Good News

 

Mr Trump is still President, of course, but with luck and a fair wind, his domestic troubles might just help to curtail his excesses on the World stage. Let us hope so.

The Wild West is where I want to be

 The Wild West is where I want to be, by Tom Lehrer

To the Élite (a luc bat)

 A voice cried 'Sleep no more!'

So little time, before the dawn

of helplessness is drawn

across our withered lawn of hope.

Wide-eyed but blind, we grope

the darkness for an opening glint

of grace, the merest hint

of honour in the flint-locked heart 

of privilege. We start

to blend excuses, partly through

our latent goodness. Who

can countenance the true extent,

the reeking sacrament

of evil, reinvented by

the shitterati? Why

dissemble? Liars all,

they'll engineer the fall

of empires to forestall their own

exposure. They have grown

to hate us all. Their only aim –

perpetuate the same 

impunity, reclaim the power

that crumbles by the hour

as truth reveals their towering guilt.

Till, skewered to the hilt,

they writhe, they squirm, they wilt and pray

for light to skulk away

so they can holiday again.

The Earl of Salisbury

 The Earl of Salisbury, Pavane, by William Byrd

Illegal in Saudi

Here's my illegal alien experience. I was working in Saudi with a 6-month multiple entry visa. About 4 months into my stay, I decided to take a long weekend in Dubai, purchased a ticket and went to the airport. At passport control, they told me I had overstayed my visa by 3 months and was therefore in the country illegally, technically as an absconder. I had not understood that my multiple entry visa only allowed me one month per entry, i.e. though it was good for 6 months, I was supposed to exit and re-enter the country every month. Whereupon they instructed me to leave the airport and first thing after the weekend, go into work and report to my manager who would deal with Immigration on my behalf. And that's what happened. No handcuffs, jail cells, beatings. I had to pay a small fine of about 200 Riyalls (about £40) except the manager refunded me because "We should have explained the visa requirements when you first arrived".

And this was Saudi - are you listening, America?

All lies and jest

Still, a man sees what he wants to see 

and disregards the rest. 

We see you, Trump, Noem, ICE

Season's Greetings

Silent Movie with mystery strobe

 

I have no idea what this device is for. Clearly it is a strobe with a fixed frequency of around 5Hz. There are no markings of any sort on the cylinder or its lid. If you know why it exists, please tell me.

Swinburne, Tyndrum and Sawney Bean

It started with a joke.

Some of us, in our small community of poets, enjoy games, challenges, exercises. They help us flex the poetic muscle to keep it fit and in good shape for the Great Inspiration that will surely arrive in time. Recently, one such challenge was to render a well known English limerick into modern Scots. Easy, I thought, little dreaming down what depths of depravity this path was going to lead me. The limerick, which most will recognise, reads:

There was a young fellow called Dave

Who kept a dead whore in a cave

He said, "It's disgusting.

I know it needs dusting,

But think of the money I save".

Translation, even between such similar languages as English and Scots, is never a simple exercise of word substitution, especially when the integrity of a verse form must be preserved. So, a first, and superficial, effort might yield something along these lines:

There wis a wee fella caad Davie

Wha keepit a hoor in a cavie ...

And already we are encountering several problems. Though wee fella is good idiom, we have unjustifiably substituted size (wee) for age (young). Perhaps this doesn't matter. Davie is certainly a good substitution, being the preferred Scots diminutive of David. But the rhyme cavie is deeply suspect, locating the poem firmly in the North East, and in a very quaint corner of it too.

We also see that in correctly using the standard Scots past tense keepit we have had to drop dead (or rather, deid) for metrical reasons. As this detail is central to the narrative, we must correct the error. One possibility is:

Wha keepit deid hoors in a cavie

But the plural raises questions of its own. Are we depicting some grim Sawney Bean* scenario with corpses everywhere, or are we suggesting that, with some measure of fastidiousness, Davie would occasionally replace an old one with a new one? Neither option is particularly palatable, and here we should take a step back and do what we should have done from the outset - examine the sources.

*Sawney Bean

Sawney Bean's cave is on Scotland's South Ayrshire coast. Some 500 years ago, Bean was the head of a family of cannibal outlaws and footpads who murdered innocent wayfarers for their flesh, under cover of darkness, dismembering, cooking and eating the victims in their cave.

