The Great Reset

The Great Reset -- Oil on canvas, 62 x 92cm

Two thousand and twenty was a year of great plenty
...of worries and troubles and woe!
This year let’s just hope that we’ll manage to cope
but will we? I really don’t know.

Let’s try and remember at least till December
the lessons that lockdown has taught us.
Lest we forget and remain in huge debt
mourning what money once bought us.

If you worked from your home, with no need to roam
don’t whine about missing the City.
You still had a job, so don’t cry and don’t sob
instead try to learn about Pity.

When you’ve finished your crap, just turn on the tap
don’t sweat if you’ve run out of paper.
Or use some dried grass to wipe off your ass
or a stick as a handy shit-scraper.

If wearing a mask is an onerous task,

The Law of the Conservation of Crap

Photo of Planet Earth by Flicker user DonkeyHotey under CC Attribution License. "My Daily Poo": Photo of toilet bowl by Billy Danner on his page at dailyscat dot blogspot dot com dot au. Animation by masterymistery.

Most critters including humans get their get-up-and-go from the stuff they eat and drink. And they get stuff to eat and drink by using their get-up-and-go to hunt or fish or harvest crops or stroll to the nearest McDonalds.

Scientists say you can’t create or destroy get-up-and-go. You can only change it into a different form of get-up-and-go, or into stuff.

Likewise, they say you can’t create or destroy stuff, you can only change it into other stuff or into get-up-and-go. For example, you can’t destroy a Big Mac, you can only change it into stuff.

By now you’re thinking this post is just a load of reprocessed burger. You’re probably snarling into your thickshake, “who says you can't make new stuff or