[happy birthday] lewisham kate

Happy birthday, dear Kate; Happy birthday to you;
Happy birthday, dear Kate; Whatever did you do? [for your party, I mean]

[writing] the incisors and the grinders

Samuel Johnson wrote, on April 6th, 1776:

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

Maybe, Samuel J but this raises the spectre of the hack, Senancour's 1804 Obermann, Willy Loman, to shamelessly mix metaphors, the writer who writes because he is into writing itself, has visions of the poet in the garrett or else puts out a piece, just to keep the bread on the table.

Walter Bagehot wrote, in 1858:

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.

To be a grinder seems, in my mind, to be a denial of the purpose of existence, a shaming epitaph to one's talent or lack of it. Like Roald Dahl, I'm terrified of mediocrity, of boring the reader and even at university, I've dropped, over the years, the lessons which don't go down well and retained those which were "winners".

I just cannot wrap the mind round the concept of Keats, from 1819:

All clean and comfortable, I sit down to write.

... although, to be fair, he was referring to a letter he was beginning at the time and he had already written, in 1818:

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.

Upfront I claim no literary talent and these words are of the process only, not the end result. However, I just cannot sit down, "all clean and comfortable" to write. I can't do it. It's more a case of waking up at 3 a.m. with thoughts storming through the brain and having to switch on the Mac [it goes to bed with me - truly], of waiting impatiently and then the fingers just take over and I have absolutely no idea where they're going to take me.

It's not even me - it's just something there and characters fly in, fly out, drop by, return and the thing just has to fly ever onward, up hill, down dale, until it stops. When it does, switching off is the only solution until the next time it happens. Usually I crash back to sleep and that's that.

This isn't literature, it's - well, I don't know what it is. Insanity?

So the result is raw, dotted with errors and then, one day, when a fine young chap quietly begins painstaking proof reading and all his suggestions have talent in themselves and when one stops to think of what he''s attempting in his own creativity and the literary persona he himself is and why the hell he is spending time on me, then the jaw drops and one wonders about life.

He makes constant corrections and all are justified, he suggests I develop the character of Konstantine the Cypriot more, he's glad the plot is finally opening up and so on. Can you understand how that puts you on edge, makes you go back and reexamine, rework, enhance, make smoother. It's a heady experience and to know there is a taskmaster on your tale* is a wonderful thing.

Surely these days now are what life is about. This is the wine you sup, the days spent productively. You have to forever feel, hurt, jump for joy, bask in the passion and then crash to darkest oblivion. And always the brute existence beckons, it's always just there behind you, wishing you to rest on your laurels and sink back to it, like quicksand, to become, once again, just another automaton.

Aaaagh, it must never be. Your talent or lack of it is a separate issue but the process itself is the thing and the day you stop is the day you die as homo sapiens.

Sorry, sorry - I've now taken my tablets and am once more feeling a trifle more "usual". Thus, I sit me down to write:

"Gordon Brown today harvested some organs ..."

* intended

[slough of despond] let's extricate ourselves

There is no doubt that interraction is the thing and over the weekend, I just wasn't interacting. You see, I had the chance of proof-reading for my books and had to work to keep ahead of this and have the next chapter ready. Plus I had professional proof reading to do too [less interesting]. Still have now.

Thus I didn't visit and thus my own visits dropped. Even the reliable googling dropped. Not disastrously but we do seem to be in a slough of despond just now, many of us. Andrew Allison wrote:

Yesterday I wasn't feeling at my best. When you look at how many hits you are getting on your blog and things aren't going as well as you would like, there is a tendency for despondency. I would like to thank those who have left comments encouraging me to continue. Dave wrote a comment that he reads the blog through my RSS feed every day and of course that doesn't come on to my site statistics. I don't know why I didn't realise this sooner as I read many blogs by this method too.

My thought is that the thing is temporary, the winter weather has a lot to do with it, we're all pretty busy just now and no need for overreaction on this. Keep the blog ticking over and though it is done more slowly, keep visiting. All will be well.

If you do happen to find yourself in the blogging quicksand, here is some advice. And one last thing - could you spare a minute and pop over to Andrew and cheer him up a bit on this cold, grey Monday?

[escalation] any pretext will do

Everyone knows about Swift's big-enders/little-enders controversy leading to the Lilliputian war against Blefuscu, a lengthy conflict that arose between the big-enders and little-enders (depending upon which side of a boiled egg one must crack in order to eat it).

Here's another from the vaults:

David Pacifico was a Portuguese Jew born at Gibraltar but in Athens in 1849 as the Portuguese consul. His house was burned down by the mob during some religious commotion n he promptly claimed from the Greek government £26,618 compensation, which, of course, they had no intention of paying. However, he was on a British passport so Palmerston sent the Mediterranean Fleet in.

