The Prince, The Crown and The Letter

January 29, 2023 By in TAOQUEST, THE STORYHOUSE Tags: , , , , Leave a comment
The Prince, The Crown and The Letter

Once upon a time, there was a Kingdom called Dwanaland, comprised of the counties Eastbord, West Hale, and Southchurch.

Every year, the richest best and brightest young princes and princesses of the kingdom would gather in Eastbord, and partake in a series of trials designed to place them in a hierarchy to choose which of them would take up various offices of the Court. It was from this privileged talented group that the eventual King of Dwanaland would come, so the trials were hotly contested. In theory, the ruler could actually be a Queen rather than a King, but that had only ever happened once and had not been deemed a success except by the princesses. This, it was felt, was because princesses were usually more suited to the role of obeying princes than to ruling them. Mostly it was the princes themselves who felt this, what the princesses felt cannot be said for certain because the princes wrote and kept most of the official records; the task of recording history being too important onerous for princesses and liable to damage their wombs. It was felt. By the princes.

But by the year 18888, when Dwanaland considered itself a modern and progressive kingdom, the trials contained a surprising number of highly competitive princesses, most of them with intact wombs.

The princes and princesses gathered as usual in Emeraldcityville, the main city of Eastbord, to take part in the trials. Two of the competitors that year were Princess Catherine of Southchurch, and Prince Christian of West Hale. These two were very evenly matched but in the final trial, a speaking competition, Princess Catherine drew ahead and when the trials came to a close, she was judged the outright winner with Prince Christian a close second.

There was much celebration amongst Prince Christian and Princess Catherine’s friends, and dancing well into the night. People said that one or other of them was bound to be King one day, or Queen of course, all wombs being equal, and both were praised and made much of.

After the dancing, Prince Christian offered to walk Princess Catherine home. Just before they reached the castle they were staying in, he drew her aside and professed his love. The princess was thrilled, for she too harboured these secret feelings.

“Meet me at midnight, at the top of the highest tower,” the prince whispered into her ear, and she shivered, and agreed.

So, later that night, Princess Catherine slipped out of her room and went to meet her prince at the top of the highest tower.

When she got there, he was waiting for her. The light of the full moon streamed in, illuminating the room in silver, and the scent of roses wafted through from the climbing vines at the window. Violin music could be heard from far below.

Her prince stood by the window looking out. “Come and look,” he said, and held out his hand to her, “you can see the lake from here.”

She went to him. He gathered her in his arms. Her face turned up to him, awaiting love’s first kiss. He pushed her out the window.

****************************

Many years later, Prince Christian—who by now was high in the line to the throne—received word that King Skum was very ill and not expected to last much longer. The prince hurried to meet with the king’s other advisors, and the succession was discussed in secret meetings in private back rooms throughout the castle. There were only two other rivals for the throne: Prince Friedegg and Prince Potater but both were unpopular with the people:  the former for suggesting to the peasants that if they were hungry they should eat more lobster, the latter for attempting to imprison indefinitely all those who disagreed with him on the subject of summary execution for anyone caught being poor in public. King Skum was also unpopular, mostly for passing a law in secret saying he was not only King of Dwanaland but of all other countries as well including those as yet undiscovered or likely to be imaginary, and that not genuflecting as he passed should punishable by death, preferably by fire ants.

It was felt that Prince Christian was probably the option the people of Dwanaland would consider the least worst, and his succession to the throne was assured. The death of King Skum was a mere technicality at this point, one that could possibly be hastened by a merciful act of medical error. Failing that, he was extremely likely to be soon taken by his most trusted advisors on a tragic hunting accident.

Prince Christian celebrated quietly that night, dining on expensive wine, lobster, and his chambermaid. He drank a toast to himself for being finally about to achieve the honour he and his family had plotted for so carefully since he was born. King! It was everything he’d ever wanted and practically in his grasp. He went to bed in a mood of heady exhilaration.

But in the midnight hour, Prince Christian dreamed a terrible dream.

He was in a crypt: cold, silent, with dark archways and deep shadows.

Before him, on an altar, glittered the kingdom’s crown, its gold and jewels the only bright thing in the room.

Between him and the crown lay a coffin.

He reached out to grab the crown but suddenly, with a creak and a groan, the coffin lid opened, and from it rose a woman’s dead hand, holding a letter.

Prince Christian woke with a start into his own bed chamber. It smelt of roses, moonlight was streaming through the window, and from far below he thought he could hear violin music.

He remembered his dream, and shuddered. “Too much lobster,” he told himself, “or possibly not enough chambermaid,” and he went back to sleep.

The next day, as the prince was breakfasting and daydreaming of future glories, a page came with an urgent summons to the throne room.

“Maybe the king is dead,” he thought. ”This could be it.” And he shivered in anticipation.

But when he arrived at the throne room, King Skum, propped up on the throne by certain peasant-eating media outlets, was resting comfortably on the incompetence of his underlings, seemingly unaware he should be dying.

In front of the king stood one of his senior advisors. On the man’s face was a heavy scowl and in his hand, a letter.

