Obadiah

Well what better time to bring our friend Kim to mind than on this New Year's Eve. While I was pottering around on the interweb when I came across an article by an ex KGB member who proclaimed the end of the US printed in the Wall Street Journal.

"For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S."

Tho' some might mock, it was Jules Verne who observed 'Tout ce qu'un homme est capable d'imaginer, d'autres hommes seront un jour capables de le réaliser.'

A new year, a new start...

I'm already fed up with Obama. While I understand he's a nice enough bloke, and that it's a watershed moment for a major sector of the American population, to be honest I wish McCain had won.

American politics is like the famous good cop, bad cop routine. Everyone will congratulate themselves that 'the wicked witch is dead', yet the truth remains that a strengthened America, is an America ripe for the next lunatic. Better to let the lunatics crack on, analogous to a fire that burns itself out.

I guess I have to spend the next years watching decent folk convince themselves everything is rosy; how annoying that's going to be...anymore logs???

An Dà Shealladh.

I used to quite often employ such a gift. I recall around my birthday one year, which falls on Samhain wouldn't you know, scrying family portraits of my then girlfriend, a countess of European ancestry. It was particularly interesting as I observed the faces change, male : female as what I perceived to be all the people present in the painted individual manifest through the artists craft. It was a little like that Godley and Creme video 'Cry' from the 80s...

So I thought I should perhaps add a scrying bowl to my tool collection. Not sure when and if I'll get around to using it anytime soon, but nice to have.

Settler Spirit

I was reading something last week which really put into perspective just why the US stands effectively behind everything the state of Israel does. It really should have been obvious to me on many occasions before. There is something inherent in the settler spirit that so defines the 'American' ideology, implicitly tied up with the American dream. It has deep roots with the arrival in a wild hostile land, and conflict with the indigenous people as somehow analogous with the struggle to survive natural obstacles. As the land is conquered, so are the 'natives'.

So then if we consider the birth of the American nation, we can see strong parallels with the creation of the Jewish state, with the native Americans replaced by what could loosely be described as the Palestinian people. Thus America really cannot be expected to question the legitimacy or validity of the Zionist dream, for it is a reflection of the very dream of the Americans themselves. America cannot question, cannot face the dissonance which would ensue, Israel, for such a question would be an enquiry as to their own right to exist as an entity.

"Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you you would cry..."

I'm currently undertaking an MSc in Medical Anthropology, and despite the subject being amazing, the academic staff truly literate and fluent in their subject, what a pain in the ass students are!!! As preparation for the coming modules I have have had to read a poem by W.H. Auden called 'Heavy Date'. Despite having spent much of my youth reading, I don't really like literature. I don't mind books that 'do' something, i.e. from scientific texts to social scientific narratives, but I can really find by chapter 2 of a book I am thinking 'Fuck this! Why should I indulge your vanity?

The poem did however make me think of the past term, and the words that Professor Chomsky once wrote to me 'It doesn't take a good education to see the truth, it takes a good education to miss it'

Thus was it in a particular lesson when I said that all children (I'm soon to welcome my fourth child into the world), were manipulative. This was met with horror by some of the students; I tried to explain that a baby has to manipulate as it has no way of achieving basic tasks by itself, i.e. nappy change, milk, blanket pulled up. One student pointed out to the class, that I was using the word with no negative connotation, something I would have thought was fucking obvious in the context of babies!!!! They didn't hear the words, they weighted what I said with their own understanding of the word. Manipulation, coming from the Latin manus, meaning to alter something in accordance  with desire as if that had been effected by the hand. Sure it has a negative aspect, but get over the knee jerk reaction to words that are weighted negatively in YOUR mind, not necessarily mine!!!!

I think CSN pretty much alluded to what I was saying in the chorus of 'Teach Your Children', 'Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you you would cry, so just look at them and sigh, and know they love you'.

Oh how profound!!!

Do you know I think I know an expression, posed as a question, that ranks amongst the most annoying that is put to me. It's not that its particularly annoying in and of itself, rather it's the smug air it is delivered with and the usual sense of profundity that accompanies it. It is the enquiry 'Well if God created the universe, who created God?'

I had the concept of branes brought to mind last night, by way of a particularly interesting episode of horizon (somewhat ironic in this instance), which posited that time as we know it, i.e. 13.7 billion ± 0.13 billion years old, might not have been the beginning of our uni/bubbleverse; rather the collision of branes within proto-time came to result in time as we are able to perceive it, or rather as our science may be able to quantify it.

So it would seem that science is able to perceive of time, and subsequently the space deriving from it rather than contrariwise, i.e time in our context as primary rather than quaternary, as having no beginning, and thus without beginning or end. However God must have a creator, as per original annoying statement. It is in this context I find the Islamic hadith transmitted through Bukhari of particular interest

'It is authentically reported on the authority of Abu Hurairah (ra) that the Prophet (saas) said: "Allah (swt), Most Blessed, Most High, says: "The son of Adam wrongs Me: He curses time, though I am time: In My Hands are all things and I cause the night to follow the day." In another narration, He (saas) says: "Do not curse time, for verily, time is Allah (swt)."'

"Still crazy after all these years..."

"Four in the morning
Crapped out, yawning
Longing my life a--way
Ill never worry
Why should I?
It's all gonna fade..."

So anyway, been away from blogging for a while. The last time I had a seriously surreal ASC was 2005. I guess it was all around the time I had some serious changes. I had started my BSc in September 2004, and then to accompany it a pretty much full time job, so all those changes and stresses certainly built up pressure, no doubt altering my neurochemistry; cheaper than DMT and less trouble to find than liberty caps. Added to this the whole password thing escaped me, but eventually I got around to it, and this new standalone MS Live writer thing seems great. So...as they say..."plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"

I've been trying to remember a poem I wrote, but can't...do however remember a keyword, and that is all that is needed...Nemesis.

Going to try and blogg more often, may as well, I seem to recall it was cathartic...