The French Ambassador then got into the act and France and Britain then fell out and the French Ambassador to Queen Victoria was recalled. The Lords censured Palmerston but in the Commons, he made that speech about a British passport protecting its holder anywhere in the world. Pacifico ended up with £5000 for his troubles.

Makes one wonder about the human race.

[lost and found] tale of two couples

Lost

British actor and comedian John Cleese has split from his third wife after 19 years together. An unnamed friend of the couple reportedly revealed that they had decided that their relationship was over but no one else was involved.

His American-born wife, Alyce Faye Eichelberger Cleese, is a psychotherapist and renowned for her work with children. Their decision to separate came after the actor became "melancholy" in recent months after the deaths of several close friends, the newspaper said.

Found

When Anna Kozlov saw the elderly man clambering out of a car in her home village of Borovlyanka in Siberia, she stopped dead in her tracks, convinced that her eyes were playing tricks. There, in front of her, was Boris, the man she had fallen in love with and married 60 years earlier.

The last time she had seen him was three days after their wedding, when she kissed him goodbye and sent him off to rejoin his Red Army unit. By the time he returned, Anna was gone, consigned by Stalin's purges to internal exile in Siberia with the rest of her family as an enemy of the people.

They left no forwarding address. Frantic, Boris tried everything he could to find his young bride, but it was no good — she was gone.

Anna's mother resolved that the girl should remarry. She told her that Boris had remarried. "She said he had forgotten about me — that's why no letters came.

But one day I got back home from work at a timber plant and my mum had burned all his earlier letters, poems and pictures, including our wedding photographs."

Life's too short for this sort of human waste.

[banks] sell debt or lose bonuses

The Melbourne Herald Sun has seen this:

Tellers at one major bank must offer customers new services, including loans and higher credit card limits, once every five hours. If they fail to meet the target they miss out on performance bonuses of 2-6 per cent.

Staff at another major bank have to make seven referrals a week or miss out on bonuses of 2.5 per cent. Workers who fail to meet targets can cause whole branches to miss out.

Lending staff at a third bank must complete $7 million worth of loans a quarter or lose about $12,000 in bonuses a year.

Per employee, the figures are not excessive and the bank is not exactly ordering staff to do this but still - it doesn't take much thought to realize which employees would be smiled on and who would not. Interesting also that the media is running a story like this now which they would not have some years back.

Over and over this blog says - get out of debt, get rid of your cards, live within your means, even if that entails severe lifestyle changes.

Last Minute Musings

Thanks for this last minute message, Matt and for all your posts here. All the best with your sojourn - learn and enjoy.

I spent an hour and a half loading photos on to this portable photo album thing. I unplugged it from my computer after clicking exit. All photos were erased. Anger does not describe what I'm feeling right now.

I'll be out of the country for six months. Even though I plan on being blissfully ignorant of who is selected for each party as a candidate, (to all Americans reading this) remember what I said the other day about lies.

So, if you all couldn't guess where I was going from the video in that post, I'll give you the answer: Spain.

Lastly, check these three paintings out from a friend of mine. She has true talent. Do note she is painter and therefore owner, propietor, and distributor. All rights are reserved by her.








This last one reminds me of the opening credits from Perdo Almodovar's film Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). Unfortunately, I couldn't find an image of the opening credits to make the comparison but trust me. So, why did I put them up? This is NourishingObscurity, right?

Be sure to go to her blog (linked above) and tell her what you think of them. Alright, that's all guys! If nothing else, I'll see you when I get back!

[ye are gods] why does my head ache then

Have to steal a winter photo from somewhere so why not from Oestrebunny?

It's been a lovely day and the scene out there is so atmospheric - a fine haze of white, blending into the landscape, with landmarks appearing through it in part. Much warmer today - minus 18 - and a delight to wander about.

Changed my country today. Geographically I haven't but I work directly for the mother country now, which doesn't alter anything for me personally except that things are a bit more exciting. There's something I'd like to write about this evening but for once I'm not sure how to do it.

Two of the most difficult statements ever written were:

1. Psalm 82:6 - I have said, Ye are gods;

2. Ephesians 6:12 - For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Why so fascinating? Because the closer one gets to the action, the truer these two appear to be.

The Psalm was written by a man - look at the style and tone and yet it was quoted by Jesus [if you can accept this for one moment] but what the hell does it mean? As a Psalm - perhaps not a lot but as something selected for comment by the Deity, quite something indeed:

Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?

Uh-huh.

