Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Currently watching: 'Afghan Star'

Photobucket


After 30 years of war and Taliban rule, Afghan Pop Idol is taking the nation by storm!
But this is more than just a TV show...in Afghanistan you risk your life to sing.


Sunday, March 28, 2010

Should Pope Benedict XVI resign?

Should Pope Benedict XVI be held responsible for the escalating scandals over clerical sexual abuse in Europe? Yes he should, and it's going to escalate a lot further, as more and more victims break through the guilt of their childhood indoctrination and come forward.

Should he be investigated for how cases of abuse were handled under his watch as archbishop of Munich or as the Vatican's chief doctrinal enforcer? Yes, of course he should. This former head of the Inquisition should be arrested the moment he dares to set foot outside his tinpot fiefdom of the Vatican, and he should be tried in an appropriate civil - not ecclesiastical - court. That's what should happen. Sadly, we all know our faith-befuddled governments will be too 'respectful' to do it.

Should the pope resign? No. As the College of Cardinals must have recognized when they elected him, he is perfectly - ideally - qualified to lead the Roman Catholic Church. A leering old villain in a frock, who spent decades conspiring Machiavellin style behind closed doors for the coveted position he now holds; a man who believes he is infallible and acts the part; a man whose preaching of scientific falsehood is responsible for the deaths of countless AIDS victims in Africa; a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down and penises in the mouths of young children is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence. Damn em to hell! : in short, exactly the right man for the job! He should not resign, moreover, because he is perfectly positioned to accelerate the downfall of the evil, corrupt organization whose character he fits like a glove, and of which he is the absolute and historically appropriate monarch.

No, Pope Benedict XVI should not resign. He should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice - the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution called the Catholic Church, this blight on earth, this evil enterprise of sex starved men in ecclessiastical garbs and little child penis infatuations - while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.

It's rotten to the core. It's all rotten to the core. Rotten I say. Rotten. Any organisation that covers up child abuse is rotten to the core. This fucked up world with its false affected pieties is too blind to see it.

I imagine the stars.

And then I am calm.

Coming soon...Midnight Adventure's in London's Arthouse Cinescape

Coming soon...The enigma of Kasper Hauser

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Cruel people


The problem is as follows:

We don't see ourselves from the viewpoint of animals. If we could see what we look like, what we are, what we do, from the vantage point of the other creatures with whom we share this world, what would we see? If a monkey, or a giraffe, or a chicken, or a cow, suddenly - by some quirk of biology, became sentient, what would it see when it viewed us? Would it see what we see when we view ourselves? I doubt it. We have an all too lofty opinion of ourselves. With our art and language and science and our philosophy. We think ourselves pseudo-angels, semi-divine, rational, intelligent, smart, clever, and imaginative creatures. We are all these great things, but we are also so much less.

To see ourselves in high definition (HD) and not mere DVD - we must imagine, what we look like, to animals. We look like an upright ape that has, by way of its intellect, managed to utterly control and subordinate animals. A chicken (by way of example) is a biological entity that nature has fashioned with her claws of 'red in tooth' - and now we, yes we mankind, now fashion the chicken. We are God as far as the chicken is concerned. The chicken you eat no longer resembles the chicken of the wild. We now control every aspect of its life. It is ours. When young we give it 4 hours of darkness in every 24. This way the chicken's internally calibrated (evolved over millions of years) biological clock is tricked into thinking it is spring, and thus it eats, and eats, and eats, readying itself for summer and thence babies. And we feed it grain, high energy grain - for the chicken must eat, for it thinks (well not 'thinks' but you know what I mean) that spring is nigh, and a chicken must prepare itself for babies and motherhood. And when it is fat, so fat it can barely stand on its own two legs (and in pain too), and when it has been pumped full of antibiotics to stop the spread of infection from its unnatural existence, we kill it, and then we eat it. We eat it in the environs of a fashionable but dimly lit restaurant where classical music is piped through the airwaves and you can hear the clink of knife and fork on china plates. We eat it braised in a delicious red wine gravy sauce with side dishes of cholrophyl rich spinach and baby potatoes. It is soft and tender when you cut it with the knife, and as we eat it, as we cut away through its fibrous tendons, we sip a glass of wine, and with our dinner guests think ourselves such lofty high brow creatures. And over this delicious chicken we discuss Schopenhauer, and Mozart and contemporary linguistics theory. So intelligent. So superior. So not like animals. Yet - We Eat Animals.

