December 2010
35 posts
I closed my eyes & held my breath & made myself very open & quiet, a receptacle like a pot or a coffin or a doll jug, because I knew something would come. Not if I could see but I couldn’t see so it might come. I stood in a little unbreathing shivering no-sound & I could feel hands raised to just beyond my lips. Everything went very silent, silent like wax stuffed up in my ears...
Our reduced Business Secretary’s ‘graceful, happy, dominating perfect lead’ on Strictly Come Dancing provokes in the press a twinkling spate of clever puns & other hilarious wordplay. No more able than they to resist such temptation, rejectamentalist manifesto has a go.
‘Go fuck yourself you Tory-enabling piece of shit.’
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'The polar night of icy darkness': Weber in...
However many people complain about the “red tape”, it would be sheer illusion to think for a moment that continuous administrative work can be carried out except by means of officials working in offices …
The choice is only that between bureaucracy and dilettantism.
‘If events spread themselves out fanwise from the past into the future, then must the occurrences of the present exhibit convergence toward some historical burning-point – some focal centre whereat the potential was warmed into the kinetic.’
Melvin L. Severy, The Darrow Enigma
What do you see? he said.
Don’t patronise me, she said. You know what I see. & I know that your efforts to use my eyes, to see it vicariously, aren’t going to work. You’re pathetic.
You do a decent job disguising your resentment as mystery, old cock, (she was really enjoying her own disgust) but it’s still not going to get you access to this.
Life in the angelocracy
A disgusted Lucifer goads the spineless, time-serving, obsequious functionary angel Remiel for siding with a totalitarian status quo. ‘What would you have done, had I won?’ Lucifer muses. ‘Told me that you’d always supported me ideologically? That you were secretly cheering me on the whole time?’
So. Vince Cable, then.
It’s for a less-than-virtuoso attempt to play Remiel’s game that...
Landscape seen at speed
is fog seeped through from an alien planet.
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‘All about the valley and here and there on the mountains were the chalets or dark wooden houses of the peasants. Some were built on piles… When Tony was very little, and before he had seen the builders at work, he thought that the piles were wooden legs on which the chalets had walked up in the darkness and stillness of the night, and that the two little windows in most of their...
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WatchA bombshell admission from the horse’s mouth.
We must honour those who are the real victims. Those who know only too well the dangers posed by monsters such as this. Brave survivors speaking truth to power. Enthusiastic exposers of their enemies, no matter the price. We are fortunate that such a man has faced the onslaught of the wheelchair & yet returned, to attest, contrary to...
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WatchThe scene: a mass demonstration in Tehran/Harare/Rangoon/Pyongyang/&c. The police are filmed shoving a 20-yr-old demonstrator with cerebral palsy from her/his wheelchair & dragging her/him across the pavement, to the horror of onlookers. Footage of this event is sneaked out & publicised. Accordingly, Iranian/Zimbabwean/Burmese/North Korean/&c state broadcasters cannot ignore it....
‘Our mission is to promote, defend and...
Shutting the cable door
‘In foreign affairs there is no promise that cannot be broken. It’s called statesmanship’.
Dambudzo Marechera, ‘The Breakdown’
‘I hate diplomacy. It means fraud and cowardice.’
Sheridan Le Fanu, ‘The Room in the Dragon Volant’
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Two insects
‘Little as had been his idea of the plan of attack and the part set apart for his battalion, it was now no better; only he knew that he was one of a crowd that straggled out across the open, death-dedicated, their faces set towards a bourne unknown. Dreadful to him seemed their ineffectual pace and grotesque the spludge with which they trudged the mud. Could sacrifice be so shorn of...
Sheer epic Promethean heroism
‘The LibDem leader, meanwhile, used a different metaphor, comparing his MPs’ ordeal over how to vote on fees to “walking through fire”.’
Fuck yes. That is totally accurate. They are so the warriors in this situation. It is such an ordeal that the LibDems are going through. What about their pain?
How much clearer could it be?
How have you made division of...
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Update on Haiti: Ahead of Schedule
A recent prediction:
within 6 weeks, articles will start to appear stating that the rumours have gotten even more out of hand, & that people in Port-au-Prince are now claiming that the cholera is a bioweapon designed to deliberately wipe out the Haitian poor. This notion, mooted as it might be by a few people, will be offered up with sad headshakes as evidence for Anglo-American media...
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Update on Haiti: The Tao of Empire
More on those false rumours that credulous natives kept believing. Leaked expert evidence might appear to very precisely vindicate what Haitians have been saying all along, as part of their long-running campaign against eating imperial shit. But those who believe this would lead to embarrassment reckon without the vatic unflappability of the UN. The international community that denied...
Pecunia non olet
‘The Ku Klux Klan website directs users to a site called Christian Concepts. It takes Visa and MasterCard donations for users willing to state that they are “white and not of racially mixed descent. I am not married to a non-white. I do not date non-whites nor do I have non-white dependents …”’
With the bleach-magic of money is the stench of urine, porn &...
Invocation
‘“Oh that good Queen Mab only knew I was here! I’m certain she would lend me her aid. … She once presented me with a Fairy flower, bidding me to keep it in remembrance of her, and that if ever I should require her aid, to place it upon the point of my sword.”’
Monster-Land, or The Further Adventure of King Pippin, Roland Quiz
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A redundancy
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Self-evidently tasteless absurdity
Racist? Oh please. Don’t you get it? That’s the whole point.
‘… being the embodiment of every conceivable negative stereotype … was the point … isn’t the point to show how absurd & groundless these stereotypes are? … in laughing, I’m admitting that any stereotypes I may harbor are founded on nothing of substance.’
&c. That,...
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Out of the mouths of babes & CEOs
If Naomi Klein, say, were to describe the fundamental job of television as ‘selling available human brain time to Coca-Cola’, the snorts of derision at such tedious & passé Dave Spartery would be deafening. Spoken, however, by the CEO of an actual television channel, describing his day-to-day activities, what deafens is the silence.
Or take Free Speech (it is, after all,...
