Still got a Merc to fix.

Don’t do this to me, I’m trying to get this Mercedes fixed! Midnight news to get off to sleep. Northern Ireland, bla, Iraq invasion, “Sorry I must have misplaced my telescope when you semaphored ‘illegal’, or you may have been a little low with the left flag.” Etc. Then the morning’s front pages. A company’s advert for a job asking for ‘a reliable person’ has been rejected by the job centre on the grounds they might get sued for discrimination! Did I hear that right? Are you reading this right? Yes, apparently unreliable applicants might rise up in the name of their maligned minority, slighted by the suggestion that their unreliability be not considered a virtue. Surely only in the land of ‘Shameless’ might there exist those so criminally unreliable as to see it as a desirable quality and sue for their right to be unreliable. But no. Apparently we the incapable, irresponsible, incompetent, uneducated, unqualified, untrained, inexpert, ill equipped, unprofessional and un resourceful have every right to stand our ground against the ravages of discrimination. Companies foolish enough to ask for qualifications, previous experience and a reference, a sure fire discriminatory document if ever there was one, will find themselves behind bars under the law of righteous indignation. Do we need clearer evidence of our decadence! So News, stop feeding me such demoralising morsels, I’ve got a Merc to fix!

The Art of Dislike.

Art isn’t usually my thing, but I do like the art of disliking someone. A lot of people miss the point of disliking someone; they go straight to the irksome misery of it all and miss out on the craft, artistry and finesse, the shear pleasure of it. If you find someone you dislike cherish them as you would a gift that you might fashion a pearl around. You’re not going to change them by confrontation, by the strength of your argument or the bruise on their forehead where you nutted them. Just settle back and enjoy thumbing paint onto the canvas of your dislike, just as I have this evening been reminded of one of my major works. Tom Paulin has just been on Front Row. Tommy the Irish Bastard, as I like to call him, manages to combine an Irish accent with a mid-west slack jawed Cleatus. Where Cleatus might ponder each word in order for his brain to have enough time to arrive at the next one, Tommy P appears to be finely balancing each word in the context of some great profundity. Their processes are similar as are the results. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me feel to hear his first book remains unpublished, his attempt at play writing un-produced and his latest re-write of a Greek tragedy is being currently re-written by the director in rehearsals. I can hear the cringes of ‘cut that line’, and ‘I can’t say this twaddle’ as clearly as if I were in the front row. And him reading his own poetry! It’s like being water boarded. I swear listening to two minuets would age me two years. Every G o d damn wo r d s u c k ing the l i f e out of m e. Tommy, nothing is so profound as to benefit from long nausea-inducing pauses. Do you have laconicitus!? Or do you drawl like a drunken Texas retard for effect? I hope you’re beginning to see the artistry involved in dislike. Tommy don’t mind and I’m really enjoying it. He is NOT a good judge of anything artistic, his pauses are NOT good timing and his opinions are NOT worth the irritation of listening to. Nothing personal Tom.

The Mercedes Repair of Life.

You may be wondering what happened with the Mercedes bumper repair, and incidentally why I’m here writing this and not looking skyward gazing at rust. I read the manual. First remove inner front wheel arch cover. Bolts are positioned here, here, two here and one here. Though the car is obviously built to a different design I understand enough from the small, grey, fuzzy pictures printed on toilet paper. The cover has broken away from two bolts so no problem there. A third is easy. The fourth must be behind the wheel, which is on full right lock. No prob. A simple turn on the steering wheel. The steering won’t move without the engine on, which won't start because the battery is flat. But there is just enough to start the alarm going. Having had previous experience of this I go inside to get a towel to wrap around the sounder. It still meeps but in a weak helpless sort of way rather than its usual, ‘I’m being stolen, call the police’ way. I take out the battery and get my trusty charger, which appears to be undecided about the batteries condition, possibly not wishing to intrude on its pleasant slumbers. I get my even trustier volt meter which shows some volts but more importantly provokes the charger into rising to the occasion. In the fullness of time I will replace the battery, reset the alarm, key in the radio's anti-theft code, turn the wheel, undo the nut and find the bumpers plastic lugs have broken off. I will then lather the whole thing in Araldite, which won’t last but will get it past the unsuspecting MOT man. Until then I’m writing this and will no doubt have to continue counselling Mothermouse’s iPod on the vagaries of real life. (whos software seems to be written by teenagers who expect everything to run smoothly and go into flustered denial if it doesn't.)

Remaining playful.

It’s just struck me, after many hours trying to get an Apple iPod to accept itself as the iPod it is, never before imagining electronic gadgets needed therapy, that I have never spoken about my previous employ as a toy designer. There are many rules regarding toy design. First, never make anything in green. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s the young’s aversion to vegetables. It seems to take a good 30 years before they come to terms with the natural world. Before that its red, blue and yellow, changing to black, chrome and magenta as they move into double figures. But never green. Second, toys must be collectable. I don’t know if they’re born avaricious bastards but they sure are after years of pleading for Barbies and Transformers to add to their collections. It is after all natural, like our need for a never-ending rise in GDP. The fact that the whole world will end up looking like one big child’s bedroom floor doesn’t seem to deter us. Thirdly, the ratio of perceived value over actual cost must be greater than 1, preferably much greater. Thus a gold plated potato is far more attractive, provided the gold is so thinly applied as to not add to the cost. Fourthly, a toy should provide maximum satisfaction from the minimum of effort. It is a toy designers dream to produce a button that when pressed will create a full-scale copy of the Taj Mahal. With working water feature. There are others, like never underestimate a child’s ability to blackmail its parents, make eyes as big as possible etc, but these are less important. So the toy industry is leading the way in making your children lazy, acquisitive, facile and disassociated with things natural. And I bet you thought toy designers were nice people. But we do remain playful, which is a great asset.

