Halloween (Beltane) pizza

I made a Halloween feast, pizza being the centrepiece. Then with daughter #2 went for an evening stroll, such a beautiful clear night sky, she dressed as a witch, we greeted the moon which was looking splendid also.

'life under a likable Democrat still sucked'

OK Vote Obama, but only as this argument implies, that when Obama surely fails to deliver it will be of benefit to Anarchism.

Robots.txt

Books

On a more sedate level, I am reading The journey of Ibn Fattouma by Naguib Mahfouz, which is very good, in some ways similar to Invisible Cities by Calvino, but instead of it being one city with different aspects repeatedly revealed, it is each type of society transposed to different cities. It is also a good humanistic response to radical Islam.

Livni for PM

Tzipi Livni has failed to form a coalition to lead Israel. Why the other parties could not agree to work with her I cannot fathom, she is a woman, Jewish and vegetarian, is this not a mix that everyone would find amenable. Maybe in Israel they are spoilt for choice with those 3 things, if only it were so here.
So vote Kadima, I say to my Israeli readers (Google Analytics says '0'). Anyway I will continue to campaign for her in the forthcoming election in my own special way (crossing fingers for luck).

Faeries

I caught these faeries in my garden, I aim to take the evidence to Conan Doyle, he'll know what to do. I thought they would look more like Cicely Barker's but it seems not.

Feted books

School fete Saturday 25th, I bought:


In the Fascist Bathroom by Greil Marcus - I don't particularly like Marcus, I don't often agree with him, but he can write and is obviously knowledgable and can draw a wonderfully long bow in his criticisms - my favourite being drawing parallels between John Lydon and John of Leyden.


The Preserving Machine and other stories by Philip K. Dick - I will have read this before I have read everything he wrote (but that was years ago), and it was there and I couldn't recall it.


More Please : Barry Humphries : an autobiography - Also read before but there was one passage I recalled describing his father's reaction to the death of a friend, which I wanted to re-read as it was a wonderful exposition on how men handle emotion.


The Madwoman's Underclothes : essays and occasional writings 1968-1985 by Germaine Greer - Her early articles are brilliant and funny.


My Lover's Back : 79 love poems by MTC Cronin - hmm I try and read Australian poetry, haven't found anyone who can do it yet, and this doesn't.


The Best Poems Ever : a collection of poetry's greatest voices - another poetry book bought to thrust under my children's noses, in the vain hopes that a poem amongst the many may catch their inspiration, hasn't happened yet, but I continue to try. (Note: does not include the best poems ever).


Total spent $2.50

Potato cunt

So seeing as I was thinking about potatoes, I thought it would be a good idea to do some potato art with the kids in class - I'm always keen to volunteer. But apparently the word cunt in Suffragette purple is inappropriate for school craft activities, don't these teachers know anything about reclamation and empowerment!

Potatoes

It being international year of the potato. You should become more familiar with them. A PDF poster outlining all the Australian grown varieties is here to print out for your wall.

Diagnosing dance styles

Dr Peter Lovatt diagnoses your dance style - see here http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7680000/7680799.stm

Once watched then take the survey

According to this I am a very large and complexly coordinated dancer. But I could have told you that anyway.

There is no real examination of what your dance moves indicate, apart from the obvious that timid and poorly coordinated dancers are unattractive. But I like the idea at least that someone is studying the subject.

Thanks to J for link

Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards

So the other day I write about mediocrity and then via work I come across the Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards, and am marvelling at how excellent are the poems by Australian school children - not mediocre at all. Nice to know that however society downplays the arts, children still shine through.

Go have a look at some of the poems here.

America

The US election is soon, and I am concerned at the level of debate, the congruity between the candidates, the lack of a definite purpose. Obviously and clearly there will be no real change whoever is elected, this is surely clear.