My research turned up many versions of this limerick, mostly dating from late Victorian England. Versions are known to exist in the United States, but all appear to be of later date. Commentators have long wondered if the thematic material has any factual basis. In particular, is 'Dave' anyone real? One popular and recurring idea is that the limericks are inspired by the decadent poet Swinburne. Some have gone so far as to say that Swinburne is to be identified with 'Dave', and that the name was chosen as much for his protection as for the rhyming punch line.

Certainly, Swinburne cultivated his decadent image during his lifetime. Several of his poems deal with death, and beauty in death, and there is no doubt he had a fascination with morbidity. He even, on more than one occasion, declared himself an acolyte of the Marquis de Sade. However, he was well aware that decadence sells, and current academic opinion considers his decadence to have been, for the most part, playing to the gallery.

In spite of all this speculation, no-one has been able to pin a charge of genuine 'practical' necrophilia on him - until now!

My own research finally took me to the village of Tyndrum in Scotland's Rannoch Moor, now popular with tourists but in Victorian times surely as remote a spot as one could wish to find. It was here, in the local public library, that I made an astounding discovery - an inept but telling Clerihew, unpublished of course. An anonymous manuscript tucked into the flyleaf of a volume of Swinburne's 'Century of Roundels'. The Clerihew reads:

 

found in Tyndrum Library

Charles Algernon Swinburne

took a cottage in Tyndrum

to be a necrophile

quietly for a while.

Tyndrum (correctly pronounced tyne drum, not tin drum) is a particularly poor rhyme for Swinburne, and the writer has also mis-ordered the poet's forenames, but both of these details merely add veracity to the Clerihew. Though we cannot know who penned it, or why, who can doubt its ring of truth?

And now we understand there was no cave. A cottage in Tyndrum, in those days as secluded as anywhere in the Kingdom. Where better for a society poet to escape the limelight and the prurient eyes and indulge in a little practical research? All in the name of Art, of course.

And finally...

Lest there be any doubt - this entire story was a flight of fancy. Lies and damned lies from beginning to end. Swinburne's reputation is big enough to take it and besides, he would probably have enjoyed the attention. All rumours are good rumours. BUT:

• There is some truth in the Sawney Bean Legend.
• Swinburne was an aficionado of the Marquis de Sade
• Tyndrum is where the devil said goodnight.

Sleep well, and thanks for the read!

N _ / _ E _ N / C _ T Y

playing hangman in style 

It seems our player ran out of luck. Clearly not a Glaswegian. Who can help? 

Post-War Albania

 

The Eagle & the Stag

War weary, they agreed, the three wise men,
to carve the aftermath of five grim years
between two ideologies. The Cheese,
victorious but broken, turned a palm
of supplication to the Rooster who,
to exorcise the guilt of tardiness,
gave alms, expected and received no thanks.
The Stag appointed henchmen to control
the South-West marches of his vast domain,
their brief, to quash all insurrection, more,
to regulate the people's thoughts and deeds.
The Titan tempered these extreme demands
with such humanity as might not goad
the Stag to intervene, and wisdom born
of understanding of his people's needs.
The Eagle took his mission to the heart.
He razed the holy places to the ground -
no man should harbour dreams beyond the State -
he burned the books and sealed the borders round
and in the nurseries had children sing
his praise, the only music he allowed.
He silenced or deported learned men
and turned the universities and schools
to propagandist mockeries. By these
and many other ploys he murdered hope,
destroyed imagination and laid waste
his trust, but caused no trouble to the Stag,
continuing thus for forty dismal years.
A model of beneficence, he bought
his people's gold with freshly printed notes
each worth its weight in paper, for the gold
was never seen again. The Stag received
the lion's share, while from some dark Swiss bank
the Eagle's family draws a pension still.

Dramatis personae:

The Cheese - Churchill
The Rooster - Roosevelt
The Stag - Stalin
The Titan - Tito
The Eagle - Enver Hoxha

Synesthography, anyone?

SYNESTHOGRAPHY is a new art form with very humble origins. The essence of classic photography is to focus light, and light alone, onto the film or, more often nowadays, the image sensor. In pursuit of quality, ultraviolet and infrared are filtered out, and the lens mounting and camera body are designed to resist vibration, fast temperature and humidity changes, and the ingress of dust or other airborne agents to the vicinity of the light path or sensor. One could say that the camera is very single-minded.