Law of Passivity.

Now no one can accuse me of being sour. We put lard-coated bread out for the local wild life, otherwise known a bird bait by our four cats. (It may seem strange mice owning cats, but lets face it Jerry always had the upper hand) I even deleted my last blog entry on the grounds of being overly nasty towards a perfectly nice man who just happens to like the sound of his own voice. Well actually on the grounds of the pot calling the kettle black, but none the less. But from time to time something crops up that dents even my boundless optimism. Fifteen minutes ago in the car returning from Sainburys I heard a new phrase on the news. ‘Passive drinking.’ Yes we are now a nation of passive drinkers as well as passive smokers. I tried to conjure in my mind what this might mean. Should one not go slack jawed into pubs in case one’s open mouth catches inadvertent spillages? Can one absorb vodka through the skin or get drunk on the fumes from Newcastle Brown? No. Remember that or countries laws are designed to stop us doing unsavoury things unto others. We cannot condemn smokers for smoking, that’s far too illiberal, but if a passing other should catch his breath on our exhaust cloud we can be enthusiastically reviled; just as the Gegemoths of Jamouselem were smote unto their deaths by the Samarites of Ratstepol. So now binge drinkers, though they cannot be condemned for drinking, and thus ruining their lives, liver, driving licence and job prospects, can be condemned for offending the ears of others with foul language, puking on cats and fighting in taxi queues. This, it turns out, is the meaning of passive drinking. And now we have passive drinking we can have a law against drinking, the clear and indisputable cause of passive drinking. If we ever do have a flue epidemic there will no doubt be a law against passive breathing that stipulates no two people are permitted to breath when less than five feet from each other; a law that, if nothing else, will mitigate the effects of over population.

Even more joy.

Even more joy. We have a new HD box to go with our new HD TV. We too can now watch guys picking their nose in the stands at Stamford Bridge. Well actually there’s not much in HD yet. On BBC HD there are continual repeats of a dreadful game show with contestants dressed in silver suits looking like foil wrapped chickens. They should do well in the oven: The oven of public distaste and despondency. But I’m still coming to terms with my new improved eyesight. It’s like the early days of stereo when we first discovered we had two ears. And even further back when we discovered we could see and hear outside our local vicinity by the magic of radio and television. Back then ‘they’ made programs for ‘us’, but over the subtleties of time the ‘they’ has become ‘we’, the program makers, making programs for ‘them’, ie us. The balance of power has shifted. ‘We’ will give them foil wrapped chickens in HD and ‘they’ will like it. But I’m still looking forward to what’s to come. Wonderful close-ups of gnats genitalia, or game shows where people dress up as gnats genitalia, or even oven ready gnats genitalia. Actually I’m only writing this crap to put off fixing my Mercedes front bumper ready for its MOT. It’s cold and slightly raining outside. But with the help of my trusty reading glasses I will be able to see the rusty bolts, road crap and immovable nuts in full HD. The sound of my expletives will be in stereo and the pain and misery will be mine alone. Luckily Telepain, in HD or otherwise, hasn’t been invented yet. If Eastenders is anything to go by, God help us when it is.

Joy.

Joy unbounded! Interfacial has not left me. It was all a dreadful mistake. Himher must have popped out for a cup of tea with their really old comatose mother-in-law, ‘it’. AND interfacial is joined by Redsally! who, if I’m not mistaken, is an old comrade of mine from our Anthony Blunt days. Anthony, third and youngest son of the Revd Stanley Vaughan Blunt (1870–1929) and his wife, Hilda Violet, daughter of Henry Master of the Madras civil service, brother of writer Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt and of numismatist, Christopher Evelyn Blunt, and the grandnephew of poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, was a jolly fellow. (Isn’t Wikipedea amazing) Many’s the time, while plotting the overthrow of Harold Macmillon et al, would we spontaneously break out in the whole 37 verses of The Red Flag and remember Yalta and Potsdam. Yalta was Anthony’s Yorkshire terrior, sadly deceased from vodka poisoning, but Potsdam the budgie is I believe still with us, if greatly debilitated by feather falling bouts of eczema. Redsally would drink late into the night often being found and returned to her lodgings by comforting English bobbies unaware of her plans to establish universal ownership by the proleteriat. We were not though lovers of Stalin. Well at least I wasn’t. We were Marxists. At every opportunity we would spit in the face of other partygoers. Not maliciously, we just got excited half way through our cheese and onions on-a-sticks and volavaunts. Young and gay and in London. We could change the world. Those were the days my friends of Mary Hopkins, a song incidentally penned by Gene Raskin, who put English lyrics to the Russian gypsy song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" written by Boris Fomin (1900-1948) with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevskii, so it’s no wonder we warmed to its haunting melody. So Hello Redsally, lovely to have you following this humble mouse.

I’ve lost ‘interfacial’!

