Boredom News.

Life is becoming more boring, it’s official I read it in the Guardian Guide. Yes teenagers have been right all along. Whilst we of an elder disposition poopooed it as a revolt of the narcoleptics they had their finger on the failing pulse of society all the time. Music was the first rabbit squashed under the steam driven roller. Tunes have been reduced to what you can hum whilst paralytic and time signatures to 1,1,1,1. TV is now just archive material of the top 50 famous bits from reruns of program repeats and internet cat porn. And Downton Abby, the third series of which will be scenes from the first two cut up and reassembled endlessly to suit WW2, the miners strike, the Falkland war and the 2008 economic crash. Similarly ‘current’ news is the constant repartition of the same old political mistakes, murders and cats up a tree rescues. Newspapers in a valiant if misguided attempt to find something new in this iterative boredom resort to phone hacking the dead and installing CCTV in coffins in the vain hope there may actually be more life after death than there is before it. Even knowledge itself, which used to be mainstay of human progress, has been sidelined to the province of autistic geeks to which no self respecting normal should be seen to have any inclination and be more rightly involved in the astronomical price of Calvin Klein boxer shorts. But even shopping is now more trying than buying. The megaplexes of consumerism are now only jaded Disneyland displays of what we used to be able to afford, with the queues for changing rooms about as long as a ride on the lunch-loosing, ‘Flume of Oblivion.’ In fact the flume of oblivion is an apt description of our accelerating gravitational lurch into our chosen destination of discomforting dampness. Or perhaps it’s just me fighting against the onset of incontinence.

Don't mention al-Quaeda.

As supplied to me by the magic of PSB television the NSA (US National Security Authority) had been tracking al-Qaeda calls and the hijackers for three years before 9/11 but they wouldn’t share their information with the CIA, which in turn wouldn’t give any info to the FBI. So the NSA, who had no jurisdiction to act inside the US, had both sides of the conversation, the CIA only had one side and the FBI, who do have US jurisdiction, had none. So those that knew couldn’t talk to those that could act, i.e. 9/11 could probably have been stopped if they had. My brief experience of working in the US bears this out. Guys in the same open plan office working on the same project wouldn’t talk to each other in case someone else got the credit for their work. Basically the American Dream is underpinned by a nightmare of fear. Anyway GW Bush passed a decree post 9/11 that the NSA could listen to all American communications, not just those from al-Qaeda headquarters, which incidentally wasn’t the problem in the first place. So post 9/11 the NSA budget has doubled to $50 billion and they’ve got billions of US tax returns, shopping lists and love letters to sift through and listen to. Ah but they have super computers to help. Assuming your typical love letter won’t refer to al-Qaeda or biological warfare their computers are set to only look for special phrases, like al-Qaeda and biological warfare. So before you even read this blog Stiffmouse will be a marked rodent. Now OK I’m not very up on espionage matters but if I were some terrorist organisation I’d feel a certain reticence in using such incriminating phrases, I’d more likely use ‘a bottle of milk’, or ‘two packets of thinly sliced ham and a jar of pickles’ or alternatively ‘$2,000- working lunch (bill lost, sorry.)’ No, fear makes you think badly and shrinks your gonads; it’s not a good place to be logical from. So if you write anything on the net don’t for God sake mention al-Qaeda or biological warfare. Oops.

A Glossy Pair.

Mid shower I search with soapy eyes for shampoo. For some reason the manufacturers choose to put ‘shampoo’ or ‘conditioner’ as an 8pt strap line to the main title of what magical property this bottle will impart to your hair. It will enhance the colour, make it glossy, straighten it, curl it, give it body, energise its roots, stop it from splitting etc. I imagine this filamentous biomaterial would require a degree in chemical engineering to be able to respond correctly to all the subtly different mixes of ingredients in these bottles. Anyway I invariably get conditioner when I want shampoo which means these niceties are lost on me, especially when Fairy Liquid does a perfectly adequate job. I suspect this cornucopia of products owes more to suggestion and the placebo effect than anything else, it just means every flat surface in your bathroom is full to overflowing with bottles. I figure these manufacturers though are missing a trick. I mean we all have different skin and body parts, so isn’t there a need for ‘Glossy Elbows’ and ‘Silky Inner thigh’ soap, ‘Black Bottom’ conditioner, ‘Pube’ shampoo? Not to mention a totally different fomulation for armpit hair, or, think about it, do  you really want dull, lifeless straight eyebrows? Not when this bottle will provide you with lustrous, curly, full bodied ones with a hint of pink. We’ll soon need a walk-in wardrobe for them all, racks and racks of the blody things. And they’ll still write it too small for soapy eyes so you end up with glossy testicles with blond highlights.

