The No-Strings Society

The self made and wealthy always say
that giving the unemployed a hand up
only makes them even more like the puppets
of government than nobody should never be
whilst stringing along the powers that are
with legal binding plans for tax avoidance. 

The Stockholm Syndrome Explained

From here.

Kinky Money

I usually like thrift and efficiency,
but when we tighten each other belts
too much it becomes an exercise
in mutual bondage-to poverty.

Weaponising Maths

In Afghanistan, under Taliban rule,
the only education was religious.
But in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan
little boys learned their maths by the following method...

“A group of Mujahideen are on the front line.
Three of them are on duty at the checkpoint.
Each has a box that consists of sixty bullets.
In the fight against the infidels.
The first Mujahid fired 24 bullets,
the second 40, and the third 16.
Write the total number of bullets fired
and the numbers that are remaining.”

Sometimes there were extra questions
which if answered correctly would earn the boys
extra esteem from the teacher such as.....

“If a total of 19 infidels were killed with a single shot
by the brave Mujahideen, how many bullets missed?”

So far the ISIS approach to teaching maths
to young boys has yet to be revealed to the world. 

How Does Three Divide Into Seven?

Paticularly when everyone focuses on the centre which never holds for long?

Why Are Sex And Food Opposites?

With food the starter is the lightest dish,
a taste of what is to come, to be going on with.
A dish with which to put guests at ease,
the better to encourage conversation.

But in sex the foreplay is the greater part,
the extended repast that warms the partners.
Foreplay is what prepares them both
for the main course where many a man,
overhwelmed by desire, makes short shrift
of his lot, much to frustration of their partner.

The best folk enrich the event with music.
Combining the two appetites make the event longer. 

Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair

I first read the dystopian classic '1984'
when I was an uneducated teenager.
I have forgotten much of the book,
beyond how the prose style suggested
a life that was dusty, tired, and over-processed.

One scene that was not in the book
was the live broadcast of an execution,
the type of thing which inspires mass numbness
and a fearful and painful public indifference.
But inspired by the book such an event
became a powerful fantasy for me,
a fixation a could neither rid myself of
nor share which was part of me for years.

Now I know my fantasy actually happened
and not only was the execution broadcast live
on local radio 'because it is a news story',
but the method of the execution travelled
and was much used. Please listen about it here.