I’ve lost ‘interfacial’! My one and only blog follower has left me!! I’m taking it badly. No really. There's now only a blank space on the right where interfacial used to be. What have I done to provoke him/her leaving? Interesting we don’t have a word for the third person singular of unknown sexuality. Anyway down to the important business of slagging himher off. Lets face it himher is obviously lacking in loyalty, conscience and any form of common human decency, and is now probably shacking up with a fanzine twitter, ghost written by some spotty youff who plays with himself. But I’m big enough to ride the unfair waves of destiny and rise above the foibles of such lesser beings. Never the less I am hurt. And hurt needs a plaster, a means of protection for a while to keep the gremlins out. Hence the slagging. “Get thou from me thou turd” as Ben Johnson used to say. It’s emotional immunology. I seek the comfort of all you loyal reader friends. Let us rise up in a chorus of condemnation. Now is not the time to remember that I ran himher’s mouse over with a tractor, or was extra nice to cover up my dislike. Now is the time to consider new futures. I will join a drumming group. Lets face it Interfacial never really talked to me, never really knew who I was. We’ve been drifting apart for, well weeks, looking back. Maybe in time I will find another follower, one that leaves comments, frequent little notes of awareness that I will cherish. All is not lost. Oh and I’ve reached 25,000 words in this blog, not bad for a mouse! Oh and not forgetting Stiffdog. He’s on an assignment in China at the moment.

Sorry, you talking to me?

Out African dancing last night with Angelina. Her class is low on numbers and somebody’s got to do it, and I need constant reminding I am a body not just a travelling mind. She demonstrates a hip movement. She has my attention. I do hip movement. She demonstrates the foot movements. I copy. And now the two together. I become aware of a new sort of internal dialogue. Brain, “OK hips, go. To the left, to the back, to the right…” - Legs, ”Come on we’re waiting.” - Brain, “I’m just doing the hips.” - Legs, “If we don’t start soon well be too late.” - Brain, “Look I, oh alright then, left foot forward.” - Legs, “too late, try later.” - Hips, “Where’ve you gone? Don’t bother with the legs we’re the most important.” - Brain, “What, oh, right, to the front, right foot back.” - Hips, “We can’t do right foot back, we’re hips.” - Brain, “No legs.” - Legs, “Sorry were you talking to us?” And so on. Angelina, “And now the arms.” – Brain,”Nooooo!!!” It’s these situations that make me realise how distant my brain and body are, hardly on speaking terms, where Angelina’s are lovers laughing in coupling unison. I refocus on Angelina’s bottom for tips. Angelina is Portuguese but the colour of Africa, full of clear infectious energy undaunted by just two in her class tonight. It’s this I want some of as much as the dance moves. Even when I’m playing in front of an audience I almost deliberately refuse to have a commanding presence. I’m just there to listen to if you’re interested. It’s my defence. I can’t take the risk. This supposed virtue of considerate modesty is just protection against me falling flat on my face. I find it’s always worth looking at one’s virtues in these terms; what fear are they covering? Anyway once my body learns the moves my brain will just sit back with a smile and say “Look at me, I’m dancing”, and my body will reply, “Sorry, were you talking to me? I’m too busy enjoying myself.”

Save Steven Baldwin.

Are the great British public cute/perverse/malevolent enough to ‘not’ vote Steven Baldwin out of the Big Brother house? Would we really like to see a rabid Christian melt like a Barbie doll in the fires of hell? Well hard to tell, hard to tell. I enjoyed the first half hour as their celebrity status fell from them by the mere fact they mostly didn’t know who each other was. “So you’re famous for what exactly?” That dispensed with they fell back on who they believe themselves to be as we all do. But right from the start Steven was different. He was on a mission. He had a plan. He would use the platform of BB to spread the message, with the help of his Bible, which, as books aren’t allowed, must be considered as a non-book by BB. Even Vinie Jones plumped for re-reading the BB handbook three times a day rather than open its pages. Maybe Steven has a cunning plot, a bomb concealed in it knowing no one would ever open it but him. But luckily, or not, there’s enough left for him to quote from at every opportunity. He’s the sort of guy who will sit beside you on the tube and ask if you’ve read Leviticus, chapter 3, verse 7. If you say no he will pity you and if you voice no interest he will open his book and, BOOM. Heaven and hell get one extra person, which kind of cancel each other out in the second leg replay. Anyway Steven is finding it difficult. He’s in a carriage of non-believers. He has tried his best and failed the Lord. Last night, with a strange look of sinister glee he glared at one of his fellow passengers and said, “The joke is on you my friend, the joke is on you”, as he no doubt considered the contents of his bible. Ah, book learning. I once suggested to a university lecturer that students should not go there to learn but rather object. Objecting is what turns beliefs into knowings. Read it, learn it, believe it, is the work of an idle mind, it gives rise to idols. So either keep Steven in and watch his idol's plinth collapse or you may find him sitting next to you on the tube. Which is it? Personally I prefer Nicola's approach, "I love them all, but Steven not so much." I doubt she has a bomb concealed about her person.

Not filled with Glee.