C Day.

“So this is Christmas, Da da deda.” Yes it’s Christmas morn and the turkey’s in the oven, which is no mean feat for a mouse. I’ve had personal Christmas greetings from Homebase, eBuyer, Amazon and Screwfix and I’ve just finished wrapping the cats’ presents, (having recently learnt how to use the apostrophe after the s) which consist of a garish gold tinsel mouse on a bed of ‘catnip nibbles’ and ‘milk drops’ within a wrapping not unlike a French four cornered hat. I’m hoping this might win us £250 on ‘You’ve been Framed.’ Bethmouse is watching television as always: personally I’d prefer cleaning drains. I’ve wrapped an assortment of old belongings, books I’ve read etc, and things I’d like to buy for myself but opted to give other people because it’s nicer. It’s a strange time, Christmas morning; the one time in the year when one’s surrounded by food but when one goes to the fridge for a nibble there’s nothing to eat. It seems full to bursting of things that aren’t nibbly or nibbly things you’re not allowed yet. I’m secretly hoping for a Ducati 680cc Monster this year but it looks like I’ll be disappointed yet again as there’s no presents with two wheels sticking out the bottom of the wrapping paper. Personally I like celebrating the birth of an exceptional human being. If only some twat hadn’t gone and changed the name of his father on the birth certificate perhaps we’d all be able to lose the feelings of inadequacy, or at least know we’re only inadequate because we’re just not trying hard enough. 

Christmas Clean.

In our house there’s weekly clean, neighbour in for a drink clean, party clean and Christmas Clean. Christmas Clean is the M&S of clean, like your grandmother used to do it but with a fitted kitchen and no green velvet tassely thing on the dining room table. Things were polished to last back then; they had lustre and we have easy-clean ever-smeary laminated compressed wood pulp. But not with Christmas Clean. The dead skunk behind the sideboard we’ve been meaning to remove all year, gone. Those tenacious bathroom hairs that could easily escape from Colditz and travel to Spain without capture, gone. Lampshades, well actually even Christmas Clean doesn’t cover them, only ‘OMG I saw my long dead grandma in a dream last night and she mentioned the state of them specifically.’  So it’s Christmas Eve and I’m ramped up to extreme, some might say neurotic, levels of cleanliness. I can spot a breadcrumb at twenty yards. It’s like my vision has been set to micro; I might not see the elephant in the room but I’ll sure as hell notice if it’s brought in specs of jungle dung on its feet. And now just a few hours before the relations arrive. To be honest they’re not the cleanest people in the world, they’re just neighbours in for a drink clean, so they’re unlikely to spot we’re Christmas Clean, but we feel somehow morally uplifted by all the effort. I guess that just means we’re lazy bastards the rest of the year. Sounds about right.

Christmas Circular.

Hello to all you dear friends of the mouse household. We’ve so much news we thought we’d e-mail you. You can always print it out and fold it up. Well it’s been another lovely year. The childermice are at uni so it’s just me and Mothermouse rattling round our mansion. Only joking. But that’s no reason why she should keep banging on about it being too bloody cold. Anyway we went on several lovely holidays racking up the old air miles. Actually we did drive to Sweden but the less said about that the better. I don’t need to drive five hundred sodding miles to look at trees. But Crete made up for it, especially that waiter who spent days showing Mothermouse the islands history, even putting her up for the night when his car broke down. They really are so hospitable. Oh and I’ve finally found a Penny Purple to add to my stamp collection; that was a real highlight, August 17^th, I remember it well. In October I managed to change the lock on my shed so we won’t have all that silly kafuffle over MM locking me in by mistake. I mean you’d think she’d learn after doing it so many times. And the thing with the neighbours has finally blown over. I used to hate all that pointing and swearing. Also you’ll be pleased to know I’ve agreed to never see uncle Berty again. I know it was all a silly misunderstanding but I think it’s for the best. Charles died god bless him. And we think the cat got Bunty. MM made a lovely display with the feathers. Anyway must dash, presents to wrap and all that while MM is out with the male voice choir. Love to all. God bless.

