At The International Conference

for the unecessary experts
for how the next world war
would be run, the argument
was a simple enough to engage with:
'How vital are we going to be in this war
for the future when the wealth of the few
being only for the few depends so much on us playing our part?'

The consensus was with the chair
when the proposition was put to a vote:
'We must be central to this new war,
our future wealth depends upon it,
And the longer the war can prolonged
the more we frame the future that follows after.

Gentlemen here's to our future uselessness.'.

Moon Of The Month - June - Strawberry Moon

The moon that is named after the fruit that is at
its most ripe, naturally, when the moon is full.
It is also the first full moon of the summer 
in the northern hemisphere, it will hang lower
in the sky than any other moon, and it will be
the second smallest full moon this year. 

 

This Blog Is Taking A Break - Enjoy The Intermission Entertainment

 

People Are Strange

In what they will excuse and what they will abhor
in their leaders-who to lead have to learn to ignore
their own weaknesses. Particularly when they know
how others will seek to draw attention to them.

In these technologically advanced times the skill set
for renewed military leaderhip is increasingly select,
transfering more rarely from one generation to the next
as the weaponry behind it becomes ever more complex,
whilst the morality of world leaders becomes opacity.

Between the jargon of the military hardware
and the morality of our war leaders,
it is right to be confused. That is when
to remember the history lesson that holds:
a people will forgive any effective military
leaders for their amorality in the civil life
of their country as long they seem to be
achieving the country's military aims.

Which is why modern wars don't end,
instead the modern media presents
the latest progress in ongoing wars
and failed negotiations for peace
as partial victories for self renewing propaganda.....  

Anti-Social Media

The more I see the personal agenda
of the new political class brought about
by the new parties in multi-party politics,
the more I notice that the new leaders
grift to raise funds for their lifestyles
via their higher social media profiles
the more the wealth they create comes
at the price of the social inclusivity
they deride for presenting as too much
like 'community', and neighbourliness.
Whist they make more money from
boxing people in with false identities.

Me? I blame the social media.....

Between Dreams And Reality

 'Over time you have to know who you are, who you think you are, who your neighbors think you are. [And know] what you are, in reality?

You must not pass into a dream, but accept your limitations and then express them in your life, in your behavior, your identity.

You must talk the truth about yourself.

Otherwise, life is just a waste of time, isn’t it?” ~ Quentin Crisp

I Am Pleased That Spelling Standards Have Been Maintained

Even as so many other marks of civilisation
and empathy towards others have fallen
by the wayside on the decades since
Margaret Thatcher left office.

 

No Bids

What if the US Government held an auction
for oil rights on land it historically held in trust? 

But no bids were entered?

Because, it is suspected, that extracting
the energy and delivering it to customers
in cities far away would cost companies more
then the present oil market says the energy is worth?

Native Alaskan communities like the Tyonek,
Dena'ina, the Suqpaig(Alutiq) and the Seldovia
who make up the diaspora of the 400,000 folk,
who live off the land, and along the coast,
of the Cook Inlet might well be glad
of the land being left intact at present.

But what will happen when the first bid is accepted....

Not Since.....

   ....the days of the slave trade being legal,
and more profitable than the dreams of Croesus
has so much recent American wealth,
and once-prized scientific resources,
been laid waste to so casually by so few,
and all to such devastating world effect.

The Video Game For One

The story goes that in 1925 Sigmund Freud, sent his book
'The Interpreation of Dreams' to America to be translated
from German to English by his nephew, Edward Bernays.
Whilst he was translating it, Bernays had his Eureka! Idea.

As he rewrote what his uncle had sent from German
into American Englsih, to explain how the dreams
of individuals could be coded, and commonly understood,
so an individual's dreams were seen as less than unique.
Bernays thought about how to recode mass communications,  
to make people live in dream-like states, beyond their means,
acting on signals only he controlled, that they misunderstood.    

The century that followed has been led by consumption levels
more conspicuous than could be dreamed by wealthy America,
for whom recrational drugs used to be part of the journey.
And it has been quite a journey, led by more changes
in technology than anyone could dare to imagine.

From the silent films of the 1920s thru the earliest television,
to the modern day mushy fantasies common to AI animation
is quite some set of changes in presentation for anyone to process. 

Now America has a president, who when he is beset
by unwelcome economic realities makes them go away,
through a media only he controls, thru which the public
can find the full measure of how much he is the ultimate
in being a controlling fantasist. The images he puts there 
exist to obliterate reality, as if American life is a video game
that he sets the rules for, where he is the only player.

Where we can read the results, in our news feeds.

'Remember Your Dreams'

the sign above my head said,
where by my bed I was also left
the means of writing them down,
before the day's thoughts erased them.

Music filled so many of those dreams,
most of it I'd shared with friends but some
fresh from my head, tunes I'd heard nowhere else.
Other times what came back was news reports
I'd read, on line or in the papers, when they were
the main way for me to learn about the world.

The best dreams would feature my truest lost love,
my one time dog Oscar, who in the short years 
I and my buddy cared for him we were the happiest 
three people could imagine being together. 
We made each other complete and content.