I’ve just absented myself from ‘Glee’, the Fabulous New Rave Series hot from American TV. It’s Ugly Betty with dance numbers. Mother Mouse suggested sticking with it because it may have hidden depths. Well it sure looks like it! It’s already going down like a greased skydiver without a parachute. To our English eyes these are caricatures as uni dimensional as the original Superman. To imagine they have hidden depths is to confuse the plot twists of a scriptwriter, held in solitary, probably being waterboarded in Guantanimo Bay as we speak, until he’s written 3 series, with something, anything approaching the human condition! But it’s light and entertaining. No it’s not, it’s BOLLOCKS! This should not be watched by anyone aspiring to be human. It’s America’s limp attempt to come to terms with its 50 year ridicule of all us shmuck non celebs by suggesting a mixture of a nerd, fatty, ugly and cripple can make it too. So long as the real celebs get all the money they’re happy to give the no leg dancer centre stage, the no thumbs guy a spot as a card sharp and the fat girl a bit part in an anti cholesterol commercial. Of course the actors will be seen to have legs and thumbs and be perfectly formed as they walk the red carpet of superiority and assert their claim to the cash. At least Ugly Betty was just ugly. Now it seems we’re heading for paraplegic boy and grossly disfigured burn victim girl making it big as angels in ‘I’m in Heaven’, the Fabulous Even Newer Rave Series hot from American TV. Should we lap it up like a dog glee-fully tucking into its own yesterday’s sick or, in our polite English way, say “Keep your fucking plastic and stick it up American Express’s API? Seriously this is the stuff of emotional fundamentalism. Lets hear it for Ms Acid Beaver and her college cheerleaders. At least they have a chance of bringing down the evil empire from within. GW did his best but….

Ah Mr Reardon.

Ah ‘Ed Reardon’s Diary’, Radio 4, Monday, 11.30am. My highlight of the week. It cleanses the system of all the false hopes and razzmatazz of the rest of the media without dipping into the deaths list abyss of the news and the reporters barely concealed glee of multiple deceasments. Haiti’s trapped thousands may prove we are mere flies on the windscreen of earth’s juggernaut but to CNN it’s another juicy caterpillar. Ed will probably be ghost writing an obituary in Bromley as we speak; proof, if it were needed, that we all have to do what we need to to survive. Such a pleasant antidote to our hundred channels of sugar coated mirrors. I swear we’ll be licking the screen soon to get our extra fix of emotion. ‘Strictly’, lick, lick, lick, ‘Celebrity Big Brother’, lick, slurp, dribble.
Ed shows us life’s not like that, it’s more trying to climb a loose scree slope, like reducing a sand dune with a spoon, prepping one’s lawn with a comb. One is destined only to make a noble attempt, and that’s all. To reduce this nobility to lick-able emotion is to join Nero in his string quartet while our backs become unduly warm, and something more tangibly begins to lick us. Apparently snooker players are being encouraged to do little entry dances as they approach the table in the hope it will be more appealing to a younger audience. No doubt Formula One drivers will soon be seen contentedly sucking dummies on the grid and footballers playing with a Fisher Price Activity Centre in the dugout.
As Ross would say, “It’s all goood.”

Dit dit dah.

In commemoration of being able to see the grass in the back garden again I have written this song for you all to join in, to the tune of 'dit dit dah.'

The snow has gone
and I am wom
The world is back in co – lour
The sun has shone
upon my bum
and I am one inch ta - ller.

I think of spring
and all the thing
I want to do each da – ay
I will go out
and catch a trout
Cos I am half part ga – ay.

All together now, “The snow has gone…..”

Getting arrested.

I know I’ve gone on about TV before, how sitting and watching a picture on a box for 1,700 hours each year might curtail young peoples experience of doing things other than sitting and watching a picture on a box but something else just struck me. When I was a kid I collected cards of aeroplanes and cars. Other kids collected footballers but I wasn’t into football. My cards showed top speed, max altitude, armaments etc. I guess the other kids cards showed team, position, goals scored, that sort of thing. It palled once I started bike riding, building stuff, fishing, playing in a band and drawing. But while it lasted we were experts on Spitfires, Aston Martins and Aston Villa. Today it’s still about football and sports for boys and celebrities and soap stars etc for girls. They too have encyclopaedic knowledge of all these things, their career, past roles, sexual inclination, hook-ups and breakdowns, missed penalties and sendings off. Pretty similar really. The only difference is my conversion to bike riding etc took place around twelve. Today it can be twenty and counting. When will they stop reading OK magazine, watching TV and Facebook, and make the transition into doing real things? It worries me. This interest in ephemeral things and other people’s lives is fine but it doesn’t open doors. My mother never learned to swim as a kid and was then too old. Of course she got along without it but she missed out. Not learning to ride a bike is not life threatening but you miss out on that bit of enjoyment. It worries me if you miss out on all the real stuff you could do as a kids and watch a box instead. What are you going to do when you get older? Well I guess it’s not a problem because you don’t know about what you've missed out on, so just get back on that couch and enjoy. Gymnastics when you’re 35? Volleyball when you’re 28? "Nar, I’m OK thanks."

Shlock.

