The Brain Plague.

There are a thousand instances around the world that point to something happening in our brains. From the notorious, the political, to sport, economics and the wealthy we seem to be going through a phase quite opposite to the enlightenment. It seems so ubiquitous amongst our institutions that it might be termed a plague, a plague of un-enlightened self-interest amongst those in power. I’m not talking here about some covert conspiracy but what the CIA called ‘group think’ to explain their wrong intelligence over Iraq. ‘Sorry guys, honest mistake. Move on, nothing to see here.’ They called it groupthink as a sort of benign explanation of an everyday, common or garden human fallibility, a one-off aberration. It was accepted as such and a hundred thousand people died. In the past I’ve called it Psychotic Group Collusion, PGC on the basis it sounds more scientific than a Mark Twain throwaway comment. PGC has been ever present from Nero to The News of the World. A closed, self-protecting group will incrementally, day by day, invent their own psychotic view behind their closed doors. The problem is the mindset of the group changes so slowly they are unaware of it, and the longer the group is isolated the more they drift into psychosis as famous psychological experiments have proved. It’s why democracy was invented in the first place but with the advent of professional politicians our western democracies have circumvented its true value allowing the ‘political group’ to remain unchanged irrespective of elections. As a result the general public see government as strangely disconnected, in short, psychotic. The ‘political group’, seeing themselves as right-minded, conscientious public servants, feel unfairly attacked by subversive elements and ramp up their defences. National security is in fact political security as they fail to perceive the influence of their own Psychotic Group Collusion. No blame can be attached to this because throughout history no person or group has prevailed over its effects. These days though, due to various technological and social factors, PGC is becoming more rampant and its effects more destructive. As such our systems of governance must take account of PGC as a progressive psychological disorder and implement measures to counter it or suffer the same fate as history’s numerous examples. Sepp Blatter today and maybe Tony Blair tomorrow. They are not bad men, they have just done bad things under the influence of PGC. I suggest it is vital this condition is studied, conclusions drawn and measures implemented to take account of it.

A Message to All our Dear Friends at this joyous Time of Year.

Time does fly when you’re enjoying yourself, I’m told. Well whoopee-do. It must be nice for some people tiptoeing through the tulips on a Cancun beach listening to Cold Play, whose progenies have become a successful wang distributor and Doctor of Philosophy at St Gertrude’s College Cambridge. Bully for them for good parenting. Ours struggle to reach average. One’s dyslexic, which is at least trendy, and the other smokes so much pot he can hardly remember his own name. One can’t spell bed and the other can’t get out of it. So what year have we had? Well ‘I’m a Celeb’ was a high point. The car keeps stalling, our broadband’s rubbish and Mothermouse feels neglected. And that’s after me buying her a shed, ungrateful cow. We did go on holiday but I backed the hire car into an Audi and it cost an arm and a leg. The four-sum with Jim and Brenda backfired. Apparently I should have told them first so Brenda got quite upset. I never liked them anyway. What a waste of oysters that was. My attempt at amateur dramatic back in April didn’t go much better. ‘Something to do to get out of the house, meet new friends’ she said. It was Pirates of Penzance and some woman laughed when I took along a CD of his greatest hits. Snotty bitch. And Mothermouse’s rash has come back, which is nothing; I repeat nothing to do with me. So that’s 2015, just another year of struggle for us nonentities. Much love and kisses and thanks for your missives, they’ve been so interesting. 

Thinking! What is it Good For!

So a recent scientific study has found that people who like pseudo profound quotes are less intelligent. All those Facebook one liners rubbished if, that is, you consider yourself intelligent. So what are you, dumb or a dreamer? I will term this reduced logic. One is presented with two linked alternatives, so if not one then the other. Maybe we’re being infected with binary thinking. Cameron’s recent speech for air strikes was a case in point. He created a series of binary alternatives each one containing one ‘oh my god I don’t want that!’ and the other ‘whatever it is Cameron wants you to choose.’ It’s probably taught in schools under persuasive writing. “Imagine children you are a government minister and you want your brother-in-law to get a fracking licence, how might you phrase a binary alternative?”  “Miss, miss, how about ‘do you want your children to freeze to death or allow fracking?’ “Very good Hilary B. See what he did children? He posed a binary alternative only one of which is acceptable.” Then of course there’s the exact opposite, a sort of diffusion of logic where everything is possible in the best of all possible worlds. That’s the domain of Facebook one-liners. ‘Everything you seek is seeking you. You have what it takes to get everything you desire.’ There’s a sort of momentary swirl of understanding that feels nice but is gone in the time it took to read it. They’re all probably true but one could read a hundred and be none the wiser. Which neatly leads on to conspiracy theorists where equally, one could read a hundred and be none the wiser. I get the feeling all the great thinkers of the past are turning in their graves at this demise of thinking. And I believe they have a point. Only gross universal non-thinking could lead to unhinging our climate, living unsustainably, fighting perpetually and generally striding out so energetically towards our own demise. So bear a thought for, well anything for god sake! 

The Elephant in the Room.

Watching the human zoo of ‘I’m a Celebrity …..’ I’m struck by one human cognitive activity that could be the root of all our problems. It’s only mentioned obliquely in therapy and even old wisdoms don’t tackle it head on. It’s self-justification. At first sight it doesn’t seem particularly pivotal or damaging, in fact it can seem a positive necessity in the cut and thrust of life but delineate it as a specific cognitive activity and for me a picture emerges. I hear much talk of ‘the self’, is it real or multiple, are there higher, lower, conscious, unconscious selfs etc? but little about the cognitive activity surrounding it. I hear about the axis of love and fear but little about the active driver that positions us along it. We seem to focus on entities rather than vectors and motive forces.
Firstly lets separate some realities. The real fear of an approaching tiger is necessary and valuable, and there is a reality to one’s fundamental being, as opposed to the cognitive construction we normally perceive as being. Our fundamental reality is of a ‘being’ in a ‘circumstance’ and these constructions are our attempt to ameliorate or justify the interaction between the two. I’m-a-Celeb’s many manipulations stress the participants relationships and in every reaction self-justification appears pivotal. “I am worthy of being me, of having that, my beliefs are true, my actions are warranted, I’m a good human being etc” and the general reaction is, “Well I am too so don’t belittle me with your assertions.” It rapidly becomes an escalating competition between self-justifications. Those well practiced bluster and dominate while others feel hurt and justify inwardly or turn to friends to justify mutually. Either way the cognitive activity of self-justification dominates. It’s easy to see how every human hierarchy is both a sponsor for and a structure of self-justification. This self-justification addresses neither the reality of the being nor the reality of its circumstance. Sepp Blatter is neither true to his being nor to FIFA. His self-justification only provides his self with the appearance of success and happiness. It’s like an oyster that, when ingesting a piece of grit, endlessly coats it with calcium carbonate to ease itself from the sore. It may become a lustrous pearl but the pearl is dead matter, made by the oyster but foreign to both it and its circumstance. (It’s no coincidence Lady C loves her pearls) And like the oyster it can become habitual to add layer upon layer to our self-justifications until they becomes a solid shiny pearl, our solid shiny self, at least in our own estimation. But I am neither the grit nor the pearl, I’m the oyster and oysters can live totally comfortably in their circumstance without a need for either. They, we, can live far more vividly without the myriad of stories of self that make up the layers of the pearl. I am not stories, I am being. But how difficult it is to trust that my individuality, my qualities, my character, behaviour, my very persona is in my being not my inventions of a self. If you would like to imagine writing on a blackboard all your stories of self, ‘I am strong or weak, I am easily hurt, I am caring and helpful, I am put upon, handsome, ugly etc ….’, every one. And when they’re all there in black and white rub them all out and look at the pristine blackboard, blank but far more substantial than those scratchings of chalk. Now you have no stories to defend or maintain. As a being in a circumstance you will respond from your being more freely and vividly. You will see and hear your circumstance more freely and vividly without the need to defend your (pearl) self and the huge amount of energy you used in self-justification will be free to use elsewhere.
Without really realising it I fell into this way many years ago and found the following results.
By not maintaining beliefs of who I am, my pearl as it were, I don’t feel the restraints of the aughts and shoulds that arise from my imagining a persona I need to live up to. I’m left only with my intents as a being to be the best I can be, and somehow work as defined from the aughts and shoulds has transmogrified into the playful endeavour of simply being. This is no less demanding just not as arduous. By not having a prescribed way of doing things I’m free to play with alternatives and to evaluate them free of constructs of right and wrong. And strangely rather than loosing an identity people respond to me lovingly as real, imaginative and competent, if somewhat eccentric.
By not maintaining beliefs of who I am I can, in circumstances were I might normally be expected to defend myself, find I have nothing to defend and as such I can hear and respond cleanly without defence. I can feel free to play with and assess my own and other opinions without fear or favour. I can accept another’s opinion without feeling hurt and disagree without feeling superior. This connects my being to my circumstance far more than having to maintain some self-position by self-justification. Of course this doesn’t stop me from being unbearably smug or cursing when I bang my head, I’m not perfect.
Lady C on the other hand has a pearl the size of a tennis ball. Her powers of self-justification are second to none. As a result the other celebs find her unbearable, either a manipulative friend or an infuriating enemy, a being trapped in a self and isolated from her circumstance. But that’s aging for you. With the passage of time we seem to either loose our sense of self or become trapped by it. So for me the cognitive act of self-justification is the elephant in the room. Will someone please open the very large door? That’s it the one at the end next to the aspidistra.