But the 300 millions within the United States given so little real choice, I think must organise and demand a truly representative and responsible government beyond the strictures and machine politics of the two party system. Only through grassroots activism will real change come about. But activism without a plan will fail, therefore what is also needed is a clear and sensible set of demands which the people must not resile from.

For the benefit of America I have thought long and hard on what America needs to do to promote the happiness of its people, I have consulted widely and after much deliberation have come back to a set of demands first annunciated in 1956 by that great American Allen Ginsburg. Here then is the questions that America needs to address, the demands that its people need to make:

From the poem America (17 January 1956) by Allen Ginsburg.

P.S. I have no idea about the eggs bit, maybe when you simplify the demands down for a proposition vote I would suggest leaving this bit out.

Sasha - my new best friend

Mediocrity

I have a Polish friend who told me that when his children went through Australian schools that he was convinced that the choice of subject matter and the level of teaching were specifically designed to make children as mediocre as possible, from my experience of Australian society and schools I can't see anything that would disprove his view. The last thing anyone ever seems to want in Australian society or in its schools is an educated opinion, or indeed anything outside of the mediocre mainstream (oh yes, unless it is related to sport, naturally).

So what confuses me is why Fiona Stanley of ARACY is surprised by the latest OECD study, putting out this quote:

We need to be asking how an affluent and successful country like Australia can be so average when it comes to raising our children and whether we're prepared to continue to accept mediocrity for our young people

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24527995-601,00.html

Surely if the report is saying that Australia is being successful in its aims, Australia after all continues to send out to the world its greatest brains while closely nurturing its idiots, why is Ms Stanley not sending out congratulations for a job well done. It seems Ms Stanley is the one with the problem here. Tall poppy anyone.

Progressive Librarians

The Progressive Librarians Guild (http://libr.org/plg/) is a worthy US organisation with which I am I suppose in broad agreement, although they exhibit progressive as only that which fits within a left perspective (and one generally outside of libertarianism or Anarchism). They publish a journal (http://libr.org/pl/) which is worth looking at, though there are only a few full text articles available on the website. One of which from 1999 is by Jennifer Cram, an Australian (shocking I know).

A dog

I buried something today

Another quote from JW. Reading the latest, sets me back to the others, there are always references back, Stone Gods, takes me back to the start of Weight, which covers some of the same ground, Weight takes me to Written on the Body (from which this quote comes).

The cross is inscribed: Beyond the light stand failure and remorse (P. Larkin, Vers de Societe).

Which means somewhat that whilst living there is no place for fear of failure or pointless remorse, just as holding back and withdrawing is a negation of life.

Hello hello, how do you do, we are the boys in Royal Blue

I do like this story from the BBC of celtic complaining of vile chants, how delightfully delicious. If there were no vile chanting between celtic and Rangers what would be the fun of going to a game, same as with hibs and Hearts, I mean, it is not as though the football is any good - it's Scotland for god sakes. But what really surprises is that celtic supporters were complaining, did someone explain to them the words of the chants, I can't believe they were able to make them out themselves.

But anyway I am generally disinclined to support any breaking of the symbolic links between teams and their supporters. In Australia we had teams which represented both religion and nationality, but this has since been outlawed and no team can have the colours, emblems or names of a particular nation or group. But breaking these links with community just makes the game less interesting, if the team is not representing you, but just a location or a name, where is the passion. The players too if they are not linked in some way become subsiduary, they come and go, get bought and sold and who cares.
The ending of mass football hooliganism I suppose therefore didn't come about through police action or social change, it was just that the teams became not worth fighting over.

Slap-up feed

I thought that I would try and find something I wanted to eat by incorporating comic lore, thus we have here what was known as a 'slap-up feed' by the denizens of the Beano.

Although there is some disagreement on what constituted said feed, some saying it is any large outlay of food, I go with the traditional sense which was limited to a large pile of mashed potato with sausages sticking out (mine are veggie naturally). Because I have such a sophisticated palate however I have added some fried onion.