The synesthetic camera (synecam), on the other hand, has no such pretensions to quality. Dust and scratches on the lens ensure that wanted and unwanted light have an equal chance, while the flimsy lens mount and less than rigid camera body conspire to couple high and low audio frequencies, respectively, to the image. (The phenomenon is akin to microphony, a notorious cause of feedback in valve amplifiers). Where can such a marvel be found? On every cheap mobile phone on the market, especially earlier models such as the Motorola L6.

The Synesthographer's technique is wholly different from the photographer's. Care, precision and planning are anathematised. Spontaneity is everything. In particular, it is important not to think visually. Your synesthographs should be influenced as much by smell, taste, sound and touch as by sight. You hear a lark singing? Point the synecam any old place, and click. Remember, it doesn't have to see the lark - it can hear it, just like you, so it will feature in the final image. It only needs faith.

THE RESULTS:

It is important to remember that the camera, not necessarily the synesthographer, is synesthetic. It does all the hard work for you. But when you first look at your images, you might be disappointed. You were expecting to see the Trooping of the Colours, while at the same time hearing the horses hooves, tasting your Cadbury's 99 and feeling the sun on your shoulders. Have faith. It is all there. To the synesthete, it is a thing of beauty; to the uninitiated, a mere jumble. Now let's talk about the Emperor's new clothes.

They move among us

Anyone who has ever, even or perhaps especially when alone in the house, posed with a gun in front of a mirror should seriously consider their mental fitness to own lethal weaponry. To any such people, I ask: What facial expression did you try to adopt? Stern? Resolute? Noble? Or just hard? What childish fantasy did you conjure up, with yourself as hero, saving the world or perhaps just felling the baddies in a shower of lead?

I'd suggest that there is a fundamental difference between the psyches of the gun murderer and the suicide bomber. The suicide bomber requires anonymity up to the moment of detonation in which his own instant oblivion is assured. The gun murderer on the other hand actively desires the thrill of firing his gun, over and over, at real people. He does it for his own sick pleasure, whatever lies he might tell himself about serving a cause.

Pilgrim felt small

He had come so far and with such hope in his heart, but would the Great Frog listen?

Tomorrow's Bread

Briefly alive, a long time dead,

trying to make the best of it.

Give us, today, tomorrow’s bread.

Picture the lilies! Jesus said

Solomon wasn’t half as fit.

Briefly alive, a long time dead,

how shall we sleep unless we’re fed?

The board is bare; why would we sit?

Give us, today, tomorrow’s bread.

We tilled your soil. Our fingers bled.

The famine struck. We took the hit.

Briefly alive, a long time dead,

with every Autumn comes the dread

of sicknesses we daren’t admit.

Give us, today, tomorrow’s bread,

you Great and Good! We're going to bed.

We pay your tax, endure your shit.

Briefly alive, a long time dead,

give us, today, tomorrow's bread.

Guns don't kill people

People kill people...

except, they don't. Not normally. I was brought up in a town of 50,000 people, on the West coast of Scotland. My childhood and teenage years were the 50s and 60s. Our parents had lived through the horrors of the 2nd World War. Now, they were living through the peacetime hardships of shortages and rationing. But of one thing they were certain: the killing had been an aberration; normality had returned, where people live in peace. Where people don't kill people. Where people don't need guns.

On cue, within minutes of every new firearm atrocity, the tired old gun lobbyists (hereinafter, the Globbies, ok?) crawl out of the woodwork with their tired old incantation – Guns don't kill people... People kill people, and every time I shake my head and think – not in my World, they don't. And before any Globby tells me that small-town Scotland is a very sheltered corner of the planet – check my Profile page for where I've lived and worked since leaving there. I still say, fifty years later – not in my World, they don't.

Guns don't kill People... Bullets kill people
It's a truism that without ammunition a gun is a pretty useless weapon. It could serve as a bludgeon of sorts, but the balance is all wrong, It would be no match for a baseball bat, far less a machete. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Let's step back and quietly consider some aspects of violence.