Appliance fixing School.

I’ve decided, come the New Year, to run an appliance fixing night school. Sonmouse just told me something like 30% of discarded home appliances are due to a loose wire or the fuse in the mains plug. His friend runs a charity recycling collection service and all his appliances come from it after a little simple fixing. Assuming a five-year life, a yearly household appliance replacement cost of say £300 and a conservative 7 million households that’s a yearly bill for over £2 billion pounds. If with some rudimentary knowledge we could extend their lifetime by a year or two we’d save nearly £5 billion pounds. And that’s from our net spending after tax. I will start it off myself to prove the idea’s profitable and then licence it to a few thousand other old codgers like me for 10% of takings and vwalla, an estimated £150,000 per annum income. And more importantly it will get me out of the house to the bountiful appreciation of Mothermouse. This is a far better scheme than becoming the freelance Monk of Woodseats, and the other one but that was just silly. STOP PRESS. And now as if to test my resolve at 9pm this very evening, little more than two days before Christmas Eve and with our turkey no doubt being gibletted as I type, our oven caught fire! Like real flames and stuff. Well Supermen-der that I am did I get my tools out and repair the bloody thing? Bugger that I got on the Internet. A new one’s coming Friday. Phew! 

Tears for Kim Jong.

Poor Kim Jong-il; snuffed it with his prezzes still under the Christmas tree unopened. So sad. So sad in fact that all his beloved people are crying genuine tears, well in some cases. Need there be any more proof that humans are not immune to Pavlov’s training methods? Would we not shed a tear if Cameron made a heart felt statement that he would forego giving his children Christmas presents this year and give the money to the poor? Or Bruce Forsyth auction his neck brace and support girdle for charity? Oh you guys. But what about Al Quida orphans or destitute Gadaffi supporter’s children? What about, “Daddy won’t be home for Christmas Lisa, he was incinerated by a pin-point accurate $5,000 incendiary missile guided from a Playstation controller in Nebraska using GPS.” No tears there. When will we realise and more importantly take account of the fact our cognitive abilities don’t extend to the absolute appreciation of anything. We simply drift on a sea of experience blown this way and that by winds of familiarity and habit. We don’t cry for Kimmy because from the outside we see the regime as criminal. It’s like the woman on a crime program who got some poor sap to murder her husband for the insurance as an innovative way of paying off her credit card bill. On the inside it probably seemed like a jolly good idea but from the outside…. Well the police didn’t think so. I guess the moral is to use cognitive GPS regularly so you don’t mistake a creek for the open sea. 

Spot the Carol.

Christmas stress

Christmas stress

Christmas all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride

on an overcrowded bus.

God rest ye merry gentlemen

The wife’s got all the presents

Oh Christ I have forgotten hers

‘You stupid thoughtless peasant’

We three kings of orient are.

Not any more you’re not.

Silent night, holy night

The baby's asleep and mi husband is tight

Pass the vodka and hang up the phone

Three mince pies and just leave me alone

I'll sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.

Oh come all ye faithful,

No come on I mean it where are you.

Rudolf the red nosed hedge fund manager

Had a very shiny nose

And if you ever saw him

It’d be on his yacht in the Bahamas.

Ding-dong merrily on high

The centre city pubs are closing

Ding-dong merrily my mate

Has just spewed up in the taxi on the way ho-ome.

Year 9 Report.

With due deference to a teacher of startling personality I offer, verbatim, Bethmouse’s Year 9 Report of several years ago.

Dear Mrs Mothermouse,

The acknowledgement of a pupil’s achievement can be measured in both academic attainment and investment of unstinting effort; the fact that Bethmouse has been awarded the ultimate accolade of meriting their teachers’ approval in that they have been awarded mostly all 1’s in the recent Year 9 reviews.