****************************

No one had faulted Prince Christian for his gentlemanliness after the terrible accident that broke Princess Catherine’s spine. He was quite magnanimous about it, offering to marry her, telling her that there were still many tasks to which she would be suited: raising his babies, answering his phone, and ironing his shirts as he rose through the ranks in the quest to become King of Dwanaland. Others said this was remarkably generous of him considering the fall was her fault in the first place: she should not have been wearing those ridiculous shoes. It was clear that the way she was dressed was simply asking for trouble. 

It is assumed that Princess Catherine was very grateful to him for forgiving her lapse in shoe-wearing judgment, although no one actually bothered to record her thoughts at the time given that Prince Christian was entirely capable of interpreting them for her for the permanent record.

In the event, Princess Catherine did not go on to marry the prince. She returned to Southchurch and spent the next years undergoing different treatments for her broken back. Unfortunately, the injury was too great for her to ever really again be considered a contender in the kingly stakes. But doctors told her that with a healthy diet and a little gentle exercise, the worst of the shattered bones could be kept from interfering too much in her ordinary life, as long as she did not attempt anything really tricky such as gymnastics, or walking. They also discreetly suggested she lose a little weight, give up on the fine lobster perhaps, a sedentary lifestyle was hard on a woman’s body but that was no excuse for letting herself go.

The princess did everything she could to recover from her terrible accident, but the pain was a constant reminder that she was not fully capable of protecting herself. She found it hard to trust, and she always felt sad. One day, she reached the end of the line. She had tried all possible treatments, and still the pain and sadness ate through her. 

That day, on a visit to her mother, her back gave out for the final time, and she tumbled all the way down a staircase to her death.

But before she died, she wrote a letter.

****************************

In the throne room, the king’s advisor told Prince Christian that Princess Catherine—whom by now he barely remembered—was dead, and that she had written a letter saying she did not fall from the castle tower that night, Prince Christian pushed her.

The prince was shocked. He denied it vociferously. When the ministers and advisors of the King’s Council asked why she would say such a thing if it wasn’t true, he said the thing that men always say about women who stand against them: that she was crazy. He said that she was vengeful, that she was bitter, that she was a liar. He said she was nasty, vindictive, too old, probably ugly, and likely to own many cats but most of all, he repeated, she was crazy.

Although the ministers and advisors were always inclined to believe that a woman was crazy, it was too late to hide the news about the letter. Word had leaked out, and the people were demanding action. 

King Skum did nothing, as was his wont, but Prince Christian was dragged before the Court of Public Opinion where he pleaded his case. He said he’d never met Princess Catherine, then that he had met her but didn’t remember her, then that he had met her, did remember her, but she was lying. He told them she was crazy, crazy, crazy. He begged for them to believe him. It is quite possible he actually believed himself by this point. He asked for sympathy. He cried.

But the people had no sympathy. They had suffered too long under the rule of men like Prince Christian. And King Skum’s time on the throne had been a nightmare full of corruption, incompetence and cruelty. The people wanted a head.

So they took Christian’s.

He was stripped of all his titles and influence, removed from power, and sent back to West Hale where he still had some friends, who organised for him a sinecure collecting the shit of the donkey belonging to the man who collected the shit of the horse ridden by the woman who emptied the chamberpot of the 4th-in-line to Head Shit Collector of the Royal Chickens.

King Skum didn’t die, he was far too cunning to go hunting with his best friends or drink the health potions they kindly prescribed, but he lost power anyway. His Council was sent into exile and replaced by a Council which actually contained princesses as well as princes. The people decided that at the very least, they could not be much worse than the council of King Skum and the Princes Christian, Friedegg, and Potater, and in the event, it turned out that the new Council, who called themselves The Workers’ Champions (although nobody knew why as none of them seemed to actually know any workers) were not much worse. They were not much better either but the people were too tired for revolution so they let it happen, and at the time I write, are watching them from afar with beady eyes.

****************************

Princess Catherine was buried with honours and real tears, her tragic letter read by the whole kingdom, and in time, a statue was raised to her with a plaque telling her story and warning of the perfidy of princes, written by media pundits of all of whom it suddenly turned out had known and loved her personally for many, many, many, many, many, many years.

And in West Hale, no-longer-a-prince Christian was left to rot away, a warning to others: here is the man who was almost king, felled by the words of a bloody woman fercrisake, always said ya can’t trust ’em, should never have let ’em learn how to read and write in the first place just look what happens when they get a bloody eddication ffs its a cryin’ shame lowdown bunch a bitches. Ahem.

He never slept very well after that. He was plagued, constantly, by a particular recurring nightmare.

In it, he is back in the crypt. He reaches out to grasp the glittering crown. But the coffin creaks open, and a long arm rises from it. Its cold, dead fingers hold a letter.

k.p.tona

©2022

UPDATE

In the Year 18923, the new Council headed by the Workers’ Champions opened an inquiry into a particularly unpopular policy of the previous Council. This policy had insisted that if the very poorest of the citizens could not prove to the Council’s satisfaction that they’d never had more than a single bag of peanuts a fortnight to subsist on, they would be fined 12,000 bags of peanuts or spend 67 years in the dungeons. Which were guarded by sabre-toothed tigers. This was called the Fairness And Recognition of Kingdom Understanding, or FARKU.

