The Power

of pointlessness
never fails to amaze me.

Remember This

when next you have a hangover,
 by quoting it you can say you have
too good a memory for your own good. 

What Marriage Is Against

is a debate worth having.
If the measure were statistics
then more marriages dissolve,
and are stalled before they begin,
than ever before,
under the yoke of consumer choice.

Being a doubter I'd have to say
that it is against reason and friendship.
I would side with those two any day,
when what used to make marriage
work was a legalistic monoculture
supported by an extended family,
who sanctioned disfavour
through shame and scape-goating.

For family leaders 'Family' was a religion
which bound the led with it's lack of choice.
Everyone had to follow The Tradition.
Whatever the label of the faith in the wider culture,
from religions of the book to all the others,
without the binding family structure it meant nothing.

My father's place of worship was the pub,
and there were many pubs in the in the town.
It was a full time job to keep them all busy.
Were he to speak on the matter
he would have said, 'No pub, no drug,
nor any brewery ever started a war,
nor were any of them ever the cause
of domestic disharmony.
The blame  for all that should be laid
at the foot of all the local church doors,
for not doing more to stop those things'.

The Democratic Deficit

starts with government reducing what the public
needs to know about what governments do on their behalf
'to keep it simple and clear for all in a complex media world'
and ends with the voters taking in the reduced information
(now garbled in transmission) and reduce it further,
by making whatever message was intended
more shallow and cynical than ever it was meant to be.
Finally it becomes in everybody's interest
to control of each other through reduced information
to the point where what ever the statement
the stock response in peoples heads is 'It is not true' .

We All Get Owned

by what we least expect. I was naive
when the bullies came for me in the playground.
I did not check to keep within earshot of a teacher.
I must have wanted to be needed by them,
by anybody, and wanted for the bullies to be
honest with themselves about their needs.
They never were. I was equally under-prepared
for the lack of paid work, when I thought I needed
to be needed by a job for it to give me money.
Everyone said there should be jobs for all,
but it seemed that there were none for me.
It was too bad that what was needed from me
was for me to lose to them all, mostly not violently-
at least not with criminal violence-but lose
with sufficient vigour for all of them to pretend
to themselves that they would have accepted me
if I had tried harder. Now I am owned by another life,
one that against the odds has proved sustaining.
In spite of myself I am in a lasting relationship.

Lethal Routines

here is his website, including blog and other activities.

On Being Frequently Quoted

To be a good media prostitute
you have to be quite tart.