The term ‘all rounder’ has developed into a hackneyed phrase that for most has lost its lustre, but if used fittingly it best summarises your child’s achievement in that they have impressed their subject teachers so much that they have bestowed this high accolade in recognition of their industry and attitude within the classroom. That is quite an achievement.

This recognition is in no small measure attributable to the obvious care, and nurturing that you provide outside the ‘school portals’ and it is with genuine consideration that I thank you for all that attention paid to Bethmouse’s education and welfare.

I look forward with anticipation and confidence to the remainder of their education, secure in the knowledge that with all parties working together the future is nothing but bright.

Thank you,

Yours sincerely, 

 Mr McKeownmouse

Acting Head of Year 9.

Dream Your Enemy.

I’ve just woken up from a quite horrible dream. I was being taunted by my American wife and her friends. Please note neither my wife, who’s not American, or Americans are in my experience nasty taunty people, but it was such a wonderful example of evil I feel moved to write it down. Simply put it was the finest judo in the realms of emotion. This fictional coterie was bound together in pure intellect; they had no emotions, just their ersatz equivalents of mild disgust, consummate sarcasm, of self indulgent pity with the rank valour of dishonest virtue. At every turn my own emotion was used against me like a judo throw. The more I became emotional, the more I called for love, the more they deftly turned it to their advantage. It was a currency they knew only as a wealthy man might know sprouts, of no value except for eating un-joyously. Compassion, yearning, exasperation, desperation and anger were all eaten and turned to dung whilst I travelled inexorably along that curve towards obliteration. I’m writing this because this frightening experience seems to identify the nature and mechanism of evil, not as a dangerous emotion but as utterly lacking in love, that those lacking this facility will always have the capacity to absorb our common emotional world and turn it into dry boned lifelessness. Maybe in some deep forgotten recess they want our currency but without the facility to turn water into wine they will swallow the sea and stay sober. There is nothing to do but ignore, to cut one’s own need to connect and walk away. This seems a strange little Christmas tale but maybe it was reminding me of the importance of defeating the enemies of Jesus as well as embracing his message of love. 

And You Are?

This is a heartfelt plea to all fellow sufferers to come together and lobby the government to recognise our condition. Bad spellers have achieved it, thick people, people who find other people utterly tedious, and standard bearers for bad language. SNRM is just as socially devastating as having a boss eyed condition where you’re always talking to the person next to the person you’re looking at, like sharing a hilariously funny smutty joke with a mate then realising you’ve been looking at his wife the whole time. No, suffering from SNRM, ‘Slow Name Recall Memory’, is no joke. For example it takes me upwards of 4 seconds to remember a name, so on the numerous social occasions requiring a crisp, “Hello Philip” I only manage to stumble through, “Hello..er…..slight cough… well er…scratch... how are you, er?” While Philip waits patiently I’m thinking, ‘I know him, I know him I, er, he does electrics, yes, married to Louise, no that’s Steve, his daughter’s called er’ and so on. And even that’s not right because Louise isn’t Steve’s wife or Philip’s, in fact I don’t think she’s married, and the woman I was actually thinking of was Emily who’s married to Roger who have a son called Sam who I mistakenly asked Philip’s wife about earlier thinking he was their son. And I still can’t remember her name! In fact if I had touretts all I’d manage would be, “You…..er…….(jerk)……. er……….. ………………….wanker!” by which time it would all be too late. If it’s Alzheimer’s all I can say is I was born with it. Honestly I would have envied my old pension salesman who would open with, “and how’s your wife Sandra and the boys, Kevin, Russell and Smidge?” if it wasn’t for the fact he was a money grabbing, heartless prat.

Another Cameron Opportunity.