The Council had been very pleased with this policy, which had reaped them a lot of peanuts and given the peasants a clear understanding of exactly where they stood in the hierarchy of the kingdom. Although some of the kingdom’s peanut-collectors had baulked, pointing out that the only way peasants could prove their peanut consumption was to obtain affidavits from everyone they had ever met since birth, and that many of these people could not provide said affidavits on account of now being dead, King Skum’s Ministers had responded by saying the peasants should have thought of this when they were born, and that they, the Ministers of the Crown, could not be held responsible for peasant fecklessness. And reminded everyone that the state of the Castle dungeons was such that they now required crocodiles to clean up the sabre-toothed tiger shit.

When the Workers’ Champions were elected, they showed a pleasing predilection for vindictiveness. They opened an Inquiry into FARKU and stocked it with Royal Lawyers with deceptively mild-mannered faces who had actually all been raised on sabre-tooth tiger milk, and had advanced weapons training in Sarcasm, Bullshit Detection, and Attention to Detail.

To date, the Royal Lawyers have spilt so much blood that the dungeon crocodiles have been brought up to lick the Inquiry room’s floors clean after every session, thus providing a neat solution to the disposal of certain soulless peanut-collectors.

Speaking of whom, it is expected that in the next week or two, the former-prince Christian of West Hale will be called to give testimony as to his part in the FARKU debacle. As it is said that his speech these days is limited to the phrases “I never” “I wouldn’t” “we didn’t” “she’s crazy” and “I forget” this is expected to be something of a bloodbath. Their neighbours say the sound of the Royal Lawyers sharpening their teeth on metal grinders can be heard throughout the night.

Stay tuned.

The Sins of the Georges

July 22, 2022 By in TAOQUEST Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments
The Sins of the Georges

There’s a moment in the recording of Cardinal George Pell debating Richard Dawkins on QandA that is one of the most revealing statements Pell has ever made; which says more about him and his worldview than arguably any other example from his long history in public life.

The moment comes at 18:59 minutes into the hour-long video. Cardinal Pell is talking about why God came to the Jewish people, and he says:

“…so for some extraordinary reason, God chose the Jews.They weren’t intellectually the equivalent of the Egyptians … [as you can see from] the fruits of their civilisation. Egypt was the great power, for thousands of years, before Christianity. Persia was a great power. Chaldea. The poor little Jewish people, they were shepherds. They were stuck, they’re still stuck, between these great powers.”

Tony Jones, not one to let slip such an opportunity, immediately pulls Pell up on this and asks him directly whether by this he means that the most famous of all Jewish men, Jesus Christ, was intellectually not up to it. Pell tries to sidle past this excellent point as Dawkins looks on in wry, disdainful, amusement and the half of the audience not in thrall to the Catholic Church cheers.

Leaving aside the blatant and ugly anti-semitism of Pell here, the point I am talking about is the way Pell reveals his utter disdain for “the poor, little people” and his admiration for the “great powers”.

For a man like Pell, only other men of great power are of interest. The little people are just that, little. He reveals his identification with power and dismissal of those who lack it again, in his testimony to the child sexual abuse Royal Commission, when he justifies his reason for glossing over the dangerous sexual proclivities of certain priests, moving them from parish to parish when the complaints got too loud, rather than confining them away from children.

“It was a sad story,” he tells the Commission from his comfortable sinecure in Rome, “and of not much interest to me.”

No. George Pell was not interested in those children. George Pell had no interest in the powerless. He was not interested in the abuse or wellbeing of those his church MADE powerless, such as women and children. Only men were of interest to George Pell and of them, only men with power.

Power. It’s the single most seductive force in the human world. We would like that to be not Power but Love, but the truth stares us in the face every time we look at or listen to the dangerous behaviours of the men who crave it, trade in it, and value it above all else. What else is wealth but power? The power to go anywhere, do anything, and have whatever one desires. The power to control world events. The power to control other people.

Why don’t we have a category of
abnormal mental health called
Power Addiction?

It’s the craving for power that motivates so much of capitalism, so much of patriarchy, so much abuse, so much damage. What would this world be like if, instead of allowing this, we called the craving what it is, addiction? What if we had a category of abnormal mental health called Power Addiction? And recognised it in those who would lead us into exploitation and ultimately, as we are all having to face right now, into the strong possibility of human extinction?

It is suicidal, this lust for power. It is homicidal, ecocidal, planet-destroying, and yet we take it for granted that ambitious, power-hungry men (and some women) make all the really important social decisions.

It is suicidal, this lust for power.
It is homicidal, genocidal, ecocidal.

It’s not as if they hide it. Cardinal Pell, one of the highest-ranking religious authorities in the Christian world, thought nothing of publicly denigrating his own religion’s prophet because his culture was not one of the “great powers” of the time. Pell would probably be more comfortable in an old religion that openly worshipped Power .

But in these early years of the 21st century after Jesus, it’s not difficult to more or less ignore the Christian aspects of Christianity, to disregard the things Jesus Christ had to say about the powerless, the weak and the humble.

