Cancer code

What a miracle is Stevie Ray Vaughan's version of Chitlins Con Carne! Makes corrupted intentions pass through the scanner with ease. (And desire, but that was an afterthought.)

Zedong's big mug

On the weekend I read about a group of Mao portraitists who every year re-touch a giant mural of the chairman in Tiananmen Square. More blush for the cheeks, more sheen for the chin wart, more sparkle for the ear fluff, etc. Their job is secret, their toil unrecognised (at least publicly). According to ex-Mao-muggist Wang Guodong, however, this does not mean the finer details of their artistry go unscrutinised. He was "shipped off to work as a carpenter in a framing factory" for "painting Mao at a slight tilt from the viewer that showed only one ear. The Red Guards said it implied the chairman listened to a select few rather than the masses". (My sympathies are with Mr Wang, obviously, but I have to say that shifting Mao's head around is going well beyond the "refreshment" JD, surely?)

And in news closer to home ...

I look forward, after next year's federal election, to standing awestruck before a mammoth portrait of chairman Ausmao or A Typical Aussie Battler On $200kpa hanging permanently on an inward-facing side of Westfield shopping centre's multi-story carpark. I also look forward to monitoring the subtle changes to Ausmao's visage as it is re-touched by wave after wave of graffiti banditti who couldn't give a fuck about mythology (or iconography) but know what they feel and feel like they're missing out.

Us and them or just us

I don't usually read Richard Glover's column in the weekend Sydney Morning Herald*, but this one was dead set mickey mouse.

That is to say, it had a simple message about the foolishness (and dangerousness) of dishonouring, mocking and bullying Muslim Australians. Here's a snippet (that refers to the importance of cultural cooperation in the battle against violent extremism).

It's a radical proposal, I know, but let me say it out loud: maybe we should stop putting so much effort into marginalising people whose goodwill we so keenly need.

*I gave up once it's scope became clear: fluffy stereotype reinforcement featuring young well-adjusted mums and dads and their hilariously juxtaposed attitudes to white goods, sheds, sports days and who makes the salad / who sets up the tent on family holidays.

Laurence Binyon - global warming seer

They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise
From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;
The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.
Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.

(A verse from The Burning of the Leaves (1942))

What are the earth's ruins that aren't also ours, I wonder? One of my vaguely spiritual fantasies -- the kind that percolates through my id when I'm watching question time in the Senate -- is that the earth will be bumped by a wayward comet into a new orbit much closer to the sun. To the extent that pontiffs*, plutocrats, peasants and property developers alike will cook in the same cauldron that is oblivion, this will amount to an apocalypse. But also a renewal, because it just may be that, over time, new primitive organisations emerge and begin to arrange themselves in one of those self-perpetuating music festivals that many scientists believe presage life (I'm thinking crystals).

So a different kind of viability will arise and thrive in a splendidly uncluttered and scorched new world. It will be much less prone to skin cancer and much less inclined to mythologise fire as evil or fish as salvation. And this will open the way to a completely untravelled path for the alien breed of bike boys, dais dancers, mountain mutterers and other victims of theism that will inevitably materialise.

Through this fantasy I can imagine the earth caring for her ruins, even if to care means to be absolutely, timelessly indifferent.

* Yes, there is only one ... at the moment. I predict, however, that as a result of a calamitously well-intentioned push for a more directly representative leadership, Roman Catholisism will soon see its headquarters teeming with hundreds of the little buggers.

Propellers

Keerihste, a translation

(English to German to English ... see original poem below)

I, a person, is making excitements to the armpit
I, a person, is asthmatic
I, a person, is doing terror for the smoothness

I, a person, is dog-pedals and fathoms
In your spreadsheet
(Incorrigibly)

I, a person, is making prouds to the failure
Which does prudentials -- up to the arm -- for
Many directions

I, a person, tells the emphasis: asthmatic

I, a person, beggars affections from the platypus
I, a person, wants lasting cognitions
With promiscuities to the chart
Whimpered inner boxes
Punched membranes
And piss

And animal husbandry -- for
Many directions

Now, prouds to the failure
Fails
I, a person, does the finger repair
I, a person, does the funny mouth-wash

Keerihste, I, a person, undertaking throat pythons
Brooming off for
Sexual mindfulness

However, what of the possible
branch hoistenings?

I, a person, derelicts my juvenile for French poet transformations

Keerihste

I am hyperlinked to your armpit
I am not breathing well
I am panicked by an unnatural
Hairlessness

I am struggling to stay afloat
In your data stream
(truthfully)

I am waving my losing ticket,
Which didn't cost me much --
Just my other arm -- but
Anyway

I am really not breathing well

I am craving your webbed attention
I am thinking of survival
Of allowing my best-laid plans
To suffer confinement
Dimpled skin
And urea

And species transmutation -- but
Anyway

And now I am losing my
Losing ticket
I am calling for digital recovery
I am gagging on my own saliva

Keerihste, I am asphyxiating and
Thrashing away the
Arousal.

But that said, can you lift your
Arm just a touch?

I am too young for romance

The story of the off-centred handle Part V

"You can protect yourselves", they were advised. But all who stood and looked up at the barbed volley, some wearing only underpants and saftey glasses, would drop into the foetal position, knead the sand with their hands and cry out invocations to their mothers (or god).

Don't get caught talking to the wrong man

(Click to enlarge ...)

Riffin' the heart stings

(Click to enlarge ...)

Dumbfaitho Cogito Ergo ... ?

Steve Salerno, author of SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, has a bone to pick with empowerment gurus. Whether they be crusading about self-esteem based education, evangelising about "taking charge of one's health-care destiny" (and, as a bonus, eschewing traditional medicine), or sermonising to corporate success junkies about skills, productivity and "the future", their message is always the same: "a positive mental attitude will carry the day".

Salerno demurs:

You cannot have a life plan predicated on the belief that everything is equally achievable to you, especially if that same message has been sold indiscriminantly to all-comers. In the grand scheme of things, knowing one's limitations may be even more important than knowing one's talents.

The old fashioned way

(Click to enlarge ...)

Atom skerrick

I love a long draught of atmospheric music. Also of atmospheric words. Atmospheric animals (e.g. birds and some species of lhama). That sort of thing. Atmospheric food? ... maybe not. Too close to vomit. But now I'm wondering if there's such a thing as atmospheric being. Due to a series of drunken teenage rejections at the clenched hands of Tok H bouncers, I have a fear of St Peter. Well, an abstract fear actually, cos I don't believe he or his boss exist.* So if there is such a thing, notwithstanding wormy wind, it definitely isn't a soul.

Atmospheric being.

Atmospheric been?

Atmospheric bean?

Atmospheric bee?

That's it! Beans and bees! Pods and proboscises. Vines and hexagons. Perfectly atmospheric. And all natural.

* Mike Willesee recently confirmed this for me on Enough Rope -- waxing sentimental about the kiddies he spent time with in Sudan while proudly advertising the fact that a good shank of his $50m fortune will be ploughed into Sudanese-kiddie-saving projects such as the demystification of stigmata and the forensic testing of blood-stained blankets.

The next George

Women in row 19.65 and How did he get in there?

(click to enlarge ... Massive apologies once again to Alberto Giacometti and also to Brett Whiteley ... and hello to all my pseudo-intellectual fantasies -- you know who you are. None of this would be possible without you. Thanks for believing in me. Thanks for being me. Mum? Oh god, I'm going to cry.)

Nose spiral 1947 and with cliche abatement

(click to enlarge ... With apologies to Alberto Giacometti.)