So what’s on the jolly old shmorgesborge today then? What has the shlockmeister got in store? Shmegegge? Well just another shlepper slapping Windows XP Home Premium in a vain attempt to pass some snow time waiting for Godot. I’m sorry but I still find Becket tedious, prancing around the stage, 10 foot tall, making asides to the audience of, “Notice how I am putting my words into the mouths of these noble thespians. Here in this apparently simple, paired down language is a profound mirror of the inane complexity of our humdrum lives.” Tosh. No Microsoft Office 2000, I think you’ll find tosh IS a word and I haven’t misspelt it! Nor have I mispelt ‘mispelt’ so don’t give me the little red line. OK. Where was I, Jewish slang, Godot or tosh? Well one of Mousewife’s friends is having cavity wall insulation put in because her husband has died. He wouldn’t have it. Any talk of cavity wall insulation and he would put his foot down. He would say, “No, I’m putting my foot down, we’re not having cavity wall insulation.” So now she’s installing cavity wall insulation over his dead body as it were. No disrespect but that’s what she wants. One time her dog chased a squirrel up a tree and then much to her and the dog’s surprise it fell out of the tree stone dead on the ground in front of the dog. Well a dead squirrel is no use to a dog so it just goes to show. Be careful what you wish for. I have a feeling Godot would appear like that squirrel, DOA. Such a disappointment. After all that waiting. So opportunities occur when things leave and when things arrive, it’s best not to wait. Which reminds me of a clowning course I went on. Head clown said “don’t force it, trust that something will arise naturally.” I can’t tell you just how hard that was for me. A mouse needs to be in control, have things planned out. But he was right, let go and you find yourself on a roller coaster of lovely surprises.

Chaos = 42.

Interesting program on chaos last night. Hard to know where to start. A steady progress in maths from Turin to Mendelbrot has produced equations that mimic chaos and show that chaos produces both predictable and unpredictable behaviour. Before this our Newtonian physics was only interested in the predictable clockworkings of our universe. And I guess before that we were caught up in the unpredictable Gods who needed the odd sacrificial virgin from time to time. Who figured that one out I’ll never know. I’m guessing the logic was women are less important, and those that don’t put out are even less so and aggravating to boot. So we figured out the unpredictable, then we figured out the predictable, then we seem to have figured out that they both come from chaos, not as random unrelatedness but chaos that is strictly governed by simple underlying rules. That life, the universe and everything has its own built in drive for predictability and unpredictability. OK so what does a combination of predictability and unpredictability give you? Complexity. Predictability gives rise to repartition not complexity, unpredictability and randomness give rise to confusion, not complexity, but the two together do. So in the fabric of everything there is an inbuilt drive towards complexity arising from a combination of predictable and unpredictable behaviour, both of which stem from simple underlying relationships that drive chaos. Interesting.
So back to our awareness of God. First we thought ‘they’ were unpredictable and needed appeasing, then we thought there was only one and that ‘he’ was predictable, if mysterious, and on our side, be it Muslim, Christian, American or Vietnamese. Now we learn that the driving force of everything is chaos, both predictable and unpredictable giving rise to ever increasing complexity; mystery that is both within and far outside our meagre understanding. Is this God? Fits the bill for me. It does not reduce my awe for its majesty and is far better than the anthropomorphic God my ego comes up with. Does this make me a Christian? I think so.

Scaring Kids.

How many times should us parents scare the lovin’ be-Jesus out of our kids? Or should we let them make their own mistakes, smile at their jokes, mmm at their observations and commiserate when they miserate? Should we treat them as friends, equals, fellow dudes and congratulate them for being mature beyond their tender years due, no doubt, to our excellent parenting? Or should we figure we’re doomed to failure and settle for just doing the best we can? Of course this includes loosing one’s rag from time to time as they unintentionally hit a nerve, but does it include cold, calculated scaring them witless, or even my father’s, ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you’ thigh slaps? We weren’t buddies then. Well maybe. But there are times when mistakes loom that seem perfectly acceptable to a young mind. Sex, drugs, speed are all great, with experience. Laziness, unawareness and mindless fun are all fine so long as they’re balanced with hard work, growing experience and the recognition one has to clean up afterwards. But they can all be traps for the happily wandering young soul that can take years to escape from. Now one can’t have compare and contrast conversations with those who haven’t read the book, one can only feign anger and say forcefully but calmly, “WELL READ THE BLOODY BOOK THEN!” or when the situation arises, “Don’t EVER do THAT again!” Fear has a chastening effect that gets to places other beers, sorry conversations don’t get. Sometimes it’s necessary, if for no other reason than that children will outwit you given an even playing field. My kids are eminently sensible, hard working and thoughtful. They don’t smoke or drink much and I’m still not a grandfather. Perhaps I overdid it.

Film Shooting.

In a desperate attempt to find something to do that didn’t require going out in the snow I found ‘Return to Castle Wolfenstein’ for PC and began playing it again. Armed with a wide selection of weaponry one shoots Germans and horrid gools and things. It’s years old but still frightening. Hide, duck out, fire, duck back. Save game! Run, crouch, select knife, stab stab stab. Select long range sniper rifle with silencer, lye down. Well actually I never found the key for lying down but I would if I could, fire. Save game! Kick door open and FIRE. I notice I’m a very nervous aimer, I could do just as well with my eyes closed, and my frantic running about usually ends up in a close up view of some hairy gools naval. Crunch, I’m dead, back to beginning. Hence ‘save game’ is my mainstay of success.