Paradise, Really?

A Facebook post from ‘Honor Diaries’ shows Saudi Sheik Yahya Al-Jana vehemently preaching the wonders of paradise that await Muslim men when they die ‘honourably.’ Synopsis: ‘Men go to heaven but women don’t because they’re all whores. In heaven every man has a hundred plus young virgins for sex every morning and Allah gives them extra staying power to do it.’ It’s all with the authority of the ‘word of god’ and frighteningly absurd. Who says women aren’t honourable enough to get in? If no women then where do all the virgins come from? Is not sex with a virgin the most unsatisfying? Wouldn’t it get boring by mid morning day one? If earthly women are whores are you not the son, brother and husband of a whore? How does that make you feel? I’m left thinking the whole tragedy of the Middle East, ISIS, Syria, hundreds of thousands dead and maimed and the migration crisis are all due to a catastrophic failure of Islamic male sex education. Imagine believing all women are either unattainable or a worthless whore. Where does that leave your natural sexual urges? Frustrated if you don’t and whoring if you do. But all this bedevilment will be alleviated in heaven with the illusion of perpetual virgins after your honourable death. It’s a vile nest of Catch 22s that produces frustrated, hate filled, gullible young men bent on (dis)honourable self-destruction. This one ridiculous masculine delusion has turned Islam from a force for good into a force for chaos, conflict and violence in the world. If you believe Sheik Yahya Al-Jana it’s likely your hundred virgins will be gullible misguided young men not women. How would you feel about that?

The City.

Darien was born in the city. Like everyone else he was extremely wealthy and had all that money could buy, but lately he hadn’t been visiting the machines. For one reason or another it had just slipped his mind. He’d probably just got used to it, and anyway the wall was some distance away. But things were very expensive and the money he had was running out. He would go tomorrow he thought. The wall that encircled the city was high and though it was rumoured there was a gate there was no reason anyone would use it when they had the machines. The machines, twenty in all, spaced evenly along the wall were the reason for the wealth. Set securely in the stonework of the wall these cash machines dispensed cash a little differently to normal. For every pound you inserted they dispensed five pounds. They were the reason for the wealth and why the city dwellers did very little work except of course for regular trips to the machines with whatever cash they had. Darien would go tomorrow. No one in the city questioned how the machines worked, why would they? He visited a coffee shop and asked for a latté. He drank the latté and asked for the bill. £5. I said it was expensive. He realised with horror that was exactly the amount he had left. He pleaded with the waitress to let him go to the machines but to no avail. With no money he couldn’t get more and without more he couldn’t get even more. He was stuffed. After trying everything he asked in desperation where the gate was. Maybe out there he could at least find some food. He found it grown over with brambles. No one had used it in years. He went outside the city. Outside there were many more people and all much poorer than anyone he’d ever known. And every day they worked. Darien asked them, “Don’t you have cash machines?” They of course said yes, that they were set in the stonework of the city wall. He asked, “So why do you need to work?” they laughed and explained that they worked to feed the machines, that every £5 they earned and put in the machine it would give them one pound to spend. Suddenly Darien realised how the machines in the city were able to do what they did. He set about working to make £5 and put it in the machine then went back to the gate, but it was locked from the inside.  

Shoreham Air Show Crash.

I watched footage of the Shoreham crash on the news, a massive fireball of aviation fuel engulfing a stretch of the A27 and its unfortunate motorists. The Hawker Hunter involved was a trans sonic fighter weighing 20,000 lbs with a single Rolls Royce Avon engine and a range of 2,000 miles.

A Boeing 737 by comparison weighs 70,000 lbs, has a similar range, two Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines and carries around three time the fuel load. In Shoreham the damage apart from the cars appears minimal given the impressive fireball that engulfed it all. Aviation fuel will burn like that but only for a relatively short time. And although it burns hot it doesn’t reach the temperature to melt steel. You can probably see where I’m going with this. The last time I saw a massive fireball of aviation fuel like that in Shoreham was on 9/11. Back then it engulfed several floors of Towers 1 and 2. I’ve just watched an old video of that and the burn lasted less than twenty seconds before it turned to black smoke. It’s funny how seeing such a catastrophic image obliterates all thoughts of physics. Could the massive steel structure of the towers really be brought down by twenty seconds of burning fuel? Most structural engineers, physicists etc (outside NIST) think not, but the public saw it with their own eyes. Try this at home; put a kebab skewer in the gas flame for twenty seconds. Did it melt, even bend, even get white hot? No, the melting point of steel is around 1510*C where the hottest a petrol fire gets is 1200*C. Thermite as used in controlled demolitions though burns at 2200*C. You do the maths.

Automated Football Results.

Our local pub runs a football competition throughout the season. Choose four teams from the four leagues then add up their league positions to get a total. To do this for seventy odd people so they know how they’re doing was an onerous task that took Chrismouse a couple of hours every week; that’s eighty hours over the season. Chrismouse needed a spreadsheet. Stiffmouse to the rescue! Well it seemed simple enough. After some evaluation it wasn’t. How do you get from data on a website to a list of people’s scores to post up in the pub? I started learning about Look-ups, Macros and how to write Visual Basic. Did all that and by week one I’d got it working and sent it to Chrismouse with considerable pride. Week two and it crumbled into dust. Got it working again, sent it off again and then dust again. And again. My file was acquiring so many suffixes of variants it ran to two paragraphs and Chrismouse was loosing confidence. Breakthrough. The BBC data was screwing things up. It was getting bigger and bigger as more matches were played. More learning, more rewriting of macros and bam it was conquered. By this point I couldn’t put it down so went for the ultimate, buttons. Yes you can put user buttons on spreadsheets, just click and they’ll do anything you want. So now all Chrismouse has to do is copy/paste data, press the appropriate button, repeat and press the Results button. It should take him around 80 seconds. That’s seventy-nine hours, six minutes, forty seconds saved every year, and I’m two weeks older. 

Hit Squads Target Corbynites.

As we speak, well OK we’re not actually speaking but as we would if we were, thousands of Corbynites are being disappeared from the streets and held in West Ham’s new ground under police protection for the foreseeable future. The opposition front bench are signing rub-out notices on anyone foolish enough to vote for JC. OMG he’s not the second coming is he? Well you might think so judging by the Mugabe-esc tactics of his own party. Lucky for him we don’t stock polonium 210 in this country. It feels reminiscent of the fear and anger of the moneychangers in the Temple, the end of the world as they know it; a politician that listens, considers and responds. They after all inhabit the world of listen, ignore and spin some guff till they lose interest. This is about the constituents of power, its component parts. Take parties, policies and collective responsibility. These are forged in committee and disseminated to voters via maximum persuasiveness. JC is not a backroom plotter nor is his thoughtful language persuasive as we’ve come to understand the word. Take ‘on message’ bluster and the dismissal of pertinent questions and facts. Here again JC’s stile of listening and putting forward considered answers and views utterly fails to fulfil expectations. No, when his party’s collective responsibility will be to pull the rug from under him he won’t last five minutes. But people at large love his style and his views and hate being deceived by bluster and dissembling rhetoric. Last evening I watched a documentary on the West Indian cricket team led by the mild bespectacled Clive Lloyd during the 70’s. Through the years of his captaincy they began as underdogs and grew to dominate world cricket. No bluster, no rhetoric, no backroom committees, they just did with honesty what was necessary to succeed and grew in well-justified belief. This is what the English people are hearing in Jeremy Corbyn, the voice of genuine leadership, but I doubt the Labour Party is that astute. 

Automated results

Inadequate Policing.

I read somewhere of a woman in danger of being raped in her own home in Cleveland or some place in the US phoning the police. She was told “the police no longer work weekends due to the cuts.” One nil for rapists. When pondering Calais I’ve often wondered, a) how immigrants get the 5,000 euros for the journey and, b) why England? If they get here they’ll be lucky to get subsistence wages and even luckier to get government help. That’s hardly a case for economic migration. I suspect like the woman in Cleveland they want safety. Even the ‘Jungle’ camp in Calais is a safe place compared to where they’ve left. They are not economic migrants nor political asylum seekers, they’re safety seekers and England with its population of law abiding disorganised mongrels seems a good bet. So Calais is a symptom of inadequate policing. Not police state policing but the policing of fairness, safety and well-being. It’s also testament to humanity’s desire for these above all else even to the point of dying under a train. In the face of them the ideologies of greed, power and religious supremacy have little credence, accept to those indebted to them. So here’s a solution. A million airdropped leaflets over Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria, etc.

“A MESSAGE FROM EUROPE- For centuries we have fought and are still fighting many battles against religious, political and economic tyrants. Slowly and through many rebellions and deaths we have curbed their power to provide fairness, safety and well-being for everyone. This is your desire for your own country and within your gift. Achieve what we have achieved and there will be no need to come here and endure the perilous journey. Good luck, we’re on your side. It’s possible.” 