It is unremarkable to worship the trappings of wealth and power in the Christian churches rather than the lowly man on whom they are based. It’s easy to twist a few words about Abraham in the Old Testament to enforce the revolting notion that the Christian God rewards his favourites with wealth and success and therefore the humble, sick and poor are not only unworthy but actively sinful, as the Pentecostal churches do.

The success of all churches in creating political and social power bases has to do not only with their brilliantly successful tax-avoidance strategies, but also their appeal to the power addict in all of us. They appeal to greed and call it holy. They appeal to hate and call it righteousness. They appeal to fear and call it Hell or Eternal Damnation and tell you that only through them can you avoid this fate—much, much worse than death and by the way, here’s the tithe plate.

In the 21st century after Jesus,
it’s not difficult to ignore
the Christian aspects of Christianity.

When the wonderful sci fi series Firefly was made, it didn’t find favour with Fox executives because, as one was quoted saying (I paraphrase): “it’s just about a bunch of nobodies, we don’t get to see the real powers in that universe.” Star Wars on the other hand, despite its reputation as concerning a scrappy ragtag team of freedom fighters, and its inception in George Lucas’ mind as an allegory on the Vietnam War—with the USA as the Bad Guys—changed as Lucas changed, to feature the wars between the major powers of its universe: the Jedi and the Empire. Both actual bloody protofascists. And if it was personal success and wealth that motivated Lucas’ change of focus, he succeeded. Unlike the brilliant Firefly, the Star Wars films have about 562 sequels and counting. Firefly got one.

The powerless are not of much interest to George Lucas, George Pell, or Fox executives.

But they MUST be of great interest to the rest of us because, as power is condensed in the grasp of fewer and fewer men, and I do mean men, the ranks of the powerless grow. Our interests are aligned and the powerful are the enemy, this becomes increasingly clear all the time. And as to our powerlessness, we do have one great superpower and that is our sheer numbers. If we worked together we could overcome the power of wealth and might, which is why the powerful work so hard to divide us, sowing discord and division, making it harder and harder psychologically for us to agree to disagree on some issues, put them aside, and act in concert from our common interests.

And too many of us assent to this division, refusing to admit that a working-class Trump voter could have had motivations other than racism and stupidity, or that an atheist may have something wise to say about morality and community, or that anti-vaxers have something in common with Anarchists: their innate distrust of authority.

We assent because most of us have similar psychological dysfunctions as the power addicts. We want external answers, ideologies we can follow to create our better world, manifestos which can cover the gaping gaps in our heads and hearts and lead us to the sunlit uplands.

Every ideology or faith is full of
power addicts and arseholes.

But the truth may well be that there is no political, economic or social strategy that will save our world until we discover what causes Arseholery and what causes Power Addiction and how to cure it. Because any and every ideology or faith is full of these, of power addicts and arseholery, and every revolution will end up with the people powerless again under a new set of faces at the top table until we cure the problem at the source.

So what is the source?

I contend that the real problem lies with the way we raise our children.

This is not the sexy answer. This doesn’t involve firepower, secret resistances, or brilliant theoretical analyses.

This is the long slow plod towards the better world through the tried and tested technique of raising kids in such a way that they don’t have a gaping hole in their psychological centre, they’re not full of secret self-loathing, no one of them needs power and control over others to feel okay about themselves.

This is not the sexy answer.
This doesn’t involve gun battles,
secret resistances, or
brilliant theoretical analyses.

And you have to start with birth.

In the West, for a long time (and still too often), we delivered babies by pulling them out of their mothers’ wombs into a shockingly bright and cold world, cutting the cords immediately with sharp scissors, holding them upside down by one leg and whacking them on the bum until they cry. Then we say they’re breathing, all is well, and leave the mother to sacrifice her sleep, her career, and any hope of social respect to the project of maintaining their lives for the next couple of decades, until she’s withered and mad, and they’re so stupefied by school and wage slavery that they’re willing to repeat the process.

Does that seem like the way to raise generations that can solve our terrible problems and bring paradise to earth?

I’d like to talk about how we raise our children more, but this essay is already 1500 words, and nobody has the attention span for that. My own beloved offspring* just said: “make it a Tik-Tok and I”ll read it.” He said he was joking but he wasn’t. I raised an arsehole. Ask me more about how to bring up children……

   *he's not beloved. He just shouted at me to turn my bloody music down AND IT WAS When the Levee Breaks. Arseholes. Arseholes everywhere.

SEEK UNITY IN CHAOS

January 8, 2020 By in TAOQUEST 5 Comments
SEEK UNITY IN CHAOS

Look, you know the fires are the first big climate change crisis and I know it’s climate change and everyone with a functioning brain knows it’s climate change but—and hear me out on this—the time for winning internet brownie points for coming up with most inventive insult for the fools who still think it’s not has passed. This is too serious.

The reason they think that—and I use the term “think” in the loosest possible sense—is that is what they are being told. They have different sources to us. They’re not going to change those sources. They’re not suddenly going to give up the Daily Tele or the QAnon sites in exchange for the Guardian and New Scientist. They’re not.