This though it may not look like it was the traditional fare for treats and rewards, the greatest meal one could attain for thousands of children throughout the many years (1930s-1970s) of popularity of this most British of comics.




It was naturally dismally disappointing to eat.

Oh and no I didn't make the idea up, here's a reference : http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/sep/08/comment.tvandradioarts2

Polling Station

Today I worked at my local polling station for the ACT assembly election, a 13+ hour non-stop work day was a bit long, but interesting none the less. The political process is almost always fascinating from whichever vantage point you take.

The points of interest were the range of people you would never normally see, and the number of people with the barest of social skills. None of which was particularly funny and really the only humour comes once you open up the ballot box and examine the spoilt votes. My favouries were:

A paper in which all the boxes were filled with smiley faces
2x paper in which all the boxes were filled with 'no'
A paper covered with engorged penis' (penii?)
and best of all one left blank but with the addition of

Oh and the result (it is not yet finalised) well I don't want to appear biased but it looks like the battery farming kangaroo slaughterers are in the majority, though the Greens may have the balance of power.

Chinese Communist Party lit crit.

Queen + Google = world domination

There is a growing conspiracy between the British royal family and the Google metahumans to rule the world through public visits to hospitals and gratuitous funding of digitisation projects, and it is very very suspicious. Mr Icke the international voice of sanity, I'm sure has all the facts, whether we are in immediate danger I don't know, but if the two sides of this pan-national conglomerate of relative benignness are willing to be so open in their dealings, the time of reckoning cannot be far off.


Or actually see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7672149.stm

Stone Gods

by: Jeanette Winterson, Stone Gods, Penguin, 2008, p. 83

Arm linking

Watching old movies, particularly those of comedian pairings such as Laurel and Hardy, you can't help noticing how often is the physical contact between men. Arm linking in particular was a very common practice among straight western men (men in Arab and some African nations don't generally do this, but are still quite happy to hold hands etc.). Today, we can have the 'acceptable' image of two men leaving a pub, and being drunk, supporting each other, but the idea that two straight men went in like that does not currently fit at all with our ideas of normal behaviour.

If one looks at footage of soldiers off duty or on leave during WWII you can see a myriad of images of men literally in arms. Only from the prism of cinema and television viewing can I see that there appears to have been a change sometime in the 1950s or early 1960s - I suppose once homosexuality became more prominent and the behaviour maybe became identified with it.

Enid Coleslaw

by Daniel Clowes

The term happening is used too infrequently these days. The point however is not to create mediated and organised happenings, but to create them individually from nothing and without too much forethought, in this way we can create situations (moments lived in).

Thrill the World

People get ready - the annual Thrill The World is less than 2 weeks away! (25 Oct.). In case you don't know (where have you been living?) this event comprises of people around the world simultaneously doing the Thriller (Zombie) dance.

In Australia it is happening in Brisbane and Launceston - obviously where else.

Or why not go to the source - Austin - oh yes.


They even have the words and movements scripted for you, so you get it right on the day. Excerpt:

You See A Sight That
swim together swim jump (hold)

Almost Stops Your Heart
swim together swim jump

You Try To Scream
shuffle back hop hop forward

But Terror Takes The Sound
turn look stare stare

Before You Make It You Start
down ha down ha down ha down ha

To Freeze As Horror Looks You Right Between The
down clap slide slide slide stomp and shoulders look left

So do you think we can all come together on this, you know unite the world, burn up all our petty ethnic and social divisions on the dancefloors of the world, it isn't going to be embarrassing in the least, really.

Update

I just read that Greil Marcus (author of Lipstick Traces, one of my favourite books) is leading off proceedings in New York , and in London it will be Billy Bragg.
Why it's not happening in Canberra I just don't know.

Youtube goodness

and




and

Accumulated epic fail

So anyway quel surprise, the orgone accumulator idea has all gone to shit. I don't know why I even bothered trying to make it now, it looked so simple, but my measurements were wrong, the wood split and then I got angry and smashed it all and god, I hate myself so much.