My Oldest Friend.

The oldest friend I still know intimately is my guitar. Not the same one but a procession like a long multiple train journey, nine of which I still have. They follow my sixty-year procession through skiffle, classical and jazz, through gentle and more recently upbeat. But this is about how rather than what. I wasn’t a natural performer, not your born front man, I didn’t know that connection. Like many introvert folk singers I hid somewhere between the song and the audience not really connecting with either. It was a quite lonely place with only myself for company, up there exposed yet hidden in some protective cloak of invisibility. I got a clap and that helped but I knew it was a consolation prize. Slowly through mastering the technicals I found space to play the song, to let it flow through without obstruction. But churning covers out to order wasn’t enough. I found songs I wanted to connect to and began affairs with them. I began to build the confidence to be their lover, to build a mutuality, to sing them in the moment as lovers do. That connection was made. Then the greater challenge, to be exposed; to perform this love making in public. Performance and acting are often mistaken to be forms of duplicity. Some are but true performance is real. Only true feeling will illicit true feeling. Through clowning I began to venture into the innocence of the moment that connects us all. There are countless elsewheres to get lost in but only one moment that we are all in together, this one. That’s the power of it. So finally I’m beginning to glimpse a way of being, a way of showing heart through music. It’s taken a long time and is easier for some but this has been my process. I suspect Robert Downey Junior knows it well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1crxmBTxRlM

Spirit Camp 2015: Maryettamouse.

Maryettamouse was chopping prayer sticks when Billmouse and I joined her. She asked for guidance but I suggested she work it out herself. If there’s one thing I can’t stand about Spirit Camp it’s helpful advice. It’s like every time I do something a queue of people form behind me with suggestions, “Perhaps you could….” or, “You might want to try…..” and their variants. NO, FUCK OFF, GO AWAY, LEAVE ME ALONE! So Maryettamouse didn’t get any from me other than a bit later on saying pick wood with straight grain and no knots. Anyway we chatted. Her face had the beauty of honesty rather than the bland sugary looks of a model, designed to be memorable rather than flattering. Later we smiled in passing. During the dance my eyes of their own accord were drawn to Maryettamouse, her purposeful truthful elegance. After it I commented, “You walk backwards strongly.” Oddly she knew what I meant and added it was walking forwards that was her difficulty. After my song performance rather than the usual ‘loved your song’ she said ‘that was so you’ like she knew me.

The following day I hesitantly said, “I think we have a special relationship” not knowing the response I might get. She leapt in the air like an electric shock and agreed with a beautiful smile, “yes!” We both knew but not the basis or origin of it. It’s strange when this happens. Easily explained but only with explanations that carry no weight. We never met again. I hope you have found Stiffmouse and read this. With love for your future. 

Spirit Camp 2015: Voice.

I sang a song. It went well, at least I remembered the words, which is always a bonus. The following day a woman asked if I could sing it to her again. I said I thought it wasn’t possible because the guy with the guitar had gone home. Later it turned out he hadn’t so I asked if I could sit and play for a while. Getting me, the woman and the guitar together seemed almost impossible amongst the chaos of packing up day, but when I looked up she was there sitting next to me. I played the song and by the end she was in floods of tears. It was my own song and special to me. She asked if I could play it again. At this point I began to wonder if I had acquired a nutter but I sang the last verse again. Through her tears she explained, “Yesterday I didn’t know why I was crying but now I do. You have connected me again.” She gesticulated to her body, her belly. “I thought I had lost it, I might never feel it again.” I felt for her tears. “No my tears are joyful not sad. Crying is like a car wash, you know.” We smiled. Now I don’t want to appear mercenary but I wrote that line down to use later. Too good to miss. We parted, she wanting a CD if I made one, and me with a renewed wanting to make one. For me this had become a recurring theme over the ten days, how in the most unforeseen and delicate ways we connect by heart. 

Spirit Camp 2015: Traps.

All is not well in spirit world. You know when you walk into a department store, say for perfume or electronics, a helpful smiling sales operative will gladly assist your purchasing. In their breezy pleasant way they will point out the virtues of their offerings as if helping you step ever closer to a future nirvana where all is nice and good. And 15% off. Their care for you is of course motivated by their own income and career prospects. With the Head of rugs and soft furnishing soon up for grabs they’re keen to show willing and turn a profit. In quiet moments with friends they will show the reverse of the coin. The pay is shit, their manager is a bully and head office is a bunch of OCD shysters who’ve lost the heart for good retailing This of course doesn’t happen in spirit world where all is already nice and good. So picture a happy go lucky seventy-year-old teenager on the bottom rung, a dog soldier with nowhere lower to go and no vested interest in becoming employee of the year and a junket to Arizona HQ. He might at some below-stairs meeting express a negative response to the management’s latest motivational initiative by saying, “Get the fuck out of my brain!” and be immediately tempted to apologise to his colleagues for his outburst. He needn’t have worried. One by one here and there in this way and that people thanked him. There was overwork, there was bullying, that too many rules and initiatives were losing the heart of retailing. Truth from the heart is a beautiful, poignant and precious thing. It’s the means by which our spirits connect and is un-ruled by mercenary thoughts of influence and manipulation. It’s what the Indians knew and what spirit camp should be about. It’s not about nice and good, status and influence, it’s about heart. 

Spirit Camp 2015: Taps.

Faith, hope and prayer must never appear in the lexicon of a designer. Materials have no compunction to do you a favour; they’re best viewed as immoral. In fact one begins to see God’s problem in creating man. Over three Spirit camps I’ve tried to fix the knee operated automatic water valves for the four hand-wash stations. The first camp was taken up understanding how they worked and believe me that’s not obvious. The second was spent postulating and testing various theories as to why they didn’t. I mean they did but not reliably. This year began similarly. Now one assumes as they’re manufactured and sold in a nice box etc they are designed to work reliably but in this case the designer had faith and hope: Faith that a small o-ring would not compress under constant pressure and hope that it would magically centre itself into a small hole to cut the supply off. Obviously magic is another no-no concept to the designer. A good design must give zero alternatives to a mechanism other than to work. These valves had several and have now been junked for ordinary taps. This raises an interesting philosophical point. If, as is supposed, God or Spirit gave man free will might the master designer junk his protégé as an unsuccessful prototype if we prove unreliable? A salutary thought. Might he not appreciate our faith, hope and prayer approach and prefer we follow his own design philosophy of the rigorous application of truth and reality to create our best solutions? I know no better focus for contemplation than the simple phrase, “Everything is.” Its linguistic simplicity allows it to go any and everywhere without building a complexity of manuals, codes and beliefs. And of course magic.

Revolution Time.

Remember the other revolutions, the French, Russian, the collapse of Communism, the Boston Tea Party etc? They all began when the people weren’t getting enough to reasonably live on. Time and time again a ‘system class’ has risen to take control and within their own concept of reason has considered themselves worth more and more. It’s a basic loophole in cognition that it is wholly comparative. Cognition doesn’t have absolute or objective measurement. I was going to say we have rulers to do that, which throws up an interesting double use of the word. The system class thus has no means of judging their needs other than in comparison with their equally wealthy neighbours, and just like the rest of us they’d just like a little bit more. Wealth becomes unbalanced simply because of the nature of cognition, and at some tipping point there is a revolution. It’s surely time we took account of this basic cognitive impairment and designed a system around it. The Greeks, God bless them, have reminded us of the philosophical struggle they went through millennia ago to create such a system. Democracy, though we cling to the word, has been much subverted since then by many different circumstances. It’s time we went back to its philosophical root. This time the system class is global and the whole planet is at stake. They are unaccountable to any populous, government or rule of law. The checks and balances on their cognition have been overcome and all that’s left is a decent into Caligula. 

Karma Dharma.

I don’t know much about these two but as I see it Karma is getting in your own way and Dharma is not. I suspect there’s probably an area of the brain that constantly figures out what’s gone wrong, and because we don’t like things going wrong it makes up stuff as to why it’s all gone wrong. Of course nothing has gone wrong, it’s just gone the way it’s gone, just not the way we wanted it to so the stuff it makes up is a fabrication of how it could have gone right if it hadn’t gone wrong when it was neither right or wrong in the first place. These fabrications form an insulator between reality, which is neither right nor wrong, and one’s inner state that’s dam sure it is all about right and wrong and that you’re getting the worst of it. You then act as if that’s the case and retaliate to even things up. Basic mistake because what’s wrong will have a different version of what’s right and wrong and retaliate back. These retaliations reverberate around the system producing karma. Basically don’t take it personal. Then comes the butterfly state as one exits the “get this fucking shit off me” cocoon. Here the same stuff happens but that little area in the brain has given up, it’s gone on a sabbatical, (from which it rarely returns) and everything just is. And it ‘is’ in a gently humorous way. Imagine you’re a Velcro covered hedgehog. Everything you come up against snags and tags and you become a big ball of twigs, leaves, slugs and cat food. OK I don’t know why cat food but it’s possible. Yuck! And then as if by magic the Velcro turns into glossy straight spines. Nothing snags, the crap falls off and you’re a clean go anywhere hedgehog just like you’re meant to be. And the only way you can go is forward. That’s Dharma. And don’t blame me if this is all bollocks, I learnt it from our cat Britney. 