That would have to get you reflecting on the true power of man and would explain why humanism is not only convinced of but knows implicitly that each man has it inside to be a god. But who would have the temerity to try it? Many people - look, for example at the Chinese intention to hold back the heavens so that it won't rain during the Beijing Olympics. Look at Babel. Look at HAARP.

But this attempt, historically, has always comes to naught. Now I wonder why that would be? It seems to suggest someone who can't take no for an answer and will try again and again forever. Someone clinically insane, in other words.

The second quote has been mistranslated in the revisionist RSV and I feel that that's no accident whatsoever. These days it is being taught that it is a sort of earthly wickedness in PMs and Presidents and so on - that man's dark side comes to the fore.

I humbly suggest that that is not what the KJV intended - that the KJV meant precisely what it said. We struggle not against flesh and blood; ipso facto, we struggle against principalities. So, research principalities and there's no ambiguity here, as the term is applied scripturally.

But this is heady stuff.

If you take it through to its logical conclusion, then the enemy in high places is not human. I didn't say it - don't shoot the messenger. But it's definitely written in there. Now this is where those whose interest it is to scorn this notion need only invoke the spectre of Icke's lizards and the logical path stops.

So let's rewind a bit. Read the text yourself. It was written by a fairly austere person according to his other history. So did he suddenly become a nutter for one verse and then go back to being rational once more or was he rational all along?

Let's accept, for the sake of argument, that he was rational the whole time - then what was he saying? What does he know that we don't? Was he referring to high places in Heaven or on earth? Tell you the truth - I'm not sure. Rulers of darkness of this world. But not flesh and blood. So who the hell are they then?

How about the progeny of the Nephalim? That's pretty ancient history. You say it's rubbish? Fair enough - simply show me which ancient documents conclusively disprove the notion? While you're about it, explain to me the Shardana. How about the Egyptian Sobek? The Book of Jasher perhaps? The Book of Enoch? Bonwick's Irish Druids, 1894? The Kundalini?

I'm not saying it is so - how on earth could I know something which happened so long ago? How could you know it didn't?

And what of the other quote - ye are gods? It's clear how JC was using it in John's gospel but what of the quote itself? If you say it was just a throwaway line, then why was it, specifically, resurrected all those centuries later and by this particular Individual?

I see one explanation. Every head of an organization or section becomes, in a way, a little god but is always subject to a higher god, in a bigger pool. John Buchan, mid WW1, said:

Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it, the first man you meet is Prince von und zu Something, an elegant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow English. But he cuts no ice.

If your business is big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes.

But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now.

I can't comment because I have absolutely no clue. But my own experience certainly bears out that even the highest are subject to someone higher. In the end, on earth, the highest of highs is the one who finances your plans. Where did they get the money?

Been in the family for generations. Fair enough. Where did it originally come from? Why did those particular families get it? Why not mine, for example? With such dangerous thoughts as these, I'm going to suddenly stop.

[fragmentation] organization's major weapon

One simple statistic is that the blogosphere has grown 100 times in three years and it is fragmented, especially in the political sphere.

While that is good in some respects, it also fragments opposition to highly organized forces which can be viewed at many levels. Everyone focuses on what they see as the whole issue but more often it is a numer of fragments of the whole. I see people writing what they think are very witty reposts on other people's posts, invoking catchphrases they've learnt off by heart and yet, when you examine it, the two parties are not so far apart, except on some interpretations.

Fragmentation, splintering. Each with his own slant, each looking from one angle but decrying another.

My anonymii focus on the EU monster and rightly so, the Americans increasingly look at the SPPNA, a man I know is working to get Christians out of Masonry, Gates of Vienna focuses on Islamic Sharia, in Britain, Lionheart and others do likewise, Cassandra illustrates the evils of PoMo, most UK pundits attack Brown and his neo-fascist state but don't you see that all these right thinking people are fragmented? They doubtless consider all issues but promote one or two.

I just commented at Gates of Vienna about Political Correctness and the Baron quite rightly stated:

The celebration of oxymora is central to the politico-linguistic discipline commonly known as “political correctness”.

To disable rational opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy, the first step is to take control of the language, forbidding certain words, promoting others, and changing the meanings of words within the permissible vocabulary to align with an all-pervading political ideology.

The second step is to erode the logical framework of thought itself, eating away at the deep structure of language until the underlying mental processes are deranged, leaving the mind vulnerable to re-programming.

Under the new PC template, time-hallowed distinctions — between good and evil, moral and immoral, true and false — are discarded. The only remaining distinction allowed is between what is and is not politically acceptable. PC has but a single commandment: “Thou shalt have no other words before mine.”

Good stuff but meanwhile the nature of a more complex battle remains obscure.