The whole mess is now consigned to the dustbin of history.

The arrogance of penguins

Penguins seem perennially popular, the birds (not just the representation of them in books and films and whatever), but at what cost peoples. Non-flying parasites of the ice and sea is what they are - go seals!

Pink

I found these American sweets (in a shop) and could not resist the packaging, and just look at the pink things that were hiding inside. Can't you feel the luxuriant pinkishness.

Banksy

I know Banksy became supposedly old hat a couple of years ago, after being the media darling for a considerable time, but I still think he's well worth looking at. His new exhibition in New York looks fascinating, a set of meditations on our relations with animals see http://thevillagepetstoreandcharcoalgrill.com/menu.html

Iceland - Communist thugs!

Well here's news - Iceland has nationalised all its banks - Iceland is now effectively a Communist dictatorship the government controlling the entire economy and thus essentially the means of production, distribution and exchange, who'd have guessed!

How marvellous that the contradictions of capitalism across the West are being supposedly solved by socialist intervention.

Baudrillardiana

So thinking further about terrorism, see previous here, I went back, as you do, to old Jean B and his work The Spirit of Terrorism which discusses terrorism specifically in the light of the events of September 11.

He has two things worthy of note:

1.is this sentence

The spectacle of terrorism forces the terrorism of spectacle upon us.

for full text see here


Baudrillard is always the one for the pithy sentence, but surely here he has it the wrong way round, does not the terrorism of the spectacle force the spectacle of terrorism upon us. The spectacle, that distorting intermediary which hinders all forms of communication and destabilises every form of relationship, is surely more pervasive and constant a terrorism than that of singular acts of spectacular destabilisation. The spectacle also surely forces the spectacle of terrorism upon us in 2 ways. 1, by creating a vacuum of hyperreality within which death cults thrive, and 2, by media - would 9/11 exist if it had not been constantly spectacularly replayed.



2. this sentence (fragment) also leads back to discussion of the state or in fact the discussion of the reification of the state.

… but terrorism is tautalogical, and its conclusion is a paradoxical syllogism: if the State really existed, it would give a political meaning to terrorism. Since terrorism manifestly has none (though it has other meanings), this is proof that the state does not exist, and that its power is derisory.

Dissing my home town

See this piece in the Times Online

it has this:
"Just get on to Friendsreunited and see what happened to all your wayward classmates. The skinhead Sid Vicious fan? Now in computing in Finchley."

- ha! thankfully no longer living in Finchley, it doesn't apply - god but it could so easily - still Finchley's OK, isn't it?

Nobel

And the winner of the Nobel prize for Literature 2008 is: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio!
- qui?

I mean its embarrassing when someone gets the Nobel and you haven't read anything by them (hasn't actually happened to me until now), but how is it when you have never even heard of them. I mean has anyone heard of him? I'm sure he's great an all, but who is he?

And anyway, if they wanted to award a grand old man they should obviously have gone for William Trevor, he bloody well deserves it as do numerous US writers I can think of, or if they wanted to reward a Frenchman merely because it was the turn of the French, then naturally it should have gone to Michel Houellebecq who is the only French writer currently of any account and the only one who is at least read outside of their native tongue.

Update: see this article which responds to my question and obviously others http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7677013.stm

Orgone motor

I am thinking of building an Orgone motor, it looks fairly straightforward. I think I will just need some balsa wood and glue. See here for details


Update

I have now seen plans to build an Orgone Accumulator (see below) from http://www.orgone.org/articles/ax2001-grnfld-aa.htm, which actually looks much simpler to build. And having an accumulation of Orgone energy, will be better than having an Orgone motor, because I have no real use for a motor, but excess Orgone energy, why that I could maybe bottle and sell. The only problem is the use of shellac (not vegetarian) advised as step 8, what the fuck am I going to use instead. I mean I don't want to go to all this trouble and find I'm not getting any Orgone because of lack of shellac. But I am thinking actually this is my chance to begin a conversation with Kate Bush, because she apparently believed in W. Reich for a bit (see Cloudbusting) and she is a vegetarian, so she might know, anyway it's worth a shot.