The Power of Tea.

Yesterday I was given a cup of tea, which was nice. Today I measured the time it took to boil two mugs of water as it’s virtually impossible to boil just one in a kettle. (one minute) As the kettle is 3 kilowatts it thus takes 1.5 Kw minutes per mug full. OK so far? Now the person making the tea yesterday filled the kettle to around a litre, enough for around four mugs full so the other three would be left to go cold. I’d guess on average two mug fulls will be left to go cold waiting for the next brew, which is 3 Kw minutes of wasted energy per cup. Now I drink a lot of tea but I’d say on average a typical adult will drink five cups of tea or coffee a day. That’s then 15 Kw minutes wasted energy per adult per day or 0.25 Kw hrs. As this happens most days, say 350 per year, that’s 87.5 Kw hrs per year. OK lets say around 40 million adults are in the habit of drinking five hot drinks per day, that’s 3,500,000,000 Kw hrs per year, which is 3.5 million megawatt hours. Now the Drax power station generates 3,960 megawatts. Times that by hours in a year, 8760, and you get KW hrs/yr and a very big number, 34.6 million megawatt hrs per year as opposed to our 3.5 million. But it does mean that 10% of the energy of our largest power station is being wasted by overfilling electric kettles. So here’s the thing. Turn on the cold tap fully and count the seconds it takes to fill a mug using the tried and tested “thousand and one, thousand and two” method. On ours it’s three. Then fill the kettle on that basis from empty. Keep doing it this way and it will always be near empty, which is fine, and it’ll boil twice as quick too. If you have an old kettle with an element in the water you’ll still have to cover the element and waste energy, but you can begin to see why power stations dread half time in the world cup final. 

Victimhood.

Forgetting The Moral Maze is the most aggravating radio program ever I listened to them mauling the subject of Victimhood and the Tim Hunt debacle. Argh! In relationship psychology there’s a diagram, ‘The Co-dependent Triangle’. It contains three stances, victim, persecutor and rescuer. It defines a poorly functioning relationship where each role undermines the other person in some way. Obviously there’s a wide variation in a peoples susceptibility to Victimhood from the weak and sensitive to strong and resilient. Some brush it off while others succumb to it rather too easily. Tim Hunt remarked that men and women fall in love, nothing wrong in that, we all do and often with colleagues, and women cry if you criticise them. In my mind and his I imagine this was a gentle joke about sexual stereotyping. OK he shouldn’t give up the day job and join the comedy circuit but then women often complain that men don’t show their emotions so it might have seemed acceptable, but that’s immaterial compared with what happened next. The sensitive end of the spectrum immediately assumed Victimhood. Those less sensitive came to their aid in sisterhood and the robust gave them the benefit of the doubt. As the twitter storm gathered the counter voices, not wishing the flack to land on them too, mostly fell silent. In essence there was a domino effect in apparent support of the most sensitive and their tendency to co-dependency, a widespread landslide towards a poorly functioning relationship. In less than an hour the victim became the persecutor and Tim Hunt was shunted into hopefully happy overdue retirement. Might it be that social media is reducing constructive thought to the nearest knee-jerk reaction and bringing us all into a poorly functioning co-dependent relationship? Even The Moral Maze circled the margins of sanity and proved incapable of useful analysis, but then that’s what it’s know for. But in the end Tim will be free to watch Wimbledon, Twitterers have been shown up as twits and the biased situation of female scientists has had an airing. One nil for free speech. 

The Truth.

True Camoron now has a slim majority, but even amphetamines won’t keep the whips awake for five years, so why the capitulation? And why have Miliband, Clegg and Farage resigned without the usual ‘we’ll fight on in opposition’ speeches? I mean was Clegg shown in an empty car park and presented with a worm-ridden hedgehog stage-managed? Did Miliband fall off the plinth on purpose and get his aids to punch him in the face to maintain the slant, Farage’s men promise to shoot their opposing candidate and all their other gaffs for a reason? Is there something they’re not telling us? I mean what if they know there’s an ISIS bomb in the Mace and it’s begun ticking, or the SNP has two thousand angry Glaswegian shipbuilders set to invade Westminster, or are banking on five more years of austerity putting an end to the Conservatives forever. Has Camoron threatened them with his own resignation in favour of Boris, or worse Gove if he didn’t get a majority? Could you spend five years sitting opposite either without secretly taking a shotgun into work and getting life? An attractive thought but risky. Has Murdoch offered them a job presenting Sky’s new reality show, ‘I’m a LibDem get me out of here’? It makes you think doesn’t it? I mean ITV’s already got Paxman doing stand-up. Has Putin booby trapped No 10 or put polonium in the sandwiches? Or has he sold Camoron the secrets of how to create a one party system?

The Result.

Well we treated it as a joke and we got a joke. There’s never been such a mass un-think since the late 30’s in Germany. Then again we’ve been given nothing to think about apart from trivia and a smoke screen of numbers and ridicule. If anything the cheap joke crowd have won it for the Bullingdon Club simply because their genetic, unshakable confidence is impervious to slapstick. It’s as if Murdoch’s now employing comedians instead of journalists because he’s found cheap jokes are more powerful than investigative reporting. You only have to count the numbers of laughs we got from the party leaders to predict the outcome, Sturgeon nill, Cameron negligible, Miliband lots, Clegg even more, and for all his comedic value even Farage wasn’t slandered much by comedy. In the light of the SNP landslide is UK politics becoming zonal? I mean if I was Welsh I’d definitely be aiming for a Plaid Cymru landslide, or if Cornish voting for ‘The Sticky out Bit Party’, and might there then be an opening for ‘The North’ party? Appealing isn’t it. I mean it would leave London with less than a hundred seats that even in coalition with the home countries couldn’t form a majority. And lets face it the left/right political paradigm is well past its sell by date. Perhaps then this parochial politics will give rise to a new sort of candidate who’s allegiance is local rather than Westminster-centric, who’re chosen for their individual quality rather than being able to ya-boo on one way or the other. I’m reminded of a Chinese official who commented that ‘in China we choose on ability. Your British politicians would not stand a chance in China’, and from my days in industry where the marketing department didn’t have a clue; they just knew how to make bad things look good. And that’s what we’ve got, bad politicians that look good. Well today anyway.

Boxed in Penis Pain.

Twill shortly be fitting a new bathroom in a 1970’s house. What is it with these people? Everyone knows taps don’t ‘make’ water and loos don’t vaporise wee and poo into an alternative dimension, they’re all connected by pipes to the supply and the sewage system, yet the sight of a naked pipe is as much an anathema as seeing Gandhi’s genitals when his toga or whatever it is is blown skyward like Marilyn Munroe’s dress. Where in old houses waste and soil pipes are on the outside showing a pride of purpose the designers of this 70’s house boxed them in on the inside hoping to prove to anyone stupid enough to believe that they don’t exist. And I’m guessing even now if I leave a visible pipe anywhere it will require boxing in. Good pipe work is a thing of beauty people and hiding them is a plumber’s pain in the pants. I wanted to say arse but it didn’t begin with p, perhaps penis. It’s a form of denial that’s a sure sign of decadence. It’s like covering your arse-wipe paper with a hand knitted tea cosy. But I guess it’s age. I mean when you’re young your insistence on there actually being a good life overrides any realisation of reality with your favourite beliefs whereas when you’re old and heading for incontinence reality dawns and niceties appear as strange as owning a camel. Hay hoe boxing it is then and bugger the plumber’s penis. Oh and as I'm getting a surprising number of reads in Russia I'd love it one of you could post a comment so i know you're a real person. Thanks.

Human Hearts Lawyer.

OK it should be ‘Rights’ but that’s how it came into my mind and it seems apt. Anyway this crew cut HRL on TED knocked me sideways. Probably the crew cut; it’s hard watching a marine get emotional. Apparently the millions in official poverty, 1$ a day, have fallen considerably but only because it’s not risen with inflation. Allow for that and there’s been no change. So you could say our millions in foreign aid has achieved one thing, inflation. But that’s not what knocked me. His experiences have led him to realise the poor are created by violence. Not wars or racial conflict etc, though there’s enough of them, but day to day violence because there’s no rule of law. Slavery, rape, daily theft and brutality are committed with impunity because there’s no effective policing. The poor have no redress against the violence inflicted on them, and it is this that causes poverty and for the poor to be and remain poor. With the rich being able to afford private security any trickle down effect is not of wealth but violence. What knocked me was our human lack of compassion. Have we really been afforded our greater intellect to create insularity, given free will to create brutality? All animals become brutal when starving or without territory or mate but when satiated they’re not. Are we then the only species incapable of being satiated, who can neglect the plight of the poor for a private yacht or a new bathroom? All the above may have happened in far away Africa but when a woman in Cleveland (USA) phoned the police to say a man was breaking in to rape her and got the reply, “sorry our police don’t work on the weekend, try asking him to go away”, and was raped because of public spending cuts it’s closer to home than we might think. Back to his main point, less than 1% of our overseas aid goes to better policing when it’s the major cause of poverty. But why do that when you can afford private security? 