As another distraction last night I watched ‘No Country for Old Men’, a Cohen Brother’s film in which a psycho killer shoots people. You could tell he was psycho from his face not the acting. How that guy ever got through acting school and made it into a Cohen Brother’s film I’ll never know. I’m guessing he bumped off the teacher and made the brothers an offer they couldn’t refuse. His little red dot went straight from head to head, groin and gut at will. No shilly-shallying with the curtains, rug, bedside light, chest of drawers for him. And whoever gave him that haircut didn’t help. He was one bad dude, unlike the Big Labowski dude. But after my hours in Castle Wolfenstein I have realised one has to be cool in these situations to be effective. One cannot be troubled by concerns of morality or compassion. Simply go for the head shot and press the left mouse button. Hitting the lying down key must be child’s play to him. Just pick off unsuspecting bystanders with cold, calculating precision whilst holding down the ‘No remorse’ key. Now, if I had a real gun, I’d be much better prepared because I know where all the keys are. I wonder if it’s not too late to go to acting school?

Forest Gump.

Fifteen years ago I watched Forest Gump and again last night. It is America’s simple incoherent heart struggling to express itself about recent US history. Watching it it’s hard to not sense one’s own heart rising in unison. It knows nothing of ideals or morals, intrigue and duplicity; it knows only what love requires it to do, and Forest does it as an arrow flies. So what might he be doing now and in the interim? In the 80's he might have stumbled over a group of therapists. As they each expounded the benefits of their own particular model he would take it all in and express it in his uniquely simple, direct way. He would rise to prominence as a person of great congruence and empathy. On 9/11 he would save many lives yet be untouched by the ideologies of terrorists and America’s fearful reaction to them. He would be honoured for his bravery. He would find himself in Iraq captured and talking to Osama Ben Laden. They would have more in common than expected. Ben Laden would connect with Forest’s simple confused view and possibly glimpse America’s heart. He would walk free from his captors and be hailed as helping solve the conflict in a way no politician or general ever could. He would connect with the pain of the planet and act directly, running from place to place and living within simple needs, and because of his prominence be followed by millions of Americans. And in 2008 he would go back to his old shrimp boat and just wait a while and think of Jenny. In 2010 he will become anchor man for NBC News. No reason.

A lecture.

In this millennium we have used the same amount of oil as we used in the whole of the last millennium. And we’re only 10 years in. As well as being true this is obvious to anyone with the smallest amount of maths. Over the last 100 years our consumption of oil has increased by a steady 7% per annum. We aim for steady growth and usually achieve it, and when we don’t, as in 2008, we talk of recession, even depression and believe we’re entering economic melt down. So a small percentage growth isn’t much to ask for is it, especially when the alternative is so frightening. Now remember compound interest at school? It’s where you add a small percentage each year and it begins to add up. Well if you add a measly 7% each year for 10 years you get to 200% or double what you started with. Hence whatever oil we used in 2000 we will now be using double that amount. In 1990 it was half the 2000 figure, in 1980 a quarter and so on. Now if you add up all those fraction, a ½ + ¼ + 1/8 etc the total comes to less than 1, so 1 (2000) + slightly less than 1 (before 200) is slightly less than 2, our 2010 figure. So growth is our biggest enemy and strangely enough our solutions are our biggest source of problems. Every time we create a solution, like electricity, cars, health care and better food productivity we create problems with pollution, dependency and an increasing population.


Last night we watched a program on the Obama campaign. He started one man with a small team of organisers. More joined them who shared Obama’s vision, organising and spreading that vision to people who also connected with it. As the campaign moved from state to state thousands joined, then millions until many tears were shed as they rejoiced Obama becoming president, each sharing a new vision for America. And within days he was left as he started, one man. Truckers went back to driving trucks, teachers to teaching thinking their job was over, they’d done it. We are entering a new era where democracy is insufficient, even inappropriate to change our beliefs in growth, productivity and consumption. It may be that democracy as we know it is only suitable for periods of growth; we simply would never vote for someone with policies appropriate to periods of contraction. Only by each of those millions who shared Obama’s vision enacting that vision individually can we create a new politic. With thanks to Dr Albert Bartlett’s lectures at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY  A must watch if you're interested in your childrens future.

I was Beyonce’.

If I crank the old grey back to sixteen and our teachers briefing before our all boys sec mod dance with the local girls school I recall David Culver asking, “Sir, do we put our arms round them?” An important question. There was a spirit of an old black and white war movie in the air. A couple of years before on a Sunday afternoon with my first girlfriend, her parents obligingly having gone out for a walk, I remember liking her as a person on the basis of where she allowed my hand. It was post war simplicity. As I recall not much dancing went on at the dance. At a university dance I walled it deep in consideration of what I might say if I might find myself in a position of talking to a girl. I think I viewed them as I might a Nicaraguan drug runner with a sub machine gun. I blame my mother who often treated me along those lines. And dancing was just as alien. The thought of standing in front of a narcotics criminal doing repetitive body movements I’d seen on Top of the Pops was just unappealing. But as my urge for better Nicaraguan relations became stronger I succumbed to doing the bare minimum on the basis that it was cool, but still ended up more Mr Bean than John Travalta. With time I became quite proficient at innocuous wavy-wavy but then marriage and children put dancing on hold for several years. At around 35 we ventured to a disco and despite being wavy-wavy proficient felt far too old, a condition I presumed one can’t really recover from. At 55 I found myself single again and in need of therapeutic adjustment and started a 5 Rhythms Dance group. To my surprise and enjoyment this was not wavy-wavy, more primary school playground jumpy-flingy-softly-springy. It was about expressing myself rather than fulfilling an image. I took to it like a duck. Suddenly my body was freed from being a puppet of fashion and it loved it. It quite amazed me how much it knew and how capable it was; just give it some good music and it was off with me trailing behind offering the odd suggestion, like ‘please don’t thump someone in the face when you’ve got your eyes closed.’ I’d had this expert dancing body all those years and just hadn’t realised. So at 56 I went to back to discos doing my jumpy-flingy-softly-springy and no one batted an eyelid, not the merest hint of age discrimination or suggestion of being unhinged. Last night at 66 I demonstrated to my wife in the privacy of our front room how well a male can dance to “If you like it you should‘a put a ring on it.” I was Beyonce’. I loved it and so did my wife.

