About a woman

My most exciting philosophical discovery* yet:

the Universe project is about a woman.

*or theory, when I'm calmer.

It's Scottish to me

I knew I could be coming across like a complete idiot, but because of my soft spot for Scots, and more importantly - whisky, I carried on with the conversation.

'Yeah', 'True', 'Ha, ha', 'Really?' Based on his intonation, facial expressions and single words I managed to make out, I kept responding in an uncommitted way to what the friendly Scot said, thinking that at least if the no-nonsense Haggis eaters and image-unconscious Caber tossers do go their own way, they'll have the bonus of being able immediately to have a foreign language. Whereas the poor Welsh, regardless whether they'll stay in or get out one day, will have to content themselves with a mere bad accent.




P.S. I've just seen 'Sunshine on Leith' and was wondering how they could have forgotten about subtitles. Then I remembered that it is a Scottish production and somebody must have decided to save a few quid. (But then again, they must have spent a fortune spreading the shooting over three or four years to be able to do all the sunny scenes...)

The Enforcement Question

"NO BORDERS, NO ARMIES!"

screamed an anarchic slogan from a window of an ugly modernist building in Canton. Fine, I thought, but who will ENFORCE IT? Anarchists, you see, have many healthy instincts, but no healthy brains.




P.S. Shoot from the hip!

I passed that ugly structure so many times. It must have been under some anarchic authority for a good disorganised while, because every other window was sprayed over with a line or two from their creed. Whenever I was in the vicinity, and I was there quite often, I promised myself to bring a camera with me next time and document this piece of the fleeting anarchic universe. But then the resolution kept slipping my anarchic mind.

When I finally did bring it with me, all the radical inscriptions were gone and some other authority, with completely different aesthetics and politics, had moved in. 

 

Why so meek? How about 'No Borders, No People!'

Staying put?

If it's somewhere in town after all and you find it, read carefully what it says there, in a few languages, and do what you're asked to: return it the relevant bureaucrats (then the bureaucrats may return it to me; after engaging some 27 national and international departments).  

This is serious: has anyone seen my passport?

I'm planning to cross the Channel and then a few borders (by flying over them) soon and some piece of bureaucratic paper with an outdated photo might come in handy (I don't want any bureaucrats or politicians - if they are not one and the same thing these days - shoot the plane down, do I? Those bloody idiots are famous for inventing new tasks for themselves - to keep them in employment, department expansion, promotions and pay rises - and who knows what they've managed to come up with since I last crossed their bloody borders).

I realised the document in question wasn't lying in its usual spot on the floor a while ago, but I comforted myself I'd lost it,  along with a briefcase, somewhere in town, where there would be some chance of finding it. Now the situation has just turned uglier: I've spotted the briefcase (more or less where I put it after coming back from town) and the passport isn't there. Which means the worst case scenario: I lost it in my flat, where it doesn't make the slightest sense to look for it.




P.S. But then again, I somehow did find the briefcase; but then again, only because it was hanging by its strap in the shower and I don't think even I would have been as imaginative with my passport, even if I say so myself.

Non omnis moriar

The baguette I lost, found and ate for breakfast the other day... I think about it from time to time. Maybe it wasn't fully eaten after all.

Well, it was, but who knows, maybe it just knew something and was murmuring to itself, or whatever baguettes do before their extinction, 'I shall not wholly die', or rather 'I shall not wholly be eaten'.

Because one day when the Universe has been cleared of everything, including evildoers and junk, (if they are not one and the same thing), someone - I sincerely hope - will be clearing the Internet of everything, including junk and what evildoers put there, and when that someone comes across that post, just before they click delete they may - I sincerely hope - take a quick look at it and think for a second of the baguette, maybe even of me, and...

(really, I have no idea what then - sigh, yawn, smile, tap their forehead? - and I quite like the suspense).

No trust, ever

John Humphrys and his guests on BBC R4 are discussing the case of a woman who colluded in torturing her child to death, got a 5-year prison sentence, the minimum allowed by law for such a crime and is now set  to go home early, thanks to a decision by the Parole Board. The discussion includes both harsh criticism  and support regarding the decision. At the end Mr Humphrys says "Shouldn't we trust the Parole Board?"

The question wasn't directed to me, but let me answer him: no, we shouldn't. Why on earth, or in Britain, should we? How - knowing what we know; why, knowing what's just been said on his programme! - on earth, or in Britain, could we??

The truth is, the fact is: no state institution, on earth or in Britain, can be trusted. Not to mention those which time and time and time again have let people down or, if you let me paraphrase, fucked things up big way. And Mr Humphrys should know better, he's been covering all this for a century or so now: the local Parole Board doesn't work, the local system doesn't work, the local state has collapsed.

 

The state has collapsed and Baby P. should know a thing or two about it: one body after another, one blow after another, his home was assessed as safe for him, his mum as kind to him; even as he was being killed.

The Queen of Wine

A vintage day (that the Lord has made,

nudged by the Queen of Wine)

 

As some of you may have noticed (but it was probably lost on my readers from Indonesia), my fascination with Mary, the Mother of God (c'mon: blow me up, you Muslim! stone me, you Jew!) has recently been getting out of hand (I managed to cling on to the Rosary, though), and I hope a relevant sentiment has been following suit.