Fresh Prince of Wolverhampton.

Remember the Fresh Prince of Bellaire? Chicago slum kid in trouble with local gangs gets chance to live with his rich uncle in Hollywood? How we laughed at his streetwise antics in the sober middleclass household. He was bright, lively and they were accepting and supportive, and they all lived happily together except for his cousin Carlton who couldn’t get laid. It was all a perfect solution to his problem; just leave the overcrowded poverty and life threatening violence of his home for the sunny suburban pastures of southern California. Luck for him it didn’t include a boat ride. Lucky for them he didn’t have eight hundred brothers and sisters in the same situation. I don’t know if the program was aired in North Africa but it looks like it as many thousands flee the hunger, poverty and violence of Libya, Chad, Syria and Niger etc for the relative opulence of Europe. Whilst it’s true that much of the violence and poverty in Chicago and North Africa is self-inflicted external factors of depravation and exploitation are the root causes. Corruption, both local and multinational, governmental, sectarian and corporate can reduce a region to its knees and provoke a bitter, angry brutality, a winter of discontent, from which all but the brutal must flee. Fine if it’s Will Smith on his own but 100,000’s? With brutality now endemic in the Middle East and North Africa they could double the European population and destabilise us too. We can’t order the various factions to be nice to each other and we can’t pump in aid because it would be used to support the brutal. It seems to me comfort at least allows reflection and tolerance where extreme hardship fosters hardened beliefs, which in turn foster conflict. My only solution is to create oases in the heart of these regions necessarily defended but acting as beacons of ‘how life could be’ with cooperation, goodwill and honest governance and hope that they act as an antibiotic to this disease of brutality. I guess it’s the ‘good guy in the ghetto’ approach; he can change beliefs. 

How to Write Spiritual Fiction.

This non-residential weekend course, 10 till 4pm, £295 + VAT, will cover all you need to know to write your first novel, mostly because you’re not dealing with fact but something far deeper. This allows for great creative scope. The narrator, usually a woman, in her quest for personal growth happens on a like-minded group with a mysterious leader, usually a man. This gender stereotyping though typical is odd because most men aren’t usually drawn to spiritual growth yet always appear as teachers having presumably achieved it, whilst most women searching for it apparently haven’t. Obviously the leader must have deep ancient knowledge of some kind that requires him to speak either obtusely or in simplistic truths, and have dark penetrating eyes capable of looking into one’s soul. This soul vision allows him to delve with complete certainty the recesses of the narrator’s vast unconscious describing memories she can’t remember, deeds she is unaware of doing and thoughts she is oblivious of having. These supernatural powers captivate her as she is drawn back time and time again from her ordinary mundane life. Do remember to put in mundane facts about the narrator; they act as a counterpoint to the supernatural but stay clear of the same about the leader. The reader will not want to know about his leaking toilet, mortgage arrears and illegitimate children. Also remember the narrator must be dumb as shit to begin with with no ideas of her own so as to allow room for the growth. She must be bewildered by the obtuseness and marvel at the simplistic truths as wonderfully succinct and, well true. This raises the question of sex. Most deeply mysterious authoritative men with penetrating eyes have a large libido and it’s up to you how explicit you go with this. It’s probably unwise to go into Fifty Shades territory as it won’t help on the personal growth front to depict the leader as a womanising letch. It’s best left between the lines. Oh look at me giving away all the course material. Still it’s not too late to get the £2 early booking discount. Knowledge like this is priceless. You owe it to yourself. See you there.

Jesus Nailed.

At the risk of boring Mothermouse having explained this aaat lengthhhh the other evening under the influence of wine and a banal radio program that pushed my mental health issues close to breaking point, Jesus was a Buddhist. Following on the heals of my recent revelation that God is Reality a BBC doc makes the case for a different life of Christ. Jesus’s unknown years were spent in Cashmere becoming a mystic and returned at twenty nine to teach the ways of the Buddha. After being nailed to the cross, taken down and put in a cave his friends revived him and before Pilot could grab him again he went back to Cashmere. There he became a revered healer, lived to old age and buried in a tomb that still exists today. If that’s the case Jesus is not in the Arabic or Abrahamic tradition and the New Testament must be seen as having totally different references to the Old Testament not a continuation of it. That would make Mohammed’s references five hundred years later somewhat confusing. Brought up a Christian and making meditative visits to earlier Abrahamic prophets he began another religion based on two different theologies, part Jewish, part Buddhist, one based on an external god, the other on an internal progress towards one’s own supranormal presence. Similarly Christianity is part Buddhism and part Roman Empire that co-opted it for its own reasons of state leaving the original Christians to argue over the best way to organise a piss-up in a brewery. Well at least the Catholics have got that one sorted thanks probably to the pagan influences in Ireland. One thing for sure the origin of suffering is in the mind so best not to think too much. Whatever you choose it won’t be what you think it is. 

Last Night’s Da Bait.

In the same way adverts sell the generic impulse to buy something, anything, last night’s debate was a plea for a vote, any vote. And in the same way we know we don’t really need seven different varieties of shampoo we somehow know the seven varieties of political stance on offer amount to little more than a marketing attempt to expand a product line by making them different colours. It’s not that they aren’t justifiably politically different but that they’re all generically political. They’re marketing politics when what we need is product development. Cases in point. Austerity cuts vs NHS costs. NHS costs will rise astronomically if the populous is poorly fed, over stressed and demotivated. It makes economic sense to improve life quality than spending billions on medicating the walking wounded. Education. Real education is a question of ethos not funding. Cash will not stop falling standards and teachers leaving in droves. Economy. Productivity is lower than in 2007. Current wages would be 17% higher if the long-term average had been maintained. All these factors indicate a poorly educated under performing and increasingly stressed and dispirited society but the political debate studiously avoids the real consequences of its own failures and opts to discuss which is the best colour, apple green, blueberry blue or rose petal red. Our vote is reduced to marketing appeal rather than the research and development of a better political product. We have been fed the bait of considering the wrong question.

Marriage Guidance (inc Rodents)

How’s your relationship? Do you have little niggles with your partner that sometimes flare up? Do you by an innocent momentary oversight give rise to some inconsiderate hurt? Are things getting a little samey in the bedroom? Don’t worry we at Stiffmouse Marriage Guidance have the answer. Why not introduce pesky rodents into your relationship. If for example having eaten your own cupcake and then unwittingly gone on to eat your partner’s cupcake offer the explanation, “Squirrel.” “Oh really?” “Yes it came in and…” and look cute like a three-year-old. Your partner will be unable to maintain any animosity. Say for example you left the remote in the bread bin or the kitchen in an absolute mess, “Squirrels”. The only comeback is, “then we really must keep that back door closed more”. “Yes, I mean who’d of thought they could eat all that Simnel cake and make me stay in bed all morning.” Yes squirrels can account for all those day-to-day niggles that blight any relationship and maintain affectionate equanimity. And in the bedroom squirrels can account for any number of playful nips and tickles, and playing ‘Hunt the squirrel’ will guarantee hours of foreplay leading to sexual gratification. After in-depth research on introducing one or more squirrels into a relationship we can personally attest to its positive benefits. Other’s feedback. “After my wife explained it was squirrels that burn our dinner I simply didn’t feel my customary anger and disappointment.” (Jack, Stanstead) “Roger totally forgets about his arthritis since we’ve started playing ‘Hunt the Squirrel. He’s like a new man.” (Judith, Bristol)

Does God Exist?

My introduction to God was Methodist Sunday School. We’ve both changed a lot since then, admittedly due to my own capriciousness. As I remember God was ever present, in all things, forgiving yet wrathful, ineffable, loving and wanting me for a sunbeam. And was referred to by the objective male pronoun ‘he’, feminism being invented later. ‘He’ was a graspable concept as was up equals heaven and down equals hell, and as a five year old I didn’t encompass the vagaries of spirituality, I was more into trikes and damming streams. My wrestle with spirituality came later but religion put an end to that. Religious beliefs appeared to be man made constructs only fit for fighting over and definitely not worthy of God, which had lost its male pronoun status by then. God was becoming ineffable. So beliefs in general were the next to go. Why hold any belief if it got in the way of further curiosity? But then there was faith, a far trickier concept. Faith seems to require surrender in order to connect and perhaps be elevated by something beyond one’s understanding. This still appeals but is so open to pilfering by one’s lower instincts as to require much rigorous interrogation. So in sixty odd years I appear to have gone full circle. Now for me God is a highly romanticised name for- wait for it- Reality. Yes I’m back damming streams and riding bikes and finally realising it’s Reality that’s ever present, in all things, forgiving yet wrathful, unknowable, loving and wanting me for a sunbeam. But don’t get me wrong I still wish to know God, this is not reductionist atheistic pragmatism. Learning to know and love Reality is just as long a process as any study of theology, it is not merely opening the curtains in a morning and admiring the view. It is underpinned by a spirit and a panoply of factors and forces we are but dimply aware of. God as Reality is not open to the spurious beliefs of an imagined deity that loves me and not you, that provokes me to cause misery in his name. God as Reality will hold me to account or reward me for each of my actions. So does God exist? Well God as Reality does.