The Big Freeze.

The big freeze of 2010 began in the earliest days of January. From the start it wasn’t English snow, it was the powdery crunchy stuff you get skiing in the Alps. Daytime temperatures were barely above zero and lower at night. Young kids and parents went sledging and teenagers took to their beds and TVs as schools closed. Everyone assumed it wouldn’t last long; we’d soon be knee deep in slush. But it did. By the 4th day gas demand was it’s highest in twenty years and stocks were running low. Stocks of road grit and salt also began to run out. When they did new snow began to close even the main roads, more people stayed at home and gas demand rose higher. On the 5th day high energy use industries were ordered to halve their usage and by day 7 householders were ordered to limit their gas heating to 2 hours a day and wear extra clothing. By the end of the first week most people had settled into a routine of sleeping and playing on the internet. New snow at the beginning of the second week caused havoc with food distribution. Supermarkets shelves began to empty from panic buying, particularly for electric heaters. Hospital workers began to sleep in staff rooms and unused wards, as did the essential employees of other industries. People began checking on their neighbours, sharing food and drink, and inviting them round during their 2 hours of heat. They brewed beer, made wine and cooked jam in the long daylight hours, and played games, talked, read books, drank and smoked by the fire in the evenings. And when the thaw finally came everyone was much more cheerful than before and because they were THE GOVERNMENT RELAXED THE SMOKING BAN! Yeseeeee! Every cloud…….

My Brain PhD.

My PhD is about the brain. In it I suggest the brain is like the lungs; it ‘breaths’ in and out in brain waves and contributes in a meta sense one’s mind, much as the lungs contribute oxygenated blood. Its in breath is the sensory perception cycle and its out breath is its prediction cycle. Crudely it plays a complete game of ‘20 Questions’ every second. It works in real time using basically one single process to provide perception, memory, imagination, and if you’re asleep, dreams. Though it perceives via the senses it exists in a different and isolated domain to its real environment. It does not function in an absolute sense but is constantly adjusting to its sensed surroundings. Now the fun begins. You didn’t think this was going to be serious did you. So how do you confuse the brain? Well you can cut off its air supply as in sensory depravation, in which case its host will go crazy. You can blast it with sensory input around brainwave frequency to mess up its perception/prediction cycle and it will suffer terminal confusion. Apparently tunes from Sesame Street are particularly good for this. You can slowly, over time, adjust its circumstance so, though it doesn’t notice any change, it will end up with a completely different outlook by the end. You can give the outward appearance of doing nothing while behind the scenes feverishly beavering away on some dastardly fiendish plot. See ‘Ninja Cat’-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSdShKOybSU You can continuously feed it repetitive banalities to, in effect, put it to sleep. You can ‘teach’ it to think in prescribed ways. You can mislead it. And PsyOps thought they had a monopoly on this sort of thing!

Comatose with Joy.

Currently reading ‘The Men who Stare at Goats.’ I got it for Christmas. In case you’re wondering the ‘men’ are US military PsyOps and they stare at goats to kill them. Not that legions of goats have been mowed down by this method, just one or two, and not that goats are a particular threat to the USA. It probably all stems from the 1920’s when Edward Bernays took the psychoanalytic ideas of his uncle, one Sigmund Freud, to the US and applied them to the propaganda of social control and commerce, making his famous quote,
"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?” Hence Green Day’s more recent quote, “Don’t wana live in Mind Fuck America.” So where Sigmund and Jung et al were trying to ‘un-fuck’ European minds, US commerce and its government were happily doing the opposite to its own population. If that’s what they do to their own God knows what PsyOps have been doing to Iraqis and Afghans. So it comes as no surprise that the US have pursued mental warfare to the tune of $30 billion under George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.
Unfortunately there’s a flaw in America’s scheme of things. No one’s immune. And it stands to reason that those who fuck most are those who are fucked most. Hence the higher you go in America the stranger it becomes. Not in a, “I think I’m Napoleon” way, more a, “I secretly think I’m God” way. As a result PsyOps believes if you poke a dog with a stick and go “gerrrrr” it will happily see the error of its ways. It won’t. It will eat the stick, go “GERRRRRRRRRRR” and tear you limb from limb. I did humanely fell a potbellied pig once. I scratched it just in front of it hind leg. It stood stock still in ecstasy for a moment and then fell over, presumably comatose with joy. After a few moments it got up and ran away. But in those few moments I could have slit its throat, disembowelled and skinned it. I could teach those PsyOps guys a thing or two.

Being Civil.

