1180 onward
the money for further Crusades,
and other battles in the same pursuit,
were financed with Jewish money,

By order of The Vatican
and the Second Lateran Council
Christians could no longer lend each other money,
at least not if they expected repayment with interest,
not even to fight Christian wars
waged by Christian governments
as fought by mercenary soldiers
since no government of that time
had anything like a standing army.

Thus it was when William of Orange
invaded England in 1688,
his soldiers were Swedish mercenaries
whose labour in war was paid for
by William borrowing from wealthy Dutch Jews,
the only people permitted finance to support
the usurping of the leadership of another country.   

Life Between The Ups And Downs

When The Lord so loves who he punishes
whither love where there is no punishment?

Whither hope without the risk of wrath
for unknowingly 'being disobedient'
because it was the only way of discovery?

  

People Who Fight Like Hell

to get what they want at all costs
will always get some of what they want,
but they rarely get it all.
What they will get as well
is their own hell, made personal
from all the efforts
that got them where they are. 

Monumental Insults Worth Repeating

for their literary qualities and brio
are few and far between,
allow me to repeat the following;

Karl Marx on Lord Palmerston (1784-1865)
the multi-titled Prime minister (1855-58 159-65)
so far he is the last Prime Minister to die in office,
a position that I hope will be promptly superseded,
by the present incumbent, to whom I'd apply the following 

'What he aims at is is not the substance,
but merely the appearance of success.
If he can do nothing [then] he will devise anything.
Where he dares not interfere he inter-meddles,
not able to vie with a strong enemy
he improvises with a weak.....
In his eyes the movement of history
is nothing more than a pastime
expressly invented for the satisfaction of Lord Palmerston.'       

When Seeing Is Disbelieving

What chance does any sort of belief have?
click here for a forty minute audio profile
of the author, from the BBC World Service.

Bunkered!

Billionaires are reported to be
buying up land in New Zealand
in which they will build bunkers
that will withstand 
the end of the world.

Don't they realise
that the scale of their wealth,
as compared with those with less,
is one of the smaller reasons
for the wrath of the earth to come?
And they will earn them a wrath in their wealth
that not even they will be able to hide from?

It could be worse though,
these billionaires could be
building 'world class' golf courses
with which to drink the planet dry,
to quench their rarefied pleasures....    

Anything But The truth

Roman rhetorician and teacher Quintilian (35-100 A.D.)
said 'A liar needs to have a good memory'
I would dispute that,
there are many other needs that if met
would  make a liar's lies stick
at least as much as a good memory;

1-having a person a charisma
that stops others questioning you.

2-being the of the dominant gender
in your society and never addressing your equal,
who might challenge you,
only addressing your inferiors.

3-knowing how to use anger in a controlled way
to stop your audience questioning you choice of words.

4-always lead conversations
away from who you are,
what you said and when you said it.

I am sure there are many similar but smaller rules
that when a liar follows them would disguise their lies
but I will leave the reader to think of these rules, themselves.... 

Picture Set Of The Month - August - Soviet Era Bus Stops

These neglected masterworks of modern art

exist on roadsides from the shores of the Black Sea
to the endless Kazakh steppe

they show the range of public art from the Soviet era  by giving a glimpse into the creative minds of the time.

The range of places represented by these bus stops
include Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Lithuania,
 Latvia, Estonia, and Belarus, 

Here is the website that will help you find
more about the bus stops and other subjects
the photographer has covered and give you
the explanations for photographing them.