Green Lite.

Lefties, lesbians, layabouts and lay lines loonies: You’ve got to love Sheffield. After a pint, three in Mothermouse’s case, we move on to a Free Radicals gig for the Green Party. The Free Radicals are a decent ten piece soul/funk band fronted by three women singers, one in a chair with crutches, all in dresses even I wouldn’t wear; a Commitments tribute band nearing pension age. But then age is irrelevant in Sheff, it’s more about activity circles. In this case the saxophonist from the Socialist Choir, another from jam sessions, more from 5Rhythms Dance, and another from a drama workshop. As we queued for a vegetable curry this latter lady introduced herself as the new Green Party candidate. We’d decided eating judicious as Mothermouse, being somewhat ahead in general merriment, had insisted on clapping along to the warm up folk singer. Then the dancing. There are two thing people often forget about dancing, one it’s a bodily function and two, it’s meant to be enjoyable. We set about proving the point to a raunchy Latin number while Mrs Green Party opted for a far less impressive barely visible mince. I’m sorry to say in our eyes her political potential took a dive, and when she took her green top off to reveal a blind person’s idea of a lovely dress it fell even further. She was beginning to not even warrant a protest vote. Now I know it may seem facile to judge a person’s political capabilities on dance and dress, even the Conservatives aren’t known for it, but it has a certain cachet with me. It shows a flair for life. I mean who remembers Boris Yelsin for his political prowess? When I Googled his name I got, “Boris Yelsin dance.” He was a lush well up for emulating a piston engine on the dance floor. In ‘Love Actually’ who didn’t experience deep joy at the mere thought of a PM who could do sexy moves? Who doesn’t die a little inside seeing Theresa May in a suit? I mean Putin might be able to wrestle a bear bare chested in a YMCA bar but I bet he can’t do a decent paco doble. No, three things Mrs Green, learn to dance, invest in a better bra and get Mothermouse to take you shopping. 

Fuck Schooling.

Are you between 5 and 16 and being told to go to school? Don’t it will harm your education. It’s full of adults beating each other up over who’s responsible for your learning. When you’re interested in something, anything, you know how much fun it is finding out about it, like TV schedules to skateboarding or texting. You learn like a sponge and it’s fun not work. Don’t and you’ll be a dumb ass nobody and you’re way better than that. But school will make it boring and hard. The teachers will be so stressed out from being beaten up they’ll make you nervous and not really want to be there. They’ll try their best but they’re in an impossible situation and may cry a lot and come out in rashes. Adults currently have a great problem with education. They believe you are an inert piece of plastic they must mould into a complex part on an education production line and like any industrial production line that requires rigorous quality control to ensure a consistent product. Your school will be judged as a factory with its teachers as machine operatives and your learning as machined in like a CNC milling machine. You will not be illuminated simply machined to look like a headlight and you will leave with a life long belief that educating yourself is a boring waste of time. Education will make you believe you are the product of what others make of you, it has forgotten you are a self forming organism that simply needs nutrients to grow into a glorious array of diversity. Whether you’re bright, sensitive, physical or artistic it’s your fun to make the best of your talents, your every day enjoyment to explore and expand on them. Don’t let school kill your curiosity, your flare and zest for life, leave until the educational establishment come to its senses.  

Dead Hand Administrators.

Just returned moist (rain) from a symposium, ‘Reconnecting Art & Science.’ Interesting speakers from both sides of the junction, bone and dementia specialists, care workers and artist. I think the aim was to combine the two to create public interest. I suggest a TV series dramatising the case studies of various murders caused by scientific cover-ups. Anyway at the end a discussion about the fruitless task of trying to prove to government and funders that art in all its forms is beneficial to the health of individuals. They don’t appear to have the hearing for it. It then seemed to me art and science are already reasonably well connected and the faculty in need of reconnection are the administrators. The introductory speaker, as if to prove my point replied, “but we need to budget.” Administrators unlike artists and scientist are the overlookers tasked to keep control. They don’t function with the innate curiosity of artist and scientists, they’re required to create a decision for the future in the present, i.e. they process in a sense retrospectively as the present always comes before the future. They must then have an innate fear that the future when it occurs may hold them to account. One looks to the future for possibilities the other with a certain insecurity. Governments, funders and administrators therefore are hesitant of too much change lest it prove them wrong. Whilst I accept the difficulty of their role if their fear predominates it militates against progress. I suggest this is the reason for their lack of support for the benefits of art to the health of individuals. If the benefits can’t be guaranteed in the present they can’t be formulated as part of the future. This is why I suggest there is a far greater need for administrators to reconnect with the disciplines of art and science. The future will invariably be a strange place; it’s the essence of evolution, and our administrators need to reconnect with the flavour of exploration and curiosity that permeate the arts and sciences and not lead with the dead hand of lagging behind. A good time to re-watch, “24 Hour Party People”. 

Agree then do it anyway.

Michael Sheen’s blistering attack on the duplicity of current politics reaches back to the lion at the heart of Britishness. As the general election approaches every bit as facile and bitchy as Miss World contestants tearing out lumps of blond hair I consider putting a huge X across my voting paper. Strangely I begin to wonder if there’s a paranoia over the value of money. Not the day-to-day variations of currency exchange or petrol prices but the validity of it having any value at all. Consider an AM radio, in its time valuable, now not because nobody’s transmitting AM anymore. Money used to be an exchange of value. In between the selling of a cow money notionally contained its value until the purchase of a sideboard. It was a token of tangible value. With the advent of mass manipulation, thank you Freud, came the mass manipulation of ‘value’. Buy a record player, a cassette player, a CD player then junk them all for an iPod that can store a hundred hours of shit music because that’s also been subject to mass manipulation. So now money is not the notional value of a cow but the notional capacity to manipulate. Wealth is now based on the notional ‘value’ of manipulation. Do anything of tangible value and remain poor, do anything of manipulative value and get rich. No wonder the 90% still working on tangible value are disillusioned. Consider then the fear of a great devaluation in manipulation as a currency. Cries of ‘It must not happen!’ but until it does we will not make sufficient of tangible value. We will attempt to manipulate rather than give good patient care, good child protection, an honourable police force and politicians worth voting for. Till then we’ll have to make do with Michael Sheen the actor. (who only played Tony Blair)

Captains Log- Supplemental.

Spock explained further after a few Star Ship cocktails. “As you know Captain I am a product of Vulcan/Human interbreeding, the two species being sufficiently close to allow that occurrence. During the period of rapid brain expansion resulting from the change to erectus stance and larger social groupings the human brain evolved what you might term a feed back loop where the Vulcan brain did not. You might consider it as a “what if” loop. In simple terms Vulcans continued with a “what is” structure. As the configuration of a ‘what if’ statement creates unbounded inferences based only on what can be internally generated it is both experientially historical and not restricted by the confines of reality. Vulcans find this a wasteful use of the limited cognition available. A case in point Captain: When any member of the crew beams down with us they invariably die from being unable to cope with the different reality.” I explained that that’s what makes us human. “May I then suggest Captain that dying is not a usual sign of success.” Dam it Spock they were willing to die for something they believed in! “My point exactly. As their historical experience to that point was of living they could not conceive that death might occur. A Vulcan would consider tangible life always preferable to an intangible belief. But the human variant has some advantages” Oh thanks Spock. “You have spirit.” Go on. “Well a certain stupidity. Vulcans do not have stupidity. When your ‘what if’ loop combines with reality it produces what you call humour. It appears to make you happy. I believe it is a propensity to be desired.” Thank you Spock. “Yes I will consider that. Possibly when you cease to generate beliefs you could be the better of the two.” You’re funny guy Spock. “You think so Captain?”  

The Man who Made Logical Sexy.

Leonard Nimoy was sent by God. It’s a rare talent that can combine the exceptional with the unexceptional, the simple with the complex, the essential with the throw away. It takes such a talent to make logical sexy. To say he was sent by God merely reminds me we all were. Somehow you can’t be a fan of NimSpock because you know he would be indifferent to it, neither enjoy or condemn it, and somehow when a person is indifferent to one’s requests to play the game of indulgence, self or other, all one has left is to love. I find there is a processing between the senses and the soul we call the self. We use it both on incoming perception and on outgoing reaction. What colours our perception also and likewise colours our reaction to it. It becomes confusing. In this way we retaliate angrily to what appears to give cause to anger not realising the whole issue of anger is the insertion of our processing self. Actually occurrences are always neutral. That’s what NimSpock offered us and strangely enough we loved it. We felt free of human entanglement. Then of course came the buts, ‘but he butted me first’, yet if we harangued NimSpock he would just smile slightly and say, “Interesting reaction.” He would conclude if the initial aggression was not useful then escalating it would be illogical. Like Jesus he would turn the other cheek for a better view and in some chemical way his curiosity would neutralise the ‘processing self’. He would appear stronger, more resilient and sexier than those in the thrall of mere circumstance. When so many lives are thwarted by the machinations of their ruling self it’s worth remembering it can be brought down to size by simply observing, “Interesting reaction.” So thank you Leonard for giving us NimSpock may you rest in peace. I know you will, it’s logical.

