My son asked me the lottery fantasy-question two days ago and thwack! goodbye to my humanitarian pretentions. Oh yes - a large boat and yes, our own island in the tropics and ooooh please a dream mansion on our dream island. In fabulously-wealthy-land, I am no philanthropist, I am a committed hedonist who really only wants the easiest most comfortable life he could ever have. Then I thought, "what, on our wages?" And I want it, but how? I wonder if it is misery that makes me a good philanthropist, my own self pity projected onto the rest of us? I could make such a good rich person, I'd know what to do, I'd learn to navigate a boat all around the world, I'd treat my staff well and I would race my son in our Ferraris. "IF I WERE A RICH MAN, YABBA YABBA YABBA DO."

At least 30 years ago FOE issued a warning about global warming, I know because I read it. Like the existence of God, the human race required firm evidence before it believed the truth. God doesn't exist however, but climate change does. Interesting notion: does faith in God allow Christians to avoid the reality of global catastrophy? They can't wait to get away anyhow - sorry, am I keeping you? Christians intrinsically despise the flesh (all matter) as obscuring the true life in Jesus Christ as they lovingly focus on the heavenly reward. So with so many of us on a permanent away day who's left to lead us away from idealism and back to the matter in hand? Not many considering the majority of the population of Earth is wacky about pre-determination. While Bush and Blair pray for deliverance from Evil and walk with her/him/it by their side through the valley of (heaven's gate)I scratch my head quite frankly and perspire at the image of billions of suicidal lemmings baaaing or whatever as they plunge into oblivion, not realising once they have done so that life isn't quite the same when they're dead. Get a fucking life you assholes, come and join the human race.

Not many people know this: mental health patients are more emotionally literate than people who haven't plumbed the depths or scaled the heights of pain and rapture. Does that help? It does if normal people everywhere accept the value of the experiences of the inmates (mostly) of psychiatric hospitals. Normal people would need to encourage efforts towards communication. Mental health patients would be happy I'm sure, albeit worried about verbal abuse and being subjected to stereotyping. The reason why normal people stereotype mental health patients is their inability to believe their senses: it's safer to superimpose a mental picture on Eric than to feel the pain he conveys. That pain resonates in normal people reminding them of their pain which is safely locked up in the inner closet. Unless you are wantonly living a lie, pain, disaster and distress are forever seconds away. The rest of us have lost touch with our natures and carry on in their Gidean farces. Mental Health patients do not have thick skins, they are cut by every stray comment, people raw and ragged and tossed around like a child's rag doll. Here is the secret of humanity's longevity - pleasure divided by pain = happiness - we need to retreat into our hides and take some lashes to know perhaps some of the things that could save our civilisations.

Hoods to Hoodlums to Hoodies - an anthropological classification related to Vandals, Thugs and Goths? In their arrogance, the guardians of the race's listings have relegated many young people to mere tribal status in their cherished gerontocratic RES PUBLICA.
Precursors of modernity, tribes were smaller, more adaptable, but considered vulnerable and structurally weak by modernisers, leading to scorn and bullying by heftier nation-states.
This invites a parallel discussion about adults, older adults and developmentally previous groups of young adults, previous also in their structure to modernist society.
Equally, one sees young tribal people scorned and bullied by strong governments of superior teleological fitness, presumably to prepare them for entry to their own 'age de raison.'
What awaits them? A planet haunted by marauding super-tribes where no-one questions rampaging armies of thieves and the old song is whistled by every oldie: " This is what got left to me, this is what got left to me, my son."

Free Saddam! Free Saddam! Come and get your free Saddam.. By Jove sah! yet another successful attempt at social and political engineering in the Middle East. Hear ye! Hear ye! UN and Nato megalomaniacs caught behind enemy lines looking stupid! "If you pick it, it'll bleed silly boy." To act or not to act, that is (sorry, what was the question again?) Honestly, if you hear them, do you think, "that's an intelligent man?" All of 'em phalanxes short of centuries, or to boot, led in the path of righteousness no doubt. Poor Saddam, a proud man indeed, 'apres moi le Tsunami' thinking no doubt. These fucking christian leaders are the biggest wankers after all - leave this fucking planet alone won't you!!

"Black Jack" bully-boy Prescott: "Yanks have a totally different 'take' on public backhanders." "The cuffs are off, bring on the dancing girls," he muttered as Philip Anschutz took a shine to his dome.

[ Snippets From An Addled Brain ]

Has Ken Lay been 'spirited away?' Te dum te dee te dum. The Lord has called him to his island in the Sun.

Oh Ken you were so fair and gay, those nasty feds are gonna pay!

And what about the North Koreans? Those naughty chaps with flyin' macheeeans....

The news is such a loada balls it appears that writing's on the walls.

Feed us pix of posh and becks and clone-ed sheep having pointless sex.

It's wearing me out slagging off the yanks all day every day. Jesus! if I felt that hated it wouldn't be unnatural to go a little paranoic. Let's adopt the poor downtrodden American nation and tell it mommie's gonna buy it some new toys, more colourful, yes! more joyous. We love you America, we love your silly little face etc.. but do put that gun away Tommy and give your Aunty England a nice big kiss. I hate it when they cry (real tears, really). It's all a bit of a mess innit? He hit me and I hit her so he hit me harder and ow mommie it hurt soooo much. If people were brighter or farted in the right places.... Let's lurve the yanks and get it on in this planet dance thing.

"Co-incidentally"... this stunning piece of bourgeois jet de plume is a nagging also-ran. Dyed-in-the-wool anarchists with our holey jumpers and bolognese streaks have the manners of subversive layabouts without the leisure of crouching next to catwalks or haunting The National Gallery. The world of the romantic by the way, is simultaneous and rigourously fated, not 'co-incidental' as might be construed from Hadley Freeman's fondness of the term in the context.

ANNIVERSARY
09/07/06



MOON comes full circle in the sky once again. She brings the cycle to completion, slowly beating a pulse in the dark of the night.
Our loves and labours both heal and hurt, trying to balance the passing scenes that buffet our lives with joy and pain.

Dare we not speak of death and our dying? Pain and joy both tan our bodies and cut deep furrows. Were we not to love does life spare us the pain of blame and accusation? The missions chosen by these solitary warriors cause them to hurl their flags in the hope the staves will land triumphantly in the dreamy moon.

Is this the same Earth? Is that the same moon? Do you claim my satellite or do I claim yours?

This time is hard, so hard, our fortunes mirror the times through which we pass and ye! there’s no escape. The very sadness of love tested, in all but mercy trusted, where mercy is the furthest fantasy to which only tearful pleading might offer some fruitless hope.

Our lives tend to kill us, life kills everyone: pain plucks out our teeth one by one, no arbiter at the game, mere delusion shields us from the wanton, formless, indisputable truth that there is no God. Who then will save us, wretched, poor and desperate that we are?