OK what is apparent under capitalism is that capital migrates to those with capital; the rich get richer. Also that as this capital is withdrawn from circulation into private hands governments have to run deficits to maintain the rest of society at a reasonable standard. And finally that this state of affairs has become unsustainable. There seems to have been a hidden assumption in free market capitalism that the unproductive and unemployed will simply disappear, that as one’s income becomes zero one also becomes zero and disappears from the earth as well as the balance sheet. The reality is somewhat different. So as the end of western capitalism looms, which might level us all, there needs to be a new approach. Just as a starving snake might begin to consider chewing on its own tail might there be a way to circularise capitalism? Connecting the top with the bottom? We are used to taxation as wealth redistribution but might there be a different form to solve this situation. Not deductible tax but an enforced percentage to be used to provide capital availability. Individuals and corporations would pay tax normally together with a percentage compulsorily paid into a government holding fund that would pay interest, much like the compulsory purchase of government gilts. This way the interest of the top is connected to the rest of society in that if the society as a whole gets into difficulty the interest paid by the fund would decrease. Its main purpose would be to provide the government with a cheap and controllable source of funds. For example the income of high earners would be taxed normally but say 70% of any amount above say £300k would be compulsorily invested in ‘government liquidity bonds’ paying say 4%. It would remain the property of the earner and provide a return but the return of capital would be regulated and inheritance taxed normally. Where currently market based euro government bonds are having to pay an unsustainable 7% because of their indebtedness having a governed wealth based borrowing facility at 4% would maintain sustainability. This may be total b*****x but it’s obvious that capital needs to be governed in order to benefit the whole of society because the poor have a habit of staying alive long after they cease to appear on a balance sheet. Nearer to home Dave nearly got stuck in the cat flap. 

Jerusalem most Holey.

Jerusalem is the holey city. Holey because it’s been built, knocked down, rebuilt, besieged, burnt down, rebuilt and shot at by all three branches of Abraham, the Romans, Greeks, in fact anyone with a decent army west of the Himalayas. King David ruled there, Jesus died there and Mohamed had nothing to do with it, but his followers built a big gold dome there anyway just to piss the other two off. So now Jerusalem is the holy city of Jews, Christians and Islamistas, a veritable department store for monotheist except where home furnishing is at odds with the cosmetics counter who in turn loathe men’s underwear. It’s somewhat ironic that the home of three world religions professing peace and love needs so much policing compared with say Whitby, the home of Dracula. This somehow meshes with an article in Therapy Today bemoaning the fact that every attempt at proving the efficacy of therapy gives illogical or at least inconclusive results. OK we each view the world through our own uniquely aberrant sunglasses. Behind them is an eye that receives the distorted image believing it to be the world. It considers its response and projects it back through the same aberration. The world then sees this distortion believing it to be the eye. This leads to confusion. When the glasses hold the distortion of a belief that ‘my way is better’ the eye is presented with the world as inferior. The eye knowing this not to be the case projects peace and love which is then distorted back into ‘you are inferior.’ What follows is a sort of belligerent sit-com. Spirit is distorted by beliefs about spirit such that the most spiritual act in the most un-spiritual ways, and people in therapy respond in some ways from spirit and some ways beliefs. So it’s to be expected the most holy city is also the most holey and therapy will forever provide inconclusive results.

Misery is Subjective.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s father, Karl, owned the Austrian steel industry and was second only to the Rothschild’s in terms of wod. But rather like Rupert Murdock he doesn’t seem to have been the best of influences on his children. Where James wouldn’t even recognise the truth if God e-mailed him direct, no less than three of Ludwig’s brothers committed suicide. One even emulated Robert Maxwell by falling off a boat in Chesapeake Bay in suspicious circumstance. But Ludwig, considered by some to be a genius, moved to Glossop and became a philosopher. Such utterances as, “If someone believes that he has flown from America to England in the last few days, then, I believe, he cannot be making a mistake” must come from someone so deep he has to be gifted. Personally I think he thought too much. I once commented in desperation to an immensely thick young woman on a date, “All the pigs in the field aren’t green” and garnered a similar effect. In retrospect I should have said it to Bertrand Russell and become a Fellow of Trinity College. As it is, apart from these blog breaks, I’ve been house cleaning and wiping up smelly cat spray all day. In Ludwig’s final hours he said to a friend, “Tell them I had a wonderful life.” Now if I’d added more detail to his biography you would have no doubt gathered by now that wasn’t strictly the case. But then again perhaps, “Not all the miserable buggers I come across are actually miserable.”

The Power of Higgs?