Now my days seem less engaged,
in a daze I do what must be done,
amiably but with less exitement. 

In This Age Of Overstatement

Where does truth have to go,
to be found, away from the shadows
of exaggeration, open evasion, cliches
that so easily block listeners ears,
and the wholely centralised media ownership
where the buck used to stop has disappeared?

I don't know, but seeking that place
starts with believing the place exists,
both in my times and in other peoples,
along with accepting, as we have to,
all days of wading through all that is not
the place seek, and slowly letting it pass,
leaving our search for rest in acceptance
intact. Whilst we seek the same for others.

The Poor Man's Work Ethic

When I was young the values I lived out
were the poor mans' work ethic of working hard 
to stay poor, and when work failed completely
doing government paid for displacement activities,
including further education, to remain active.
Whilst making my acquired cheapness work for me.

There the main purpose of my activities
was to keep me reaching towards the horisons
I could see, that retreated, the nearer I got to them.

I found my way out of this grown up version
of smothercare when I going nowhere slowly
by my being accepted by a world with no family
behind me, where my main experience of work
was the catch 22 logic of not getting jobs
from a market that was set to refuse me.

Nowadays I don't scrabble after money with any effort.
I live within my means and my greatest sense of reward
comes from having survived long term unemployment,
and the poor man's work ethic, with my mind intact.

Film Of The Day - 'My Dog Tulip' (2009)

 

This fine feature length animation is a film you can sink into, as I did when I read the book long enugh ago to be unable to say now when I read it. If you like dogs, and include in your likes unruly dogs, then enjoy with the certain charm this film presents, as man and dog find companionship in each other, against the odds, when both are rejects from normal society.

And please excuse the subtitles being in a language you don't speak, that is a small price to pay for having the original, English speech based, soundtrack......  

The Power Of A Handshake

Of all the devils whose hand, if I were offered it,
I would offer them mine to shake I don't know which
I would trust most. Which I might wash my hands clean of,
after, and whose hand I would set in a queue to make wait
for some distant ocasion where nothing rode on shaking it.

But my discernment tells me that he could present
himself as being of any nationality, any empire,
and could quote any government from world history
from the past to the present, that matched his bona-fides
with his verisimisitilude. Therein lies the problem.

When lies are made to seem so beleivable, and our media
buy into the pride of those who insist on being believed
-no fact checking allowed-then what can the public do?

They have to choose a side, and choose a media
in which their choice includes explanations, aplologies,
and asides that explain when their media will fall in error.
But apologies will be made promptly, to reset where truth rests,
so that same point can be found again later.

I will shake the hand of whoever apologises
in good time, and changes their stance,
after, longterm, we have had enough chance
for opinions to differ with honour. 

Know Yourself Whilst You Can

  This cartoon is from the mid-1970s and is either a tame satire on the ease of corner shop shopping out-of-daytime-business-hours where 'instant coffee' etc seemed new, a satire on the title of the John Lennon song 'Instant Karma', or a satire on the slow collapse of the values and cogency of the then Labour government. Any values that you had to 'just add water' to could not taste of much in the longer term. 

But I put this cartoon here because with the internet we have, fifty years since it made cynical young readers laugh, because in the 2020s our media is caught up in the midst of its own ever shifting fever dreams, where it focuses on one idea then another so fast that readers can't keep up with what is presently promoted as the next trend/the next leader, as the latest dream is paid for by advertisers seeking to sell the latest wares as if they were created - instantly! 

There is a better life to be had by knowing your own mind and knowing where, and what, it should not be led to accept. No product or idea is instant, particularly when we trace how it was developed. Yes, information is relative, and the relativity that informs it tells me that space/time gives us a choice of which space/time from the past to recognise. But space/time cannot be sure of the future: do your best to live in the present, as near as you are able.      

The Ignorance Economy

Is as popular as it possible to be,
just ask advertisers selling products
that are as familiar to consumers
as to make advertising rhetorical,
then view the progress of the gaslighting industry
as it eats through the media - where interviewers
on old media lob softball questions at leaders
who need to hide how old and tired they are,
along with their wealth and where it comes from,
as they seek to sideline all the questions
about popular on-line fraud, 'media influencers', 
cronyisn, spreaders of invisible crypto currencies, 
and popular white collar criminality that the public
endure as new gov't policy becomes, effectively, inaction.

How far does each of us have to go
to reach the bottom of this rabbit hole,
before we getting lost in our search?

Before we give up seeking
what we once thought, and reverse
our journey to where our bearings
were firmer, and we knew where we were?

How else are we to set a safe distance from the ignorance economy?

Picture Set Of The Month - June - Landscapes By Stanley Soencer

'Landscape, Gloucestershire', painted in 1940
by Englsih Sir Stanley Spencer (1891 - 1959).

'Beacon Hill near Burghclere' painted in 1927
as painted by English painter Sir Stanley Spencer
(1891 - 1959).

"Panorama, Wangford Marsh near Southwold, Suffolk"
by English painter Stanley Spencer (1891 - 1959).

'The Cottages at Burghclere' painted between 1927
and 1930 by Stanley Spencer (1891 - 1959).