The DNA of Names.

I know a rock guitarist and lover of Bob Marley whose name is Kevin. Why is that funny? One can only assume he was a terrible disappointment to his parents. Well it serves them right, what were they thinking? Everyone knows Kevins are only good for replacing toner cartridges and library assistants. It’s like there’s a long chain of DNA behind a name, the result of a spiral of parental pairs stretching back into history. Who for example when named Mr and Mrs Pipe would call their progeny Dwain? (true, I didn’t believe it either) But there are some names that carry a heavy burden. Brian for example. Brians are bumbling out of their depth simpletons, honest to the point of naivety, forgetful daydreamers yet in some deep recess having a somewhat confusing resolve. Monty Python could not have named their film, “The Life of Robert” or Richard or Christopher, maybe Kevin, but no Brian fitted the bill exactly. When GoCompare wanted a name for their bewildered C3PO variant, “mmm what shall we call him? I know ‘Brian’.” Brian the snail in Magic Roundabout, Brian May the token golly in Queen, and last night ‘The adventures of Brian Gulliver’ on radio 4. It’s the go to name for befuddlement. Professor Brian Cox has reclaimed some credibility but even he knows more about the Great Grablion Cluster than his local high street and probably get lost going for a pint of milk. I’m just glad I’m called Stiffmouse, but even that’s got unfortunate connotations according to the Russian gay community.  

50 Shades of Grim.

I was not blessed with good teeth. It may well have been the radioactive paint my mum used painting glow in the dark bomber dials during the war and my own struggle to get here. Nobody told her not to suck the brush. So this morning’s dentist check up, though few remain, runs to multiple pages; front right three occlusal, dada missing, buckle, amalgam and so it goes on. Like the book, now film, my mouth is a catalogue of human miscreance. My school dentist, a Hitler of the gob, extracted four healthy teeth in an attempt to avoid me looking like a squirrel. Unfortunately it only reduced my chin to the proportions of a Bullingdon Club member. Looking back his constant harassment about teeth cleaning was well meant but at the time I just took it to mean he didn’t like me. In my twenties I had a season ticket for fillings and when I finally had my front teeth capped they looked like two milk bottles amongst the rusting remains of a Vauxhall Cresta front wing. Twenty years on I encountered a woman dentist with a partiality for surgery. Everything required sadomasochistic

gum scalpelling. Another ten years and another woman. She charged me £700 for a top plate on account of my front teeth were now missing altogether. All went well with the hot squidgy impression taking but for some inexplicable reason she retired between visits. That thrust me into the arms of my current dentist who is the best ever. Our first appointment was to fit the plate organised by the retired dentist. Whilst it fitted my front four missing teeth had been reinterpreted into three. That meant my beautiful and to be honest expected human symmetry was replaced by a single middle tooth reminiscent of a genetically modified white trash redneck. Though amusing we decided this wasn’t comely and my best ever dentist made a best ever new one. So over the years my mouth has experienced abduction, perfidy, sadomasochism and being jilted, the dentistry equivalent of 50 Shades of Grey if ever there was one. Without the sex. 

9/11 Is Falling Down.

Unlike the three building’s that fell on 9/11 it’s taking a lot longer for the official version of events to collapse. From day one there have been inconvenient facts conveniently dismissed as conspiracy theories. Why did Building 7 collapse at free fall speed? (heat from burning office furniture) Why did the twin towers collapse? (explained by the NIST inquiry) Why didn’t the US air force scramble? (on a training mission) Why weren’t there wings on the outside of the Pentagon and nobody saw the plane? (nobody was looking) Why did firemen hear sequential explosions inside the building? (they were mistaken) etc etc.  But getting back to the NIST enquiry. Though people found thermite in the steel residues, though NASA showed satellite pictures of intense heat in the ruins, again etc etc, they did not investigate the possibility of demolition deeming it ‘too improbable.’ Over the years that followed various structural engineers have evaluated the NIST findings. Why were plates wrongly sized and structural elements left out in their calculations, why did they underestimate structural strength and overestimate kinetic energies? In 2014 Tony Szamboti published a white paper, "Areas of Specific Concern in the NIST WTC Reports". It lists 25 areas where NIST made errors in their calculations to ‘prove’ the official explanation. If NIST can’t refute these findings where does that leave us? If building 7 couldn’t be brought down by their calculations it can only have been a controlled demolition. (that would take weeks to prepare) If their pancake explanation of the twin towers collapse is proved technically impossible then the only other explanation is a manufactured collapse. If so who ordered it? Who had the influence to direct NIST to pursue their erroneous conclusions? Who might then be found responsible for the thousands that died and the false wars in the Middle East? In the end it will all come down to the meticulous calculations of structural engineers working outside NIST, and they’re gaining ground. There’s a lot to play for. 

Listen here http://themindrenewed.com/interviews/2014/590-int-67 

TJ’s Q-tips.

Mothermouse lost her nose diamond and went down the pub for the quiz. As general knowledge is something I look up when I need it and not before I’m as useful as a pristine notebook at quizzing and chose to nap and ponder the whereabouts of the missing item. As washing one’s face seemed a likely activity for losing it I decided to examine the U bend beneath the bathroom sink. Can I say at this point the bathroom sink has required frequent plungering for the last fifteen years or more, which I’d put down to insufficient fall in the waste pipe. On removing the U bend and carefully shaking it over the bath I did not find jewellery but rather the remains of around forty neatly stacked Q-tips, enough to almost fill the pipe. Mothermouse, Bethmouse and I viewed the rank mess and postulated. Who could it be if not one of us? Britney was mentioned as she does like a Q-tip now and then but hardly forty! Then it all became clear. Long before Tommouse, TJ to his friends, left for university, roamed Brazil and moved to Barcelona, in fact probably before he went to big boys school he was concerned with ear wax or ‘ear whack’ as he used to call it, which is when he developed a fondness for Q-tips. We postulated that being a boy at that particular developmental stage and having a particular concern for personal grooming he would wish to dispose of them quickly and efficiently, but not in the bin as that required the extra effort of bending down. He would note the holes in the plughole were slightly larger than a Q-tip’s diameter wherein they would disappear as if by magic. Having no inkling of the geometry of a U bend or that they even existed the thought of a straight Q-tip not being able to negotiate a U bend was as foreign as the Large Hadron Collider would be to a Neanderthal. So no nose diamond but a free flowing sink, a small victory. One can only hope the habit passed and that sinks all over the world aren’t blocked up with Q-tips. 

Goggleboxers.

OK don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting Goggleboxers are chimpanzees but that after watching a million episodes of Monkey World humans in their natural habitat are just as curious, joyous, spontaneous, creative and warm and infinitely captivating. Gogglebox proves you don’t need a million humans or monkeys, or politicians and TV producers for that matter, to come up with the complete works of Shakespeare, Miller and Pinter. Each individual is a fractal of the whole and each Goggleboxer has as firm a grasp on the whole as any chimp with a banana. In fact the chumps, as opposed to chimps, are the Nigel Farages of this world driven mad by eating the postulations embedded in their own faeces. Anarchy is an interesting word. I have a definition here: “a state of lawlessness and disorder (usually resulting from a failure of government)” It’s usually interpreted as when a ‘good’ government is overthrown by ‘bad’ anarchists but that’s not necessarily the case. Anarchy can just as easily be a government that fails to deliver good governance, in which case the government themselves are the anarchists: Michael Gove for example. Compared with the clarity of Goggleboxer perceptions the machinations of our faeces eaters are disturbingly anarchic, en-railed by postulations digested and excreted so many times as to become their truth and our future. So long live Gogglebox and Monkey World; they are rare glimpses into a world free of anarchists. 

Eastern Block Cleaning.

Russian lorries are wild beasts. They lurch through obstacles with a giant’s tremble under black clouds of diesel breath. Close up they exude a primordial fear. It’s no wonder eastern Europeans are made of sterner stuff than us who grew up with Ford Transits. I realise now how this explains our Slovakian cleaner. She works harder than a Polish plumber, is as honest as a summers day in Finland, as reliable as the BBC pips, and brutal. Our lily livered western possessions are no match for her vacuum cleaner the size of a Humvee. I’m sure she uses an angle grinder on stubborn stains: I don’t know for sure because I retreat for fear of being cleaned. I’ve mended Mothermouse’s fragile American Indian figurine numerous times after an unfortunate duster whiplash. I think the first was our front room carpet, red Persian type. “The carpet is very dirty, I take it home and clean it.” I don’t know what she did to it but it came back dispirited, broken by the Slovakian inquisition. It’s now limper than a damp j-cloth. She moved on to the curtains, “They are very dirty Mr B. I take them home….” These Cole Brothers items came back four inches shorter with the lining a further two inches, clean and convenient for the cats but not as curtains should be. Luckily the oven withstood her attempts to purge its uncleanliness, protected by years of baked on food, but last week the hob got it. It comes up fine with gentle rubbing but obviously not clean enough. The coating on the knobs is now worn through in places thanks no doubt to the afore mentioned angle grinder. It’s difficult to know what to do with this cultural mismatch. How would Peter Crouch deal with a Russian wrestler? For sure it’s not the cleanest house in the world but it’s suffering from not being a rugged Russian lorry. Try saying that fast. 