But, anyway I have time this coming weekend so I think I will build it and just leave out the whole shellac stage for now. So, let me know if you want some Orgone as I could with luck have some for sale Monday.

Update 2

You would not believe that Kate Bush got back to me almost straight away and suggested I use a plant based violin varnish instead of the shellac. I am so impressed, she knows her instruments obviously, but also the technical aspects of an Orgone accumulator (she gave some good advice on the actual later usage). Apparently I will have to beware of spending too much time in the box, as too much exposure to Orgone can be dangerous.



This is all going so well, I'm getting really quite excited, but at the back of mind is always the fear that it will end up like the recent planned trip to Rigel which went so badly I don't even want to think about it anymore.

Brooks and Ted Shawn

I was reading Louise Brook's autobiography for any mention of Denishawn, and although she toured with them 1922-23 and went to two of their summer schools, there is really no mention at all. Which is a shame. Still here's a photo.

What a state you're in

But you may say what is this state you speak of that in the past we were offered liberation from.

Margaret Thatcher said “there is no such thing as the state” the state for her was not a monolithic entity, but a composite of individuals, collected together by force of geography, politics and time. A reasonable argument, and entwined with her insistence that the state did not have nor own any property or wealth, rather there was a joint holding and administration of individual taxpayers wealth. But yet we also know the state does exist and does holds power, is self replicating and acts with representative rather than mandated power. We know this because we can see the outward manifestation of it within politicians and the armed forces which maintain them. So the state is both a collective of ourselves and also has a distinct face that is not ours. We should also say here what the state is not, for we must not fall into the trap of believing that a conspiracy state exists that automatically vests power and interest, as this almost religious view of dark or benign hidden forces at work, is clearly farcical (and those who believe it are generally of the belief also in the Jewish world order lie).

I would say that Thatcher was essentially right today. We are we all now in the position to claim, like Louis XIV who is reputed to have said, ‘Le etat c’est moi’. We cannot escape that conclusion any more, the co-option of the entire population into the idea of a state is complete. We must also realise that the population did not go unknowingly into this compact, but actively sought it out through many years of negotiation, via the destruction of oligarchic power, political enfranchisement and property law. So secure is the apparatus of the state that now you may even with the state’s blessing opt out of the system, but you can rest assured that somewhere down the track a representative of the state will come find you, not to imprison you for your views, but to offer you the golden handcuff of social welfare.

The state rarely if ever acts now against majority will (you may say here what about the second Iraq war, but you would be wrong, there was majority support for such, you just didn’t pay attention enough). But you may think majority opinion is not valid, democracy fails by preferencing the opinion of one group over another, therefore the state does not represent you or your opinion, and thus you are outside of the state, which is valid to a point. But your opposition to the state (or any part of its current orthodoxy) is actually a fundamental part of the functioning of it, the state contains within it all opinion, it allows you to pull it in whatever direction you want, and can thus adapt and grow to incorporate any view. The state is not an agency, with a set of goals or an opinion it is an evolving creation and it develops as you mould it. So you remain a part of the state, and even in your most complete disagreement with one aspect of it, you will continue to support the whole by complicit activities such as taxation, by voting, by obeying the laws, by taking any action that legitimises the state. And actually, even if don’t do these things you will still serve the state’s purpose, by allowing it to project another aspect of its co-operative power, either through violence or beneficence.

So if you take the argument that you are the state, how then is the state opposed to your freedom and why should you seek liberation from it? Firstly I would say that the state is not opposed to your freedom - you are, and secondly, you have brought the state into being and given it power merely to draw an intercessionary mask between what you may think you want and what you really want. Funny that. Sorry did you want a real answer?

p.s. the you is a universal you.

p.p.s is clear I is joking, yes.