Assisting in the general confusion are catch cries which do so much damage that it's debilitating - try these words - Zionist, cabals, PoMo, globalism, Political Correctness, Neocon, White Supremacist, Truther, Illuminati, conspiracy theorist, relativist, multi-culturalism, inclusionism, Christian [aaaagh!], Atheist, Right and Left, climate porn and so on and so on.

Ruthie made mention of internet idiocies:

[I]t’s particularly prominent in Internet message boards, comment threads on news articles, partisan mainstream political blogs and various other quick and anonymous fora for political “debate.” YouTube comment threads, for example, are one of the worst places for this.

I know I shouldn't even read this stuff, I shouldn't indulge my perverse fascination, but it's like watching a car accident— there's something captivating about the wreckage. The reasoning is often shallow and faulty, ad hominem attacks are plentiful, and common sense is in short supply.

It is dire. Each has his own standpoint and in his "ramblings", argues from his own perspective, pronouncing "self-evident truths" in emotive language. Millions and millions of blogs are doing this. Everyone's pushing something and trying to have it seen as the major perspective.

Christian sites resort to capitalized fonts to convince or endlessly quote scripture. Illuminati sites use garish colour and emotive adjectives incessantly, making logical jumps when they should make the single point they're safe on and leave it at that.

The conflict between people divided by labels is staggering.

Even if I beg that people look at the global implications of all policies currently being pursued and therefore all agendas, the very word "global" will turn off half the people reading this. This is madness - turning off because of a label. It's moronic to label someone a "Truther" and thereby dismiss all arguments out of hand. Where is the logic in that?

And what the hell is a truther anyway? Someone looking for the truth of what's happening? Is that a bad thing, to look for truth? What are we meant to do - follow jingoistic catch cries and wrap ourselves in a flag? And which flag? The EU's? The Union Flag?

One section of society points to Christianity v Islam, another at Christianity v Jewish Cabals, another at the West v Islam, another at Statists v Libertarians. All deny something in their focuses.

Surely local self interest is the overwhelming governing factor at the base level, followed by the national interest which derailed Doha, then we splinter into all the other divisions mentioned above. In all of this, one theme I see running throughout is people's freedom to self determine their own direction in life but even here, supposed free enterprisers call for bans on this, regulation of that.

And total deregulation is anarchy and anarchy is just the separation of the sheep so they can be picked off, one by one, by the real evil [seen through my Christian eyes], the evil which says: "It's OK to indulge whatever passion springs to mind with no cessation and with no fear of consequence." Anakin Skywalker's anger - go for it, breathes Palpatine - kill, kill, kill. Yes, it feels good, doesn't it, Anakin? Indulge youself to your heart's content.

And in the process he loses his soul, his ability to resist his base desires. Little people get in his way - he swats them. You tire of one woman - get another - there are millions out there to be exploited. The road to yahooism is broad and easy. ASBOs, Clockwork Orange - great landscape for the hedonist, isn't it?

All right, my tuppence worth. Islam of the virulent kind is making huge inroads, the western leaderships are riddled with tentacles of the well acknowledged monster called the Finance, people are fragmented and pursuing their own agendas, congratulating likeminded people and gently shunning other points of view, the destruction of values once associated with Christianity is almost complete, the move to Continental Governments proceeds apace but is running into Nationalism, local, national and regional interest rules all and allows monsters utilizing the flag to rise in Africa, Iran, Malaysia and anywhere you care to name. The Old Money sits in its sanctuary and funds the mayhem all over the globe.

Then we look at China, which gave rise to this blog's name. Oh my goodness - once we start on China!

What's the net effect? Unrest, unhappiness, a new ignorant generation of alienated ASBOs and homies, breakdown of all societal codes which served before and rampant greed of a kind never so nakedly obvious as we are seeing today, not just at the top but permeating all strata of society. The great gods Credit Debt and Never-Be-Satisfied are blighting families worldwide and now into Russia.

Hope? Is blinkering one's eyes and pretending all is well true hope? We need armour, not blind faith. I know where you can get it from but I equally know why you won't seek it. I therefore beg two other things:

1 Do one kind act for someone outside your circle each day;

2 Look at what the other says and see how far it can be reconciled with your own, even on minor points.

[quick quiz] special bag edition

Bag was not so impressed with the last one so I'll try again. :)

1. What is the most times a car has rolled over in an accident and been filmed doing it?

2. What is the highest grossing western film of all time, according to Wiki and adjusted to 2007 values?

3. Who was Alexander VI's famous daughter?

4. Who holds the world land speed record with Thrust SSC and where is he from?

5. What's the name of China's superhighway linking through to Israel?

7 - in Casino Royale, Titanic, Lucretia Borgia, Andy Green - England, Karakoram