Today, the fascination and infatuation are having their wedding day. I've opened the Bible -  have you? -  and am reading about certain nuptials somewhere in the land of Galilee. I've heard of them before, I've read of what Jesus did there, I've always known that Mary nudged him to do it.

But only now did it came to me - like a wave of the vintagest Vosne-Romanée which I believe (because of certain financial aspects of my situation) I'll be able to surf only in Heaven* - that it was about wine she decided to intervene and it was thanks her that more wine, and divine wine at that!, was put on the table.

Beautiful Mary, Queen of Wine - you, and your gift, make me dizzy! You're vintage!






*what a bad metaphor; vintagely bad. (And yes: the Litany of Loreto needs to be extended. I'll drink to that!).

I am sorry

Richard, my manager, told me to get a teddy bear from one of the small conference rooms. I didn’t like the idea, because I’d just been doing some thinking about teddy bears and realised that they might be contributing to general metaphysical confusion in the West. However, the task was connected with supporting a charitable organisation and a bunch of tired, sleepy kids who were about to set out for London, so I grudgingly – a sentiment about which Richard never learnt – agreed and made my way to the room. 

It was still before 7am. We’d already served some simple breakfast and lots of hot drinks to our exceptional guests and I hadn’t managed to have my consciousness-giving espresso yet. When I opened the door, it turned out that I didn’t need any espresso after all: the size of the thing I’d been sent for made me fully awake in a second. Soon I was crushing into all sorts of things while carrying down the corridor a soft toy which was bigger than myself and made it impossible to see what was in front. 'What kind of bloody sins have I been committing to suffer like that?' I was wondering.

The bear and I somehow managed to reach the ground floor and we found there all the kids ready to board a coach parked just outside the hotel's main entrance. Someone from the charity which organises fun-packed trips for terminally ill children thanked Richard for our hospitality and the kids started getting in.

I was standing there with the ridiculous beast and waited for instructions where and how to dump my embarrassing cargo. The kids kept disappearing inside the vehicle and a small military band was playing some bracing music. A little boy with a very pale face and no hair looked at me, or at the bear. He was too sleepy, or too devastated by his illness, to smile. But I did. Whether I wanted it or not my smile said ‘I am sorry’. And it wasn’t ‘sorry, kid, that you’re dying’. It was ‘sorry that I’ve killed you.’

Progress

I must be getting something right, philosophically. Today I looked at a girl's perfect bottom and I saw God.




P.S. In another recent situation that confirms my philosophical progress I was telling a young and rather attractive woman about my theory, which I was just about to commit to paper, that there will be sex in Heaven. The woman said it sounded interesting and she'd like to know more about it. I said I'd let her read it, somehow, when it's ready. And it was only after she walked away that I realised it wasn't an elderly priest I'd been talking to and I didn't even get his, or her, phone number. A sure sign or a true philosopher.

Go, Bluebirds, go!

A local football team, the one that is in Premiership now, is playing today against some Anglo-Saxons from far, cold North. I'm happy for Cardiff to be in the limelight for a moment, but you just can't kill the fair man in me. So I shout: Go, Bluebirds*, go! And let the better win...




*I'm ignoring the new red dragon. There're enough of the ugly beasts around as it is; in fact it's about time to start slaying rather than multiplying them.

Food for thought

No relation of the one in or on (philosophical) question

I popped out to buy a baguette* to go with my breakfast (well, actually to become part of my breakfast, if I want to do good philosophy), came back, put it somewhere and now - the scrambled egg's getting cold - can't find it. How frustrating.




*please, excuse my decision to immortalise this minor (not from the baguette's point of view; if I want to do good philosophy) event: I so rarely pop out to buy stuff for breakfast - normally I eat whatever I come across in the fridge, or its vicinity, that doesn't move, or doesn't move too much for my taste - that I though it worthy sharing with the Universe.

(Speaking of which - I seem to have lost all of my Indonesian fans. I just hope they're not on their way here to get me..., but anyway: to cheer me up I've gained a dozen or so American readers. Howdy! (I know, I know: cheap and probably not funny; but then again: I heard that American humour sucks too; how about that as a little ice-breaker? ...No, that's really sad; Slowly but surely I'm becoming an ever more miserable git.




P.S. Just found it. You're not gonna believe it, but it's true: it was lying - now, this is really funny - on Alexander Moseley's A to Z of Philosophy. And it's a fact, whatever facts are. (Actually, let me look them up in Moseley's book.)


P.S.2 The closest Mr Moseley gets to facts is 'fallacies'. Well, a caustic - and childish - reviewer might comment then that there are no facts in the book.

Roberto Devereux, ossia Il conte di Essex or God of last resort

Mine is - it struck me (in these words; the gist has been with me for 45 years) during a scene in Roberto Devereux, ossia Il conte di Essex*  by Donizetti/Cammarano/Ancelot - God of last resort.



*staged, rather boringly and confusedly, in Cardiff.

Print on

Another intellectual achievement of the West in economics:

printing your way out of own-made deep shit.

What's all this fuss about U.S. federal shut-down about?

First of all it sounds like a good idea: the more of the federal government - or actually these day any Western government, federal, state or local  - you close down the better.

Secondly, what do they mean when they say 'we need to find a solution': can't they simply print more money, as usual?