Do you remember the English civil war? Well it was 360 years ago. The French revolution was 160 years ago, the Spanish civil war was in 1936, a mere 74 years ago, and the Greek 64 years ago. We have to have very long memories to remember mega civil unrest in the UK.

Now I toured Europe last year on my motorcycle with a fellow smoking mouse. Eight countries all with the same smoking ban. In Germany we did smoke outside a classy restaurant. In Austria we had several lovely meals in local bars and rounded them off with beer and numerous cigarettes. In Italy it was hot. In Switzerland, well I forget, but in France you could smoke in proletariat bars. In Belgium you could smoke in the majority. On other holidays we’ve smoked in numerous Greek and Spanish bars.
And back in Blighty NOWHERE! Where in the UK the smoking ban is universally applied in other European countries the ban simply means the proprietor can implement it if he or she feels it appropriate to his or her establishment. The ban is society wide but its implementation is local and civil. Which raises the question, what is the relationship between the capacity for civil action and the elapsed time from the last civil war? Does a civil war refresh the balance between governmental control and the scope for local/individual civil action? More importantly are we simply losing the capacity to think for ourselves?
Interestingly it wasn’t the CIA, airport security, the department for Home Security, MI6 or any other government body that foiled the last two aeroplane bombers, it was passengers. Logic suggests we should use the resource that works, the civil resource, us. There’ll always be 200+ of ‘us’ on a plane sitting next to and opposite and behind a bomber well capable of noticing he’s on his own, shifty, scared, no luggage, etc and odds of 200 to 1 aren’t likely to succeed, especially when the 200 want to continue living. SB's would have to increase their numbers till the whole 747 was packed out with a Yemeni delegation of explosives experts going to a convention to make it work, which then becomes rather self defeating. Do we really have to be nose-diving into the spot where the Twin Towers used to be before we start taking civil action to reform education, the legal system, the banks, our energy usage, packaging waste, and allow smoking in pubs that find it appropriate?

Carbon Offsetting.

Hey, what if carbon emissions aren’t the cause of global warming? Boy then we could sleep easy in our beds. We could leave the light on and fly to Parga in sure knowledge it won’t make a difference. We could even revert to old fashioned light bulbs that light when you turn them on. Cows could fart with impunity. Ah bliss. Of course we don’t want to be profligate but it would be nice to know it’s not our fault. Nope it’s not our fault, it’s just happening naturally, nothing to do with us, it’s totally beyond our control. OMG! No, no it must be carbon emissions, it has to be. So back to carbon offsetting. That’s where you produce carbon and pay me for not doing. Well not actually not producing carbon, just reducing what I used to produce. Of course if I didn’t make any to begin with I couldn’t reduce it. It’s a bit like banking. But offsetting is a great idea for applying elsewhere. Health offsetting? That’s where I pay you for being poorly when I am fine. Lost a leg? I pay you because I’ve still got two. A bit doolally? £10 a year from Melvin Brag. Wealth offsetting. I pay in so you get a pay out. Salary offsetting. I earn less so you can earn more. Employment offsetting. You work less so I can get a job And so on. Oh, and sex offsetting? I’m not sure how that would work. Anyway, is it just me or is it getting hot in here?

Spring Phase.

I feel a phase of gentleness coming,
full of berry tastes, bitter, sweet, playful.
The morning milk of seeds resting in un-asking earth tip my tongue to spring,
the taste of newness yet again unfolding.

And new in love and danger both to show shoot green above dead last years leaves.
For this is no scheme of sense, no childish dream that crushed by treading circumstance can spring again in reverie unscathed.
This gentleness is bold,
it knows the run of being is a thread,
that life is given once to do or not its bidding.

That all that’s in my head is history of the browning leaves
that move not, ‘sept for pushing shoots.
So green in fear and red in zest I choose to rise to be the truth of trees,
to bear the fruit,
to ride the wind,
to bloom in sun for bees.

Calculator fun.

New Years Day. Well we all gave, “You and me, we can light up the world, …” a 110% arms up hammering and hip flicked to Beyonce’s “I’m a dinner lady, you’re a dinner lady. I’m a dinner lady, you’re a dinner lady.” We ate our way through several packets of Sainsbury’s micro morsels and emptied umpteen bottles of beverage which, being good green souls, we will take to the bottle bank along with morsel wrappings, coke cans etc.
Now a cava bottle weighs around 3lbs and our weekly bottle bank run weight is around 15kg. So say there are 15m families in the UK like us, that’s 225m kg of bottles a week and 11,700,000,000 kg per year. OK so far?
The specific heat of glass is 0.2 calories per gm per *C temperature rise and the melting point of glass is 1,500*C so the heat needed to melt 1kg of glass is 1239293 joules, which equates to 0.35 kwatt hrs. Thus the energy needed to re-melt the UK’s recycled glass bottles is 4,000,000,000 kilowatt hours per annum or 4 trillion watts (I think) or about 15% of the output of the Drax power station. Now the Drax power station outputs 22 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year so our recycled bottles accounts for 3,300,000 tonnes of CO2 or 0.5% of our total yearly emissions.
Enter Bottle Station. Simply take your own everlasting high tech polycarbonate bottles to a Bottle Station, dial up what you want it filled with, press a button and replace the cap.

Right, all together, arms up, “You and me, we can light up the world, …”