So stop trying to throw science at them because they can’t hear it. And stop calling them unbleepable twatwaffles because they CAN hear that. It is all they hear from the other side. It doesn’t make them listen to the science.

There’s a lot of misinformation being spread, around issues like hazard reduction, arsonists, blaming Greenies, spreading rumours that climate change activists are lighting the fires to “push thir narrative” and other outlandish nonsense. Some sources pushing this out are pretending to be Australian when they’re not. They use terms like “wildfire” that are just not the local vernacular.

So who is doing it?

Australians are falling for it. There’s a lot of conspiracy theorists out there, and there’s a lot of people motivated purely by vitriolic hatred.

We watch idiots like Craig Kelly, Richo, Alan Jones — the usual suspects — mouthing off their usual bilious garbage, and it’s not hard to draw the conclusion that these people would rather watch the world burn than ever admit the greenies were right.

…these people would rather watch the world burn than ever admit the greenies were right…

So we’ve got the stale pale male brigade and their Women’s Auxiliary — Miranda Divine, Rita Panahi and other poisonous little hobgoblins  — on one end, and shadowy overseas influences pushing lies and division on the other. In between them are caught a lot of fools who live in a world where Murdoch dictates what is news, who believe all this garbage because it’s all they hear and it’s what their tribe thinks. And they’re desperate to be part of their tribe.

It’s not in Australia’s interests.

As is usual, we see a great deal of anger and ridicule from people not blinded by Murdoch. But here’s the problem: when those people expend their energy sneering at the ignorance of fools, whose work are they doing? Whose interests is it in to keep Australia divided into camps with bitter division between them? Not ours. It’s not in Australia’s interests.

What we need in this crisis is to be very supportive and tolerant of each other. Don’t get too involved in bagging idiots, they’re still our neighbours and we still have to create a new, post-climate change world with them.

And you don’t know whose dirty work you’re doing, getting involved in fights with rightwing nutters.

Find what you have in common and stick with that, and don’t get tricked into fighting. There’ll be plenty of time to fight later—right now we need solidarity. Even with people we have no politics in common with and who we think are insane: they still have children, still need drinking water and medical care, still worry about their pets. Find that level of commonality and stick with it. These influences are trying to divide us and we need to unite.

They are trying to divide us when we need to unite.

Can we give up our internet-fueled addiction to sneering at other tribes for just a little while? Can we swallow our normal response when Aunty Betty starts carrying on about the wicked greenies, and ask her instead if her cats are coping with the smoke? Are her budgies getting enough water? And is there anything we can do to help?

When someone attacks us online for being a sheeple who doesn’t understand Agenda 20 or QAnon, rather than retort, check that they have support, that the region they’re in is doing okay, and if not ask is there some way we can direct resources to them.

Ask them about their dogs. Even insane conspiracy theorists care about their dogs. Commiserate with them over the lack of water, or electricity, or the difficulty in breathing through this smoke. Don’t take the bait. Say things like: “I know we don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, but we’re both Australian and we’re both affected and if I can help you in any way, please just ask.”

Even insane conspiracy theorists care about their dogs.

Seek unity, not discord. If we can create solidarity out of chaos and hate, then we are beating the enemies who want us at each others’ throats.

Seek unity, not discord.

Take the high road, for a while. Enjoy the view. Look after yourselves and look after your neighbours, however they voted.

And good luck to all.

ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING

September 4, 2019 By in INTERRIGATIO TUU Leave a comment
ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING

THIS SECTION IS FOR READERS’ QUERIES.
It is not to be used as a toy for bored billionaires, nor for the cheap sexual titillation of livestock.
NO SKYLARKING.
NO LOLLYGAGGING.
DO NOT FROLIC.

Please place your questions here, in legible handwriting, in a language other than Luxumbourgish which this website has repeatedly told the Luxumbourghanianites it cannot and will not tolerate. They know why.

Be syntactical. Be heterodox. Be terse.

Do not prevaricate.

I thank you, and your mother’s mother thanks you.

ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING

As you were.

You Know Nothing

April 18, 2018 By in TAOQUEST Tags: 5 Comments
You Know Nothing

I find all this serious discussion and analysis of the latest bombing of Syria just fucking ridiculous. I don’t know anything about Syria, and neither do you. Nor do most of the journalists, or the commentators, or your friends on Twitter and Facebook who are certain there was no chemical attack in Douma—they may well be right about that, the point is, they’re guessing. They don’t “know”.

I have zero faith in the credibility of any sources (including the video below); we all should. There is just so much bullshit and propaganda everywhere; it is impossible to see behind the curtain, to see who’s pulling what strings. And it is impossible to begin to make sense of any of it until you admit your ignorance.

All I can see clearly is consistent accounts of an enormous amount of military ordnance and matériel getting used and I wonder who is paying for that, where the money is coming from, and where it is going to.

Because as far as I can figure out, modern warfare is not about politics, it’s about profits.

It’s a business.

The strikes on the weekend were likely some kind of marketing exercise. Someone wanted to show off their new kill-toys, and now all the psychopathic world-leader kiddies will be lining up around the block to get theirs too, their cool new shiny kill-toy.

I am cynical enough to believe that is ALL it is about anymore.