For one adult to kill another in unarmed combat, assuming both are in reasonable health and physical condition, is actually no mean feat. It requires either great effort and determination, or considerable knowledge and technique. Or, just conceivably, diabolical 'luck'. It also requires an absolute awareness and total involvement with what you are doing, something the vast majority of people would pull back from, in total revulsion at the enormity of the act, and its consequences.

Bring a knife into the equation and everything changes. We are all capable of lashing out in anger and, with a knife in hand, a single strike can be fatal (though usually it is not). But again, let's step back, to small-town Scotland and the day one lad brought a flick-knife to school.

He had no intention of using it, of course. He just wanted his moment of glory impressing his friends or maybe frightening a few juniors. Inevitably, he was uncovered and the knife confiscated. On the following morning the Headmaster addressed the school: Unable to make an impression on his fellows on equal terms, the culprit had sought an unfair advantage. In trying to command fear in others, he had merely betrayed his own fear. In trying to be the bully he was not physically cut out to be, he had shown himself to be – a coward. The psychology was exactly right. No-one ever again brought a knife to school.

The Headmaster was right. A knife is a coward's weapon. Yet, while it gives an unfair advantage, it still requires a degree of closeness to, and interaction with, the victim. A quick and lethal thrust does not compare with the white-knuckled sweaty intensity of wringing out a life, bare hands around the throat, and yet... A knife will still transmit its passage back from blade to haft to hand. You will feel the changes from cloth to soft tissue, to muscle wall, to vital organ. The scrape of steel on bone. You will know what you have done and most of us could not do it, or live with it afterwards. Quite literally, you will have blood on your hands.

At best, then, the knife is a half-way house. The true coward's weapon would further reduce the involvement between killer and victim. This is where the gun comes in. The gun, or at least its bullet, kills at a distance. There is no need for the killer to feel any involvement whatsoever with the victim. You point, s/he dies. It feels no different from shooting at a target. Easier still is the semi-automatic weapon where you don't even need to know who or how many have died. Isn't this the very epitome of cowardice?

Guns don't kill people... Cowards kill people
What we've seen thus far is a progression, from unarmed equals, to knife-wielding wimps, to gun-toting cowards, to the craven cowards with semi-automatic weapons. Is this the limit of inhumanity? Sadly no, it is not. Crasser still are those who kill by proxy, who pay others to do their dirty work. Those who profit from the manufacture and sale of weapons. Those who foment conflicts and wars to advance such sales and maximise their personal fortunes.

As it is simply distasteful to dwell too long among such miserable specimens, let's look instead at the opposite end of this continuum to see what manner of people can be found there. These are the people who never pull a gun or draw a knife. Who rarely if ever raise a fist. Who will argue and agree to differ. Who will walk away and get on with their lives. Some are quite famous: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Siddhartha Gautama, Jesus of Nazareth. Most are relative unknowns on the World stage: me, my friends and work colleagues, the grocer on the corner, his wife and kids. Most folk, in fact - the people who don't kill people.

Thank you for reading.

Rational Express now in print

A paperback version of The Rational Express is now available from Amazon. It differs from the Kindle e-book version by being flammable, if not inflammatory. Neither will break the bank.

The Rational Express

 Now available on Kindle:

These articles were originally written as standalone pieces on HubPages, under my screen name Paraglider. The common themes that run through the articles are: that the World is better understood without reference to, or reliance on, the supernatural, that situational pragmatism is preferable to any form of dogmatism, and that faith-based belief systems are neither necessary nor helpful as the foundation of a fair society. Though the articles deal with serious topics, they are intended as entertainment and do not profess philosophical, scientific or academic rigour. Their original aim, in which they largely succeeded, was to stimulate discussion.

All this, for less than the price of a pint . . .

Tom Lehrer's Hunting Song

The Hunting Song is one of Tom Lehrer's lighter offerings. That is, unless one takes it literally, in which case it is surreal and more than a little macabre.

 By the way, I haven't really lost all my hair. This is the effect of sitting in front of a bright window!

An Open Letter

To whom it may concern, but mainly apologists for Mr Netanyahu's regime:

Please provide a list of Gazan civilians who have not been forcibly dispossessed, evicted, bereaved, herded from camp to camp, deprived of the staples of life (including food, water, medicines, shelter and energy), threatened with, or subjected to, violence and/or lethal force, and been generally disrespected, abused and dehumanised continually for the past eighteen months.
This should not take you long. The list will be short.
Thank you.