So if the Higgs Boson does exist as a particle and imparts mass into all forms of matter there’s likely to be a Higgs field that might explain Zero Point energy. It might work like this. We are used to the flow of electrons in conducting materials producing magnetic effects and heat. We are surrounded by heaters, lights, motors etc that use this property of electrons, which are also present in all materials. Now it’s been observed that a highly charged horizontal pate capacitor is slightly lighter or heavier depending on which way up it is. Might this be due to boson distribution alongside the electron distribution? Arising out of Tesla’s work various people have reported a sort of inductance effect where switching a high voltage in a straight length of wire will result in a subsequent surge of current that produces more energy out than the energy used to create it, i.e. an over unity device. Over unity devices are deemed impossible by the basic laws of thermo dynamics, but might this experiment and its results be the result of a temporary distortion in the Higgs field? Might the Higgs field in a way be ‘blown outward’ by the switch and then recover inward again causing the current? This wouldn’t be energy for nothing but a gathering of energy from this previously unknown source? It has been reported that electrical energy produced by this effect reacts counter intuitively when used. Rather than motors etc heating up by resistance losses they are chilled, they freeze up rather than over heat. It’s been suggested an appliance the size of a fridge/freezer could power a home forever for free; similarly cars, trains etc. Using a different technology www.placklightpower.com has just begun licensing power plants using hydrinos rather than fossil fuels or nuclear to currently produce over 7 Megga watts. There’s also various technologies utilising the very springy nature of the valency bonds between hydrogen and oxygen in water, H2O. By piezo vibrating water in a test tube an experimenter managed to blow a test tube diameter hole clean through his roof. Reportedly. Though the line between information and misinformation on the internet has similarly been blown through the roof I still imagine we’re close to clean, sustainable energy production.

Got a Headache?

Just dipped into Therapy Today, in particular a view from the couch. This lady expressed her frustration at being told she’s angry when she wasn’t feeling angry. I surmise the therapist had spotted that she was and wanted to offer her enlightenment of the fact. And of course when she refuted his suggestion it somehow constituted proof he was right. There’s a sort of temptation to state the outside obvious as a therapist, rather like someone with a hatpin stuck in her head complaining of a headache. “Ah I see your problem, you have a hatpin stuck in your head, here let me take it out.” When he does she reaches in her bag and sticks in another one. Therapy’s not that easy. But when the therapist became alongside the lady she felt some benefit. At the risk of taking this metaphor too far, if he’d stuck a hatpin in his own head and said, “God this really hurts! You’re good at this, what should I do?” she might respond with, “I know, let’s stop doing it.” I know that for me remembering my own perceptions count for nothing on someone else’s internal map would be virtually impossible. I’d be a rat up a drainpipe offering advice and guidance, and generally giving vent to my amazing powers of insight and awareness that I’m so proud of possessing. So don’t come to me with your hatpin problems, I’ve got a headache.

Old Langsyne, 2013.

Having begun to draw my pension this year it’s only likely the world will end in 2012. ‘Sorry’ seems insufficient somehow. I know there’s global warming, food shortages from the weather in spasm, economic melt down, the end of the Mayan calendar, and Nostra fucking Damus, but the truth is my pension. I’m really really sorry. And then there’s a high probability of a meteorite impact from the galaxy going into a flat disc orientation. The last time this happened was thousands of years ago and it toasted the dinosaurs. Oh and the weather and seismic activity we’re experiencing at the moment is typical of an imminent polar shift. That’s where the north/south magnetic poles, and presumably a fair proportion of the earth’s core, swop ends in just a few days inducing mega tides and even worse weather. And then there’s catastrophic rises in sea levels along with a scarcity of fresh water as water tables get lower and lower. Honestly I’m so so sorry. I mean if I’d known I’d have just taken the tax free lump sum. I’m going to buy a lottery ticket in January just to make sure. If I win, well it’ll be ‘good by everybody it’s been nice knowing you.’ But looking on the bright side, Happy Christmas, and here’s to us all singing Old Langsyne in 2013.  

Christmas Games.