I have zero credible information about Assad, nor could I give a fat rats arse about him; he is somebody elses’ problem. To form an opinion based on the level of bullshit we are constantly fed seems to me the height of arrogant stupidity. Syrians can have an opinion. They are there; they have to make decisions based on the reality they confront daily. So too their friends and neighbours … but everyone further away is just blowing hot air up your arse.

It is a vital and radical act to say: “I do not have enough credible information to form an intelligent opinion.”

Because think, in whose interests is it that we believe we’ve read enough op-eds or seen enough footage to weigh in on this and argue, argue, argue, pontificate, argue, argue..? While right in our own backyard we have psychopathic sadists torturing refugees, children, blackfullas, the elderly, the poor, the disabled and getting away with it, as all we know how to do is hold polite protests where all our anger is contained neatly within the signs we carry?

Cui bono?

And doesn’t it set your bullshit meter clanging to hear the oh-so-serious pundits discussing the motivations behind every new atrocity as it they are the acts of rational–albeit cruel–actors? Most human moves are made out of panic and stupidity. Most things are mistakes. Most people are idiots, and that goes double for anyone who is so addicted to power that they’ve performed all the inhumane acts necessary to reach “world leader” status. If the pundits ever got up and said: “I don’t know what the hell they’re up to, it’s quite possible someone just pressed the wrong button,” or “could be because it’s a Tuesday, Anderson, he often gets low blood pressure this time of the week,” then I’d be more inclined to listen to their ‘expertise’. But as it is, I can take only so much of this po-faced gravitas before I want to go running down the street reminding people that Columbus thought Turtle Island was India, and Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by forgetting to put his lunch in the bin before he went on holidays. Or that the Titanic sank because a guy lost a locker key. Or that the Berlin Wall came down because a politician fluffed a press conference. Or that Kennedy’s attempt to de-communise Cuba failed because the idiots forgot about the time difference between Cuba and Nicaragua, thus taking us into the Cuban Missile Crisis and nearly WWIII. But everyone prefers the version where Kennedy is the most solemn of statesmen who saved us from the evil Reds and would never, ever, mislay his sunglasses or his house keys.

People are moronic. They’re forgetful, they’re lazy, they’re greedy and they’re usually nasty with it, and the higher you go the nastier they get. Politics, and war, are more Yes, Minister than Thirteen Days; more Dr Strangelove than Black Hawk Down; more Veep than House of Cards. Or perhaps there are some films & novels we should be looking at to better place ourselves amongst this incessant, torrential, deluge of ‘information’… I recommend Wag The Dog, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop.

Forget it. Forget trying to understand the conflict unless you’re there and have first-hand experience. Turn your attention instead to who is making what obscene profits from the business of constant war, from these dreadnoughts and killer drones, and missiles with an IQ higher than the Minister for Women.
And to how can we turn their abominations around and point them towards their houses, instead of towards normal people who just want to have a nice meal and go out dancing and get their kids to school on time tomorrow?

And then to what do we have to do to ensure Peter Dutton loses the very marginal seat of Dickson so we don’t have to die knowing we let him become Prime Minister on our watch?

And how to not choke on our own guffaws watching the Daily Telegraph trying to paint Scott Morrison as loveable. (Does that mean he is Murdoch’s choice for the post-Turnbull leadership? That’s a terrifying thought. Of all the appalling, unethical, incomptent people in the Coalition, Morrison is arguably the worst.)

Now, practice saying with me: “I know nothing.”

Feels good when you get used to it. Because it’s the truth.

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Screen Shot 2022-10-19 at 8.59.52 am

Inside Douma —click here for video, there were upload problems.

At least this guy is actually in Douma. OAN is a dodgy source of course, but Real Clear Politics is rated right-of-centre biased but mostly factually accurate by the media bias/fact checking sites I checked. And there are issues around this journalist’s politics re the election Trump lost, but he IS there, in Douma, and he is not trying to overwhelmingly convince you, just telling you what he found out. I have the unfashionable belief that being opposed to someone ideologically doesn’t necessarily mean they are evil, wrong, and lying about everything. (Fascists, white supremacists, and most of the current crop of Australian LNP politicians excluded, obviously. They ARE evil, wrong, and lying about everything.)
Anyway, at least this feller has a point of view other than the breathless warlust of most current media morons.

DEUW-YORE eSEARCH

April 7, 2018 By in TAOQUEST 2 Comments
DEUW-YORE eSEARCH

Deuw-Yore eSearch is a customisable internet search engine, frequented primarily by professional sociologists, academics, client experience enhancement consultants, clinical beauticians and other truth-seekers.

Kon Spiro Cetheris, supported by leading truth-in-reporting advocates Al X. Jonz, Dave Id-Icky & David Avocado Turnip, developed Deuw-Yore to fill the gap left by the Illuminati take-over of Google and Bing. The company has since become a favourite in scientific rationalist circles for its unbiased, dispassionate, measured, analyses of cutting-edge theoretical controversies in various academic disciplines and internet memes involving cats.

It has become one of the world’s leading search engines in recent years, after revelations of its popularity in both the White House and the Fox News research department.

