Pebble towers pt1

The dishes in the sink are piled high like pebble towers on the beach, tottering with a Schroedinger quiver.

I survey my domain, my flat, my cell. Someone has been here ; things are not as they should be, or at least, not as I left them.

The window : open wide to the world, saying “ah”. I peek, and see them far below. Workers. Scuttling like cuttlefish in the rain, cheap chameleon-grey suits adapting to their environment, unintentionally. By. Becoming. Wet.

Two sheets of paper, partly adhering to the table with cold coffee, flap desperately in the breeze like a seagull, be-mudded and left by the tide.

Except we’re far from the shore, such basic boundaries. We are in the greatest city that humans have ever built, so they say. Millions of us pouring over each other like glasses of water over a face fresh from the desert, rising ever higher.

I survey my domain, my flat, my cell. A gutted boat, an abandoned hulk. Mind the rudder as you step into the kitchen…it’ll bruise your knees as it tries to find purchase in this city.

This grey city … take out the colours ; less to worry about.

As I wade and kick my papers about the place I realise, like a bad chord, what they were after, and how little time I have left.

So I vacate, and a pigeon flap/slow-hand-claps me down the stairs. [The lift's broken again]

Bad God

Posting anew, like a pigeon chased away by a car, wings flap as it flew, like a cyclone in Myanmar.

Many folk dead; and the little one said : “Roll over, roll over!”

And they all rolled over and one fell out…

And as our papers are filled with ‘Britney Hilton’, let me quote your man Milton :

“Whence and what are thou, execrable shape?”

You infuriate me. With your ignorance and sheep-willing you denigrate the crying while perpetuating the killing.

And then you’ll pray. The most immoral act. No deed needed , no effort made, no action undertaken, no price paid for the prayer ; just say some words and hope and share in the hysteria. Why ‘actually’ do anything when you can bow your monkey head and wish for a lottery win?

God? If you’re listening…you disgust me in the strongest possible terms.

Expelled Exposed.

Expelled.

Culture wars. The Enlightenment has been under attack since its inception. Take a look at the list of books that the Vatican banned, it’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum and yep, it’s a pretty good reading list! Ban, lie and obfuscate continue to be the watchwords of organised religion. Ironic that the first country to enshrine the Separation of Church and State into their constitution are so besieged by anti-intellectual religionists.
In a few days a grotty little ‘film’ will be released into the world, like a bird-turd dropping into your beer. That mealy-mouthed homunculus Ben Stein ( who’s most worthwhile contribution to culture is saying “Bueller ? Bueller…?” in nasally, brain-dead, monotonous whine) is fronting a film called Expelled : No Intelligence Allowed. It is essentially a tissue of dishonesty, lies, and untruths in the name of Creationism. Yeah, I know, it’s the 21st century. Doesn’t seem to matter to these people.

Maybe I’ll write more tomorrow, suffice to say that there is something sinister going on with these nutcases…

Meanwhile, I’m joining with the reality based community by adding ” Expelled ” links in an effort to big up the google rating for Expelled Exposed, organised by the magnificent Eugenie Scott, herself interviewed for the film ” Expelled ” under false pretenses. I urge you to do the same.

Dawkins has a good go at the film here.

Bottle-tops.

Smile, and pick a bottle from the pile. A view from above, you need a non-slip grip, don’t approach with a kid glove. Double-thigh hold the container like I told you, use your Mickey Rourke effort-face and steel your soul colder…

…you have to evict this fella that holds back the gold.

Give that cork some tough love.

Bottle-tops…

…once removed can replace your T’s with glottal stops. A few more of those, when popped, might produce some O’s, slip into the glass and view the world through it’s silky prism. Each bottle contains a truism. Search for the prose contained, adjust your vision, and as you reach for the rose that grows from that final drop … you’re comatose.

“Everybody should believe in something — I believe I’ll have another drink.” W.C. Fields

[fotos from my personal cellar]

The pleasure of finding things out.

Death of a blog.

Blog, I let you die.

Try as I might, I can’t avoid your gaze : “You left me this way ” you say.

“Remember the day that I created you?” I shuffle nervously, sure in my guilt. “You got 30 hits a day” I say.

You quote Shakey : ” Enter his chamber, view his breathless corpse” …and I concur. And I am sorry.

“But is it not you, flakey with your verbiage and your version of the true, that warps the appearance, and obscures the view…”

‘Stop!’ I say. ‘How dare you question my ideas, the trickle of which adheres to this web of inter-fearance. I made you! You’re just a job-slob slogging at a bad blog..’

“Yeah? Well you wanted a techno-utopia…here it is! I’m on no hits, you hear?!No hits!”

Blog, I let you die.

Lovely French Yoda

“The Collector is an ongoing portrait of Christian, a lifetime collector who has “worked” the streets of his local town in Provence for the last 30 years. Every night, from midnight till dawn he makes a careful circuit of the town’s dustbins and picks up things he considers useful. These are added to his ever-burgeoning collection which now fills the three plots of land he inherited from his grandparents. The second part of the film revisits Christian after 3 years to find him adapting to new restrictions imposed by his nemesis, the town’s mayor. The film was made with the photographer Leonie Purchas.“

Wonderful short doc. from Martin Hampton. A perfect example of how documentary making is an art form…giving us an opportunity to view a subject from a perspective that we might not have achieved on our own. Comments?

Disclaimer.

So. I was cruising the inter-tubes yesterday wind in my hair, easing open the throttle on the old info-highway, maybe a couple of toots to passers by as I swung through the web. Suddenly the landscape turned to ob-scenery. I’d bumbled into someone’s poisonous micro-mind. A grand conspiracy nut.

I used to be intrigued by these people …it was interesting how far the human brain’s pattern seeking can descend into a paranoid extreme, slipping down the suspicion slide. Nowadays I suspect many are suffering from a legitimate psychological disorder. But this guy’s septic invective was offensive and I commented. I know, “Don’t feed the insanimals!”. Anyway this brainiac edited my comment to make it look like I dig his nazi bullshit, so somewhere ‘out there’ is a dirty little hate rag with my name on it. Lesson learned, and needless to say (but I will anyway) … “I disclaim.”

I’m not going to link to it as, frankly, it’s not worth fouling your browser with. So instead, a nice conspiracy parody from my main man Rives.

Derren Brown’s Sunday Lesson.

Heard/read a lot of childish nonsense about astrology recently, so here is a classic from good old Mr B.As well as being entertaining, his shows often illustrate how easy it is to fool our mammalian brain, and how often we fool ourselves.

Open source, of course.

[foto:Real de Quatorce,Mexico]

A window is an opportunity. An aperture into a different space. A keyhole to peek within a place, to puncture a film and swim in the pool revealed.

Our largest eyes trace a line to the Planck time and …surprise? maybe things aren’t as we first surmised, but hey, hasn’t that always been the way? Refine, keep your ears open, listening to the grapevine till the facts chime…chill whilst we distill the wine from this data-brine and realise. After all, we haven’t been at this for a long time…200,000 years max., a blink of a gnat’s eye. And since Copernicus? 700 years have flown by, my my … a pencil shaving.

But every window has a vista from the inside out, a shallow shadow of the reality without. Check your perspective, use your doubt…our world maybe just windows…but we can reach in and grab a brother out…

So; I use Linux.

[foto:Santiago de Chile]