Seriously, Don't Stop Laughing

Whether Kierkegaard also cried tears
for what the world should have been
remains open to debate....

 

Irony vs Nuance

American always understood irony,
it goes with accepting manifest destiny
with all the slavery and displacement
of the native tribes that followed
from that implacable self belief.

What Americans find harder to embrace
is all the nuance and detail in their history.... 

The Next To Go ?

According to media reports there are now less
than 20 known wild examples of this species,
the vaquita porpoise, with an unknown number.
  in captivity, who presumably don't breed
as easily there as they once did
in their natural habitat.
 There is an online campaign
to save them from the illegal gill nets
they so easily get caught in.
Find the campaign here.
By supporting this campaign
You may well save other species too.
  

 

Only Another Two Years To Wait ?

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II
has just celebrated 'seventy years
as the monarch of the United Kingdom',
'Head of The Commonwealth'
and the holding of many other titles
she has accrued over the decades.

Now all that is left for her to do is live
just a little over two years longer,
for hers to be the longest reign in the history of world.
Then she will have ruled longer
than Louis XIV of France (1638-1715).
The Sun King had a good head start on her,
he was on the throne from the age of  five.

However much anyone might want her
to break this record, they should remember
what it will cost those 'rules' over,
watching her declining health,
accepting her increasing immobility,
and seeing how rule by an ailing figurehead 
feeds into creating a new failing nation. 

Who really wants all the badly made decisions,
the broken checks and balances on political power,
and leadership by the best mediocrity
that money can buy which will come
with such a Faustian longevity?

People who want her to break the record
for ruling for the longest time in the world
should realise that eighty short years after his rule
the dynasty of Charles XIV was over;
Executions of the powerful became popular.
France became a violent republic....

Just When I Thought I Had Heard The Ultimate

The reality of how dictatorships
try to cheat reality has undone me again.

It seems that whenever President Putin
goes abroad, he has his own special WC,
less out some strange extreme of privacy
that has become an extreme of vanity,
and more because if any foreign powers
got his stools then they would analyse them
as the only guides for what they could not get,
by any other means, the state of his health.

I would not be surprised
that when Putin is in Russia
every stool was stored and analysed,
but the result kept as a secret,
from even the president,
who, like Stalin before him,
would punish his doctors
for not telling him
what he want to hear.

Work, Life, Balance

Covid has shaken up how society works,
never more so than with paid labour,
which when it is computer based
can be done anywhere there is the power,
the wifi, and the internet security.

Working from home,
well away from the boss,
is very attractive to many;
attractive to everyone except
the boss with no underlings
in his now self emptying building
which has less future the more
his workers work well from home
and make sure the work is done.

But never mind 'working from home'
what I want to see is greater social visibility
for long term non-work from home
where the unemployed don't even need
a boss who is based in some central office.

All the unemployed need to be justified,
by being paid well to do less
than history would credit possible,
for them to be creative, and live contentedly. 

Holiday Diary - Last Day

Friday May 8th The alarm on my smart phone went off at 23.45, I had not slept even when Anthony suggested I should. I could not stop myself feeling watchful. I quietly dressed and made sure that I had everything packed. I was outside the hotel for 23.55, where I waited in the sodium lighting with my chit from the hotel in my hand, my luggage held tight by the handles in the other hand. The taxi was white and it arrived across the road just after midnight. I got in the rear seat where I was dimly aware of  a young man driving and his wife was sat beside him, their conversation sounded like some minor disagreement in which neither cared whether won the argument as long as they had the last word. I enjoyed the late night light show the city had to offer. The journey took over in thirty five mins, I had expected it to take an hour. My luggage went through the security x-ray machine first thing as I entered at arrivals. I offered to show him my papers but he waved them away, suggesting 'Later other policemen will want to see them, not me'.

  The departures hall was pleasant, with some traditional decoration in the stonework of the walls. From the information on the electronic screen there were perhaps only a few more than a dozen planes departing that day. It was quiet, I looked at the post cards, saw that some of them were rather good but there was no way of buying any of them at that time of day. I settled into my half read/half dipped into book 'Bowie, Bolan, and The Brooklyn Boy' -Tony Visconti and read solidly from the start of the book and re-read passages I had skimmed before, until near 3am, occasionally moving seat to give myself exercise. 

  When I approached one policeman he waved at the check in desk where there looked like there might be activity soon. There was; my boarding pass got stamped and the lower half of it was torn off. With the boarding pass stamped I went back to the policeman who saw all my documents and let me through to another two policeman who between them were thorough in checking my documents, Covid pass, passport, boarding pass, etc. I looked at the food store and wondered about what they served, decided it was junk, as was the contents of the duty free shops-no character in the goods at all. I did wonder are these goods chosen for their lack of character, as if one can never show too much contempt for a tourist?

  The departure was on time and undramatic. I slept through the emergency/life jacket instructions and woke half way through the three hour flight. To amuse myself and tune out of the noises being made around me I tried to photograph the mountains of Morocco from the air with my smart phone, I am used to taking several pictures of the same thing in the hope that one of them will be 'the one'. When I download this lot onto my laptop I somehow doubt any of them will be 'keepers' but taking them passed the time, and there is always the delete button.

  When the plane landed I thought that I would be delayed enough getting through airport security and passport checks etc that I would miss the first bus to leave the airport, which was I due to leave soon after my flight landed, but I was proved wrong. The queue at the bus was long enough that it's departure was delayed long enough for me to catch it, in spite of my online booking being for the next bus. 'Thumbs up to good timing' I thought. 

  It was only in Belfast, two hours later, that life became familiar and uneventful, the slow blur of events that I recognised from before the time away.