Whereas Google’s user demographic skewed towards the YUPPIE—Young Upwardly-mobile Professionals Pursuing Innercity real Estate—Deuw-Yore is more popular with CLOUWNS—College-deprived Overeating Upwardly-Wakey Non-Sheeple.

Users tend to be committed proselytisers, dedicated to carrying the message even to the bowels of Youtube comments sections, where they can be identified by their anarchic abandon in the matters of grammar, caps lock usage, and ideological coherence, and their anti-mating calls:
“Wake up, Sheeple!”
“Deuw-Yore eSearch!”

This commitment to proselytising for increased usage of this particular engine is remarkable. It is not known what percentage of users are actual shareholders of the Deuw-Yore eSearch PiTY Ltd, but anecdotal evidence suggests that many actually volunteer their time, which they appear to have a great deal of. It has been suggested that they are perhaps rewarded simply by the warm inner glow of setting right a net denizen on the verge of intellectual error. It has not been believed, but it has been suggested.

There are marked correlations between Deuw-Yore eSearch advocates,  Moon Hoaxers, Flat Earthers, Birthers, and Mandela Effect enthusiasts, possibly due to the high standards of truth, proof, and grammar also required by those sub-demographics. Or possibly not. More data points should clarify.

They drive mostly flat-bed pick-up trucks and big ol’ John Deere skidders, are fond of movies starring Steven Siegal, Bruce Willis or The Rock, and their favourite flavour is purple. They vote conservative if they are not too drunk that day, Sovereign Citizen X if they are.

Dogs don’t like them.

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NEXT: An informative breakdown of the online shopping habits of people who believe both that crisis actors are mostly illegal refugees and that the Titanic was an inside job.
Based on extensive data* collected with absolute ethical fanaticism and never, ever, passed on without permission except when paid. We here at Quaerentem pride ourselves on our commitment to the loftiest standards, and as we speak, FB is running their flag the highest though that may change. Hi Alphabet. Contact details above. 🙂

 [*cheers, Zuke, cheque’s in the mail]

Anyone for otters?

February 26, 2018 By in OXYTOCIN CORNER Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments
Anyone for otters?

Here, have an otter eating a lettuce. It’s good for what ails ye.

Oh god yes, give me baby otters, please, please, give me all the baby otters, I’ve just had to watch Barnaby Joyce claiming to be a rural battler and I need some Oxytocin desperately.

THE NIGH IS ENDED IN THE WORLD

February 25, 2018 By in K.P Reasonable Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
THE NIGH IS ENDED IN THE WORLD

Well, the Apocalypse is upon us again, is it that time of the year already?

This time it’s October 15th, apparently, which will be nice because it’s my birthday.
“Happy Bir— ¡BOOM! ” Yikes. At least I suppose the fireworks will be spectacular.
It’s also a Monday, and who doesn’t secretly wish for the apocalypse when Mondays loom? We’re only human. (At least you and I and the New Zealand Prime Minister are, I’m not so sure about Barnaby Joyce. Did you see that hat??? They breed them shameless at Black Stump Primary.)*

But, it got me thinking… whatever happened to “Nigh”? Back in the olden days, when I was a mere stripling of a lad and Playboy Bunnies roamed the earth, The End was never next month on a Thursday afternoon, it was simply Nigh.

Back in the day, doleful fellas in sandwich boards used to roam the streets adjuring us to:

“Repent, for the End is Nigh.”


Compared to them, Twenty-first Centurions are bewilderingly specific about the approaching Apocalypse. Nowadays, lovely, completely undoleful fellas like David Meade feel obliged to tell us The End is going to come on the stroke of midnight December 23rd. Or before breakfast, the third Tuesday of March. Or 12.36:09:and-a-bit:pm precisely on the 27th June, 2021 (possibly because zombies) and don’t bother putting a paper bag over your head, it won’t save you from Niburu, the Greys see all. Extraordinary, their accuracy**. It raises the question of how on earth they know, but this is not a question Apocalypse-Predictors are likely to answer sensibly; I strongly advise you not to try asking. It will only end in tears.

Ah, I miss the old fellas. It was a lot easier on the nerves when The End was merely Nigh.

We had no trouble believing it, either, the End certainly felt very Nigh, in the heady, carefree days *cough* Rubbish. They totally weren’t. *cough* of the Cold War and The Bomb. None of us fully expected to live much beyond the age of—oh, say, six, so news of the Nighness of The End hardly surprised us. (The bit about the zombies did, tho, which is why I don’t like to talk about it, we Cold-Warbabies don’t much like surprises; we always think they’re going to involve a ¡BOOM!)

“Oh, yes,” we’d nod sagely when confronted with said sandwich boards. “Nigh, is it? Highly likely, what with all this carry on in the Common Market and Unmarried Mothers running about willy-nilly thinking they’re just as good as normal people, the world’s going to hell in a handbasket I tell you and now you say The End is Nigh well I for one don’t doubt it, what with this here new-fangled Daylight Saving bewildering the livestock and god knows the Labor Party ain’t what it was. Something had to give.”