We Eat Animals
We Eat Animals
We Eat Animals
We Eat Animals
We Eat Animals
We Eat Animals

When you say that a few times. It finally hits you. It hits you hard:

We Eat Animals

Because...

We Are Animals.

We Eat Animals

Cos...

We Are Animals.

We Are All of us...Animals.

We go about our lives thinking ourselves so lofty, so aloof, so noble and high-born. So Moral. So Kind. So Good.

[I laugh]

[And then I smile]

And then I see..that I have canine teeth, incisors, for tearing flesh and I sometimes fart and when I look at certain types of women (the one's I fancy) I get the urge to fuck them. Being human is so hard. There's always a conflict between our animal natures and our so called nobility and reverence. A storm constantly raging.

And as for sex! Sex is all animal. Fuck - Fuck - Fuck. We love to Fuck. We try out different positions of Fucking, and sucking, and licking and tasting, and squirting. And my gosh! How we love to Fuck! And exchange bodily fluids - no wonder the Catholic Church hates sex - No wonder all religions fear sex - for in the mirror of sex the true face of Man is revealed - in all it's shame! In all its wildness. If ever you doubt your animal truth, think about sex - think about how animalistic it is. How so inappropriate for such a lofty being!

And the worst, perhaps the most shameful word describing a quality of Man is a German word: Schadenfreude. The very worst thing in Man. Schadenfreude: taking sweet pleasure from other peoples misfortunes. Not because the unfortunate are our enemies or people we hate. Oh no! but because, to feel good about one self, to win a competition, to come first, to get a job, to be promoted, to pass an exam, to win a girl, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE ANOTHER WHO LOOSES...by definition. Remember that. Our fortune, our good luck, our happiness, is always, at the expense, of another not so fortunate person. It evens out in the end. There is no sum increase in happiness - just changes in distribution of happiness. The sum total of happiness has always been the same throughout history. It's the distribution that counts. So next time, you are staring into the opalescent eyes of the girl (or guy - for I also have female readers) whom you love. This sealed individual sitting opposite you in a restaurant over a meal. This person who shines a light in the dark corners of your life...just remember, that moment was brought with the pain and suffering, of that chicken, you are about to tuck in to.

Bon Apetite!


___________

Jelly people


People are like jelly.

Imagine a tower of jelly. Sitting on a dessert plate. Surrounded by empty 'plateness'. You see it sitting there? This tower of jelly. You shake it. It wobbles a little. You shake more vigorously. It wobbles some more but, but it keeps its shape. You throw something at it. You throw a cherry at it - it bounces off and falls to the ground. You knock it on the head with a spoon. It bounces off too.

You stare at it. This castle of jelly. You look into it and notice that it is not uniform or homogeneous from inside. It's like marble. With striations and patterns and whorls and cracks. It has structure. It has form. It has textures. You shake it some more. It wobbles but the patterns inside never change. After a while you recognise them and they become familiar, dependable, boring.

People are like jelly. Set. Set like jelly. Everybody a fortress of jelly I see. With insurmountable redoubts, formidable turrets, crenellations, a deep moat - and views that never change. Try scaling a jelly fortress.

When do we become jelly fortresses? I wonder often. I wondered today. Sealed as we are. In our fortresses. Views that never change. A landscape that see's the seasons shift, but it's the same old seasons, every year. Year after year. And as they go by. The jelly hardens. Toughens. Grows a skin, like crusty cheese. Caked as it is with time. Ah time. Don't talk to me about time. And then, it no longer even wobbles when you shake it! Oh no! Rock solid now. A fortress of mortar and bricks. And the view? It shifts no more. The seasons no longer change. A painting now. By a painter that never sees.

Am I a jelly fortress?

Oh no!

Not me. I'm a puddle!

A squalid runny puddle. Of Jelly. Not set. Globular. With blobs. And bits. Like a lumpy custard. I don't look like anything. I should know. I look in the mirror and see a kaleidoscope. With no form. I occupy whole swathes of the dessert plate. I am runny. And I run. From one end of the plate to the other is my Kingdom. Thinly spread, widespread. The kingdom over which I rule. Of which I am king. But a king with few rules.

If I'm lucky.

Really, really lucky

I'll never set.

Oh no!

Do you know what my wish is?

To fall of the edge

of the dessert plate.

Just to see

what else there is

on the banquet table

of life.


Thursday, March 04, 2010

Pale Blue Dot




________


Look again at that dot.
That's here
That's home.
That's us.
On it everyone you love
everyone you know
everyone you ever heard of
every human being who ever was,
lived out their lives.

________________