My BAFTA Speech.

I find the most difficult thing about preparing a BAFTA speech is deciding which category to win: Actor, writer, director or lifetime achievement? I did that last year but it had a hint of has-been about it so this year I’ll be winning… Well actually I first thought best actress but as it’s become androgynous and I only wanted it for the dress I’ve gone for best actor, in a dress. Well I say dress but that’s tranny, I just mean not a black bloody suit. I like red. I’d say blue but it’s a difficult colour. It goes straight from too dark to wishy-washy, so it’s red, bright but on the deep side. Tight full length sleeves on a lose jacket over a tight burgundy, no make that charcoal, t-shirt, close neck probably with a zip at the back to get it on. Below, thigh length matching trouser-ets over charcoal leggings and dark blue plain shoes, possibly converse. Now the role? OK I’m a guitarist in a little know seventies glam rock group who around thirty, I’ll need makeup, realises everything is. He tells people this amazing revelation but they just say yeh and smile. He says, “No everything is, get it?” Still nothing. Anyway it goes on like that bla bla. It’s shot in Hamburg. Then the speech. The usual thanks, I might do a twirl at some point, and then say doing the part opened my eyes to the fact that everything is. OK there’s a little laughter but on the whole I think they get it. That would be amazing. I walk off clutching my award arm in arm with Jessie J, who I know is a lezzy but what the hell I love her. Then back to my seat next to Robert Downey Jr. He says, “You’re right everything is just is isn’t it.” Always thought he was a bright guy.

Sic Soc & the NHS.

I heard a startling fact, that it would pay the NHS to fit insulation and new boilers into the homes of asthma sufferers: £1,000 for house improvements as opposed to £2,000 for the inevitable spell in hospital. It’s equally likely it would save on their mental health budget to provide pay-day loans at realistic interest rates, but they’re not into loans and building work. There is a glaringly obvious conclusion, that all the injustices of our society in one way or another result in physical or mental ill health and this un-health of masses of people ends up in the NHS. Poor housing, work stress and poor wages, poor diets, poor benefits even poor education all lead ultimately to an NHS bed, yet this systemic view of society is not even acknowledged. When NHS costs go through the roof it’s viewed as a problem within the NHS not the growing levels of sickness creation in other aspects of society. Quite simply a sick society will require more hospitals, doctors, beds and nurses. The beginning example beautifully illustrates that money skimped elsewhere is far outweighed by the cost of picking up the pieces. And that’s not even taking into account the misery of all that illness. Unfortunately politicians are responders not creative thinkers, they think after the event rather than before it because there’s a greater fear in an unknown improvement than the known ineffective. So save the NHS at all costs, it’s the final barometer of the governments performance and the only way it can be held to account for its wider social mismanagement. 

Adam Curtis’s documentary ‘Bitter Lake’ (BBC iPlayer) charts recent Middle East history. It’s 2 hours+ so here’s a synopsis. After the WW2 America wanted oil and the backward fledgling state of Saudi Arabia wanted to protect their brutal Wasabi fundamentalist version of Islam. Roosevelt and the Saudi ruler cut a deal on Bitter Lake, oil for protection and petro technology. The US supplied plant and the latest armaments. Earlier in Afghanistan they built dams to help modernise the country. Afghan groups revolted against ‘western influence’ and turned to Marxism. The Russians armed the revolt but their attempts to introduce Communism failed and left the Afghans to fight amongst themselves. In Saudi the ruler didn’t like America’s support for Israel in their war with Egypt and hiked the price of oil five fold which led to an economic crisis in western economies in the 70’s. They then flooded the west with their ‘petro dollar’ profits that gave far greater destabilising power to the banking system. Iran and Iraq fought over their Islamic differences and when Saddam Hussein invaded Saudi Arabia the Saudis were incapable of using the US armaments so America went in to overthrow him and protect their oil ally. Osama Bin Laden, a member of a wealthy Saudi oil family, rebelled against them believing the west was damaging Wasabi Islamic beliefs and began attacking the west directly with Al Quida. Meanwhile in Afghanistan the American built dams had raised the water table creating perfect conditions for poppy growing which the warring factions used for income by exporting cocaine to the west. Every attempt to democratise Iraq and Afghanistan was unsuccessful. As Sonny and Shia wars percolated through many Middle East countries Wasabi Moslems in Saudi Arabia saw an opportunity to expand there brand of Islam. Wasabi Muslims see both Sonny and Shia Muslims as infidels no better than Christians and Jews and as Saudi law requires all their people to give a percentage of their income to ‘good causes’ they funded Wasabi fighters in neighbouring countries. Their fight to form a fundamentalist (Wasabi) Islamic state became ISIS, funded by Saudi’s who are in turn protected by America. The documentary devotes a whole minute of an American soldier stroking a bird, which moves from his gun to his finger, a beautiful moment of connection, human and animal, one with another. It seems to me the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge is not referring to our knowledge of physics and technology etc but what we ‘know’ as beliefs, beliefs that separate Jews from Christians, Sonnies from Shia. Beliefs that we fight for, condemn for and brutalise each other for. In that moment the soldier did no know that ‘knowledge’, he was being as the bird was being. This is our path back to unknowing, to refusing the fruit. 

Squirrels Rule.

Is there some Darwinian root to wealth acquisition? I mean I’ve been watching our cats and though they jealously guard what they want at that moment anything else is anybodies. I guess squirrels store nuts on the basis it gives them something to do in spring, but mostly nature is Marxist, “each according to his needs”, except they eat each other. So the acquisition of wealth on the scale practiced at the moment is wholly unnatural. It’s the equivalent of a single squirrel stashing away all the nuts south of Birmingham. It couldn’t realistically collect them all itself or eat them, but it has them. So the processes of acquisition have strayed horrendously from the path of wants and needs. Also this squirrel sees no abnormality in keeping what he has and wanting more. He wants it, needs it, and he deserves it. He sees no correlation between what he has and what others are going without. In nature with its checks and balances this couldn’t happen. If cats and squirrels have this all figured out one’s only conclusion is that humanity has a lot of catching up to do. We’re not the staring lead in this earthen Shakespearian production we’re the inglorious clod chorus incapable of following the plot. We’ve eaten the apple of our own knowledge and left the garden stage. It’s a bitter pill to swallow that we’ve been wrong all along, that our name in lights was just a figment of our own imagination when we’re being rudely woken in the dumpster behind the theatre. “How can this be?” we cry. A big boomy voice says, “You’ve fucked up”. It’s the director from that place way up high at the back of the theatre. But we’re trying so hard. “Exactly.” Surely he can’t be blaming us for trying. “This is an ensemble piece people, there’s no room for individuals with an inferiority complex grabbing centre stage all the time.” Inferiority complex? He’s gone mad. How can we the singular most superior species of actor have an inferiority complex? “Think about it.” Well that’s no answer. We is severely disgruntled at this point. “Take Act 2. When the squirrels are doing their big number about how much they love nuts, what made you think it was a good idea to drown them out with ‘But they don’t have no mo-ney’?” Well that’s just a fact isn’t it. “And?” Will you stop doing that. “What?” Stop making us think uncomfortable thoughts, it’s very confusing. “And when all the animals were singing Circle of Life you elbowed your way to the front shouting, ‘but we know the management.’ What was that supposed to mean?” It means we have a special relationship with him. In fact we’re thinking of rewriting the whole show and since you ask getting a new director. “Really?” Yes. Do you know the O2 Apollo on Mars? “Never been there, only do Earth.” Well there you see. If we can’t get our way here we’ll just go somewhere else, it’s that simple. “OK they’ve had their say, throw them back in the dumpster.”

Zero Hours Con.

The commercial world was rocked yesterday be the High Court’s judgement in the case of Cyril Squirrel v McDonlidons. Judge Harley Higson found Mr Squirrel’s zero hours contract, and by inference all zero hours contracts, to be illegal. He stated that, “In English law a contract must not disadvantage one party in favour of the other. A zero hours contract puts an obligation on Mr Squirrel to be available for work during periods defined by McDonlidons. At McDonlidons discretion Mr Squirrel may not be required and would not be paid. During these periods of unpaid availability there is clearly commercial value conferred on McDonlidons but with no recompense to Mr Squirrel, and further this imbalance is not compensated for during Mr Squirrel’s paid employment. As such we deem the part of the contract requiring Mr Squirrel’s unpaid availability to be illegal. We find that as this illegal contract has been in operation for some time McDonlidon will be required to pay Me Squirrel the sum of £2,500 as fair recompense for his unpaid availability.” The judgement will send shock waves through the many employers using this type of contract. Len McLusty from Unite was “over the moon” saying, ”Finally the courts have found what we knew all along.” Even a spokesman for the CBI said zero hours contracts had been undermining the cooperative relationship between employer and employee and said, “ Now our members won’t be forced to use them in order to be competitive.” After the trial Mr Squirrel said he was thankful that the payout could be used to pay his rent arrears and buy a winter coat.