I do miss the satisfying rubberiness of Nigh as a date. You could concertina Nigh in your imagination to indicate as long or as short a period as you wished. Nigh could be sometime early next week, if you had a nasty teacher/parent meeting looming, or it could be well after Christmas if you were hoping to get a Malvern Star bicycle with those dinky little streamers on the handlebars, maybe in red, and didn’t want The End to ruin that for you. And there was nary a zombie in sight, except for The Late Late Late Movie which is where they belong.
Yes, as a date, Nigh was very accommodating.

Nowadays, however, things are very different indeed (except for the bit about the Labor Party, they’re still not what they used to be). We’ve already had to live through 2012 and every year it seems we’re forced to live through it again. Those Mayans knew what they were doing when they ended the calendar, this world clearly should have finished some time ago, it increasingly feels like we’re in the fifth season of a once edgy show and the writers have run out of both ideas and perspective. I mean, a demented Cheezel as U.S. president?? Kate Middleclass as Princess of the World?? Barnaby Joyce** as an actual human being with unassailable rights to food and oxygen??? Now they’re just jumping the shark.

It’s all rather unsettling really. Back when The End was only Nigh. it was perfectly acceptable to forget all about it for a while if one was enjoying oneself, having a peak sexual experience for example, or a very nice counter-lunch. (Whilst not fretting about zombies.)

When The End was Nigh, you could take time off from thinking about zombies it. When The End was Nigh you could at least pretend to be nonchalant about the undead the whole business. But now that it’s August 14th just after lunch it all gets just a bit more… brain-munchingly terrifying personal.

I find myself worrying about not having a Will, and then I remember The End goes for everyone so my offspring won’t care whether they get my collection of funny hats urinated on by inebriated footballers or whether their brother does. Then that thought depresses me and I wonder why I even bother to collect funny hats urinated on by inebriated footballers. It’s a sad, sorry state of affairs when one questions such harmless hobbies.

Why just last week I found myself calculating whether I could put off paying the electricity bill until after the latest date of the Apocalypse, and if so, can I use the money to get footballers inebriated or would that just be asking for trouble?

I blame the government. If they hadn’t invested so much in technology for the classrooms we wouldn’t have this rash of computer-literate eccentrics. They’d be wandering the streets in sandwich boards instead, comforting us with messages of hope. Telling us to buck up for godsake, there’s no need to stay indoors with a paper bag over your head on the evening of Wednesday 24th, because The End is merely Nigh.

Sigh. Troubling times. Predicting The End Of The World has become an exact science, legions of the re-animated roam our mental landscapes unchecked, and the Labor Party STILL ain’t what it used to be.

I miss the 20th Century.

********************

* btw, don’t believe the Beetrooter’s carry-on about his humble state school origins. He went to Riverview. 

**that is, the accuracy would be extraordinary if there was any. So far I have lived through 39 and a half predictions of the End of the World so forgive me if I’m a tad jaded. (The “half” was of course the admittance of women into the Marylebone Cricket Club. Turbulent times. It’s still standing.)

PLIK

February 24, 2018 By in PUNCTUM Tags: , , , , 6 Comments
PLIK

On the island of Haiti, there is a village called Plik. 

When the U.S. president, Evil Homer, recently spoke dispagagingly of Haiti, word travelled to the village of Plik rapidly.

“He’s an evil version of Homer Simpson,” they cried. “Something must be done.

Some demanded an apology. Others just wanted a lock of his hair.

They must have obtained it, because before too long, President Evil Homer was beginning to show the effects of some terrible magic: his speech became repetitive, illogical, and disorganised, he started forgetting important things like which nations were allies and which enemies, he began firing anyone who failed to flatter him fulsomely enough, and soon he was trying to date his own daughter.

It became clear to everyone that the poor orange man was losing what few marbles he had to begin with.

Eventually, the voodoo took full effect, and the President went dancing naked through the streets whistling Dixie and sticking sprigs of straw in his hair. This was too much, even for a White House peopled by sychophantic kindergartners. They arranged for him to be taken away by some nice young men in clean white coats.

And the villagers of Plik who had criticised the presidency took credit.

Tours were organised, from the USA to Haiti, to shake their hands. There was much rejoicing throughout both lands.

Many said the Plik villagers were heroes.

Others, however, shook their heads sadly and said:

“It’s nothing more than critical Plikners gone mad.”

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SICK & TIRED

February 14, 2018 By in TAOQUEST 29 Comments
SICK & TIRED

I worry about the health of people like Pauline Hanson, Peta Credlin, Alan Jones and our other RWNJs, I really do, because they are so often sick. They complain about it all the time. Not only are they sick, but they are tired; in fact frequently both sick and tired. Sometimes even sick to death! 

I suspect it’s something they ate, they admit themselves that they’ve had a gutful. Maybe they just ate too much, like when they tell us they’re fed up, often to the point of being fed up to the back teeth. 

They must know something’s wrong, they say themselves that they’ve had just about as much as they can take. And they’re clearly measuring their own intake, because they know when they’ve had it up to here.

Sick and tired, sick to death, had it up to here, had a gutful, fed up to the back teeth… these are not signs of a healthy organism.

I hope they feel better soon, I really do, it’s not a mood you want a person to go out and vote in.

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