So Christmas approacheth, time to dig up your nuts etc. And here’s some Christmas games. We played them last night for thespian warm up. It requires around six people. OK designate a settee or two chairs as a park bench where the first player sits and assumes the role of an unsuspecting member of the public. A second player joins him/her and assumes a personality with which to join the first player in conversation. After a few minutes the first finds a reason to leave and a third brings a new personality, and so on. For example last night a player joined and began to interview the other. “It says here you….” “Yes I’m used to working as a member of a team and …” “and your IT skills?” “Well I’m fine with Word, Excel, oh and Power Point.” “So how do you think you’ll cope with the lions?” “I, er, I mean I, er, well I have a dog.” “Good.” “I, er ….” Etc. There followed an upset little girl, Father Christmas, a paranoid schizophrenic, a recalcitrant husband and a really annoying schoolgirl, and others. It’s a bit of a stretch to begin with but great fun when you get into it. In a similar vein two people stand up and converse. As soon as either one mentions another person they are replaced by a third being that other person. It’s whoever fancies a go that steps forward. Pretty soon if someone mentions a dog, the dog appears, then a house or later in my case a platform. Pandemonium sets in and changes become more rapid. At one point a woman was talking to her dog and mentioned a cat. We then had a dog and a cat, which as well as provoking a fight left us in a bit of a stalemate seeing as neither couldn’t talk. Having said that being a platform didn’t stop me wittering on about being taken for granted and being stepped on, which incidentally Maggie wasn’t meant to be taken literally. So there you have it. Given half a chance we can all be incredibly talented like those people in ‘Who’s Line is it anyway?’ Enjoy.

Fluffy Tails and Tits.

So Mothermouse has stocked the bird table up with Christmas Spirit Nuts. A pair of bluetits is waiting their turn as a busy squirrel is stuffing as many nuts as he can in pockets and pouches. Actually he’s also pushing nuts off the side of the table to his mate below who is bagging them up so a third can rush off and burry them around the garden like an advent calendar. Such is the power of fluffy tails that we go ‘ahh.’ But now I’m suspecting the third is an incomer as the bagger has just chased him off. Which poses the question, has the news of abundant Christmas nuts travelled too far a-field? Mothermouse suggests it may be a visiting Christmas relative. Well if he is he’s already outstayed his welcome and it’s barely December. The tits wait patiently. There seems a rich web of morality in this little scene worthy of Dickens but I can’t fathom it. We go to Sainsburys for a Christmas tree. There people with a firm hand on their nuts, pardon the unfortunate simile, buy their Christmas indulgencies and scurry with bags to the car park while unseen in bushes tits, oops another one, wait for charitable droppings or scamper off with someone else’s fresh found bag while they’re not looking. This is reminding me of a lovely little book I’ve just read about old American Indian ways, how nature reflects us in sustenance and conflict. However much I can’t really connect, not having a corpuscle of American Indian in me, I share the same certain sadness of losing a relevance and reverence for nature’s lore; that we are still just scurriers of nut and timid tits, rooting boars and thoughtless chickens however our minds dress up supremacy. How they all have their turn and give leeway and proceed in some supremely gracious efficiency that we have forgot. In surplus they reproduce, in debt they die cold with a peaceful forgotten hunger. There is little complication. So the Indians are sad their ancient ways are dying out, romantically forgetting they used to loathe and kill each other before they had a common enemy, and in that reflective sadness is their demise. They have become old and nature knows what has to be done with the old. It knows only new growth on the burial. But new man, the reaper and sufferer? We have much to remember of what nature already knows. For example, she has never found a need to create politicians.

The invisible Pig.