Recuperation

Look about the Internet, is it strange that all the old style European 'terrorist' liberation forces have websites now by or for them. The CCC funsters have their own at http://www.cellulescommunistescombattantes.be/ there are of course a number for the RAF/Baader-Meinhof, one such at http://www.baader-meinhof.com and for Action Directe http://www.action-directe.net.

I presume this means that they are now historical and we are seeing their abstraction and abnegation from currency.

But this is true I suppose, the terrorist today is the representative of some state (or an irredentist excuse for one), or some sad religious farce, their targets are the public, because obviously both the state and religion are irretrievably and absolutely opposed to the possible happiness and freedom of people.

The communist/anarchist vanguardist adventurers were never motivated by such hate, nor sought indiscriminate violence against the people they wanted, by example, to liberate. That which is used today, the bomb in a public place is relatively easy and uses brute force to punish and threaten a population. The radical Left of the 1970-1980s was never indiscriminate and targeted specific companies, institutions or people, a much harder task - one for which they got caught.

So is it OK now that we can recuperate them ourselves, now that Baudrillard has shown us that the time of ideology has permanently ceased, now we know they are a part of the past.

If the face of that filthy concentration camp commandant Che Guevara can be on numerous products can we use the most beautiful image of all, not as cliche but as iconography.


Can we celebrate them if only for this reason:

It doesn't matter if their choice for the armed struggle is
right or wrong - morally or empirically (politically or
strategically) - what matters is the fact that people had the
courage to act in consequence with their ideas and convictions,
in other words people had the courage to be free. Let's not
forget that those who have chosen to go underground in the
resistance are fully aware as an ever present probability that
one day they will be arrested, or possibly killed.

from here


Today there is no conceivable concept of liberation, we can imagine creating revolutionary events in everyday life, but they have all become subsumed within art. Art having replaced politics as the arena for ideas, think of the concept of the flash mob, the sudden eventuality of people coalescing for a purpose to detourn a space for a moment in time, 'a happening' as was the old term. We can all prank now like the yippies - but only now that the context is gone.

The Prophecies of William Blake

from - There is no natural religion

That the poetic genius is the true man, and that the body or outward form of man is derived from the poetic genius. Likewise that the form of all things are derived from their genius, which by the ancients was called an angel and spirit and demon.

It is worrying when reading Blake just how close he comes to saying that I am god because he is not subtle in his estimation - it is lucky indeed I am not prone to delusions of grandeur.

As to creation he has these words for me:

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason compare. My business is to create.

kangaroo culling - Australian policy?

Ross Garnaut's long awaited Climate change report has arrived. There was some hope that he would make some recommendations against the keeping and slaughter of animals, and he has somewhat, admitting that raising millions of sheep and cattle for slaughter is not in any way good for the environment or climate change. However, all he has done is say that these animals numbers should be slightly reduced and the meat from them replaced by slaughtering more Kangaroos. No win then for animals, but then when is there.

I am in agreement with something - yes

This Manifesto by Free Culture at http://freeculture.org/manifesto/ is pretty much exactly where I stand as an Internet user/creator and Librarian.

OK "with a truly active, connected, informed citizenry, injustice and oppression will slowly but surely vanish from the earth." is just the sort of hyperbole I would use, and is obviously wrong, because oppression exists on so many levels and knowledge does not in itself combat it, but anyway it is a very nice manifesto.

Guitar Hero

So I was talking about the computer game Guitar Hero (yep I was, just maybe not with you) and it reminded me of this picture from Destroy by Dennis Morris (cept mine is the 1998 edition not same as Amazon, and mine is a signed copy). The book is of photographs of the Sex Pistols from 1977.

National Vegetarian Week

OK Kids, it is day 3 of National Vegetarian Week.
I have been really good, so far, and haven't eaten any meat at all. I just hope I can last through the entire week.

But also, does rat count?