I’m considering becoming ‘The Great Inviso’, the first ever magician to work with invisible objects. I’m still working on my first trick, to make an invisible wine bottle disappear. You laugh but it’s not as easy as it sounds. First I have to find it, which isn’t easy. And then I’d have to carry all this stuff including a baby pig to performances along with my beautiful, scantily clad assistant, Camilla. Well I wouldn’t carry her; she’d have to buy her own bus ticket. But I’m excited about the tricks with the invisible baby pig, once we’ve caught the bloody thing. This will be the crescendo of the act. First I place it on a small table; I’m going to have to put it in a trance and make it believe it’s watching Match of the Day so it stands still. Then I’ll slowly walk in front of it and, vwala! It changes colour to red, back the other way and it’s blue. I plan on doing this several times until the applause begins to dip. Then the piece of resistance, I or we, me and the audience together, will attempt to levitate the pig up off the table. There will be silence and complete concentration and a waggling of hands rising slowly up accompanied by the same in sound. As it lands back down on the table I will grab the pig and leave with Camilla to rapturous applause. Oh I forgot one thing, sorry, this must all seem nonsensical without it. I need to get a member of the audience to touch the invisible wine bottle to confirm that it’s there. Without that this would all look a bit stupid. This is where the practice comes in. I will ask for a volunteer to close her eyes and feel a real bottle and pace my hand on her shoulder as I confirm, “you can feel the bottle,” then say to the audience, “So lets see Mary if you can feel the (invisible) bottle.” This has to be done precisely. I will say loudly, “So lets see Mary”, mumble the “if”, and then place my hand on here shoulder again as I say directly to her, “you can feel the bottle.” I may repeat it in a different way but again place my hand on here shoulder as I say the phrase. Finally as her fingers approach the invisible bottle I will repeat the hand and phrase. If it works she will be amazed to find she can. I will make it disappear and move her hand through the place where it was and she’ll confirm she can’t feel it. Total confirmation that what you’re not seeing is believing. It’s called anchoring. Of course I won’t tell the audience there’s no such thing as an invisible pig that changes colour; that would be stupid. 

9-11-2011.

It’s been ten years and three months since 9/11, enough time to take a considered view. I remember all the conspiracy theories at the time that were subsequently disproved, or at least ignored by the official investigation. What I’m left with is collateral issues from accepted facts. In the days leading up to 9/11 there were highly unusual put to call options specifically and only in the companies affected by the attack. This, as well as being a strong sign of insider trading, suggests prior knowledge of it. An FBI supervisor reported a month before the attack that they had discovered a plot to fly planes into the twin towers which was ignored, and other agents felt thwarted by the government in their investigations. Eye witness accounts of strange sounds and dust in the building in the months before, and firemen hearing a sequence of bangs prior to the collapse, also of people being warned not to go to work that day. And for me the strangest of all; the collapse of building 7. This was not hit by a plane or damaged by the collapses. Later in the day there was a fairly insignificant fire on one of the floors and it collapsed at around 5.30pm in a way typical of a building ‘being pulled’ i.e. purposely demolished. A videoed interview with the owner of all seven Trade Centre buildings, a Mr Silverstein, shows him saying, “so we decided to pull it.” He later explained what he meant to say was ‘we decided to pull the people out of it just in case it collapsed.’ The trouble with 9/11 is there’s enough smoking guns to equip an army. But whose army?

Simpler in the Real World.

My medicine name, though I’m not very medical, is Happy Beaver. I love it; it works on so many levels. I’m currently reading a book about the adventures of a ‘shamanic thrill seeker’ under the tutelage of a shamanic teacher called Raven. Notice they’re never called things like Stiff Mouse, they’re obviously higher up the romantic food chain. Raven knows stuff. He knows about you even when you don’t know it yourself, and so has the incredible facility to tell you what you will know even before you knew it. Anyway this lady has an incredible dream, a lucid dream, where she leaves her body sleeping in her bed and walks into the night. This is where it gets incredible. In this half state of being she is kidnapped along with two other pregnant ladies and driven to a deserted ranch where she finds a room full of kidnapped expectant ladies. Through the power of lucid dreaming she has learnt from Raven she moves to another room full of babies and bats and realises an evil sorcerer is stealing babies to feed to bats that will fly out and do nasty things. Then to escape she becomes paper-thin and passes through a crack in the door using her powers of incredible lucidity. Now back at the motel Raven knows all this before she tells him. He generously awards her a 1:1 draw on account of escaping but not overpowering the evil sorcerer. She is understandably shaken up by this experience and asks if this happening in dreamland or in reality. Raven who knows, knows it is really happening and knows the guy and his whereabouts in Texas. They talk about the sorcerers power and what ceremonies and teachings will be required so that next time she meets him in her lucid dreaming she will be better equipped to overcome his dastardly powers. Now call me an unimaginative realist if you like but wouldn’t shopping him to the FED be a better idea? I mean stealing babies to feed to bats must be illegal in the US surely. It seems not, sorcerers must do things sorceristically. My interpretation, Raven take note, is that this lady, in trying to give birth to a new life for herself, has subconsciously realised her ‘birth’ has been kidnapped by an unpleasant ever-so-plausible know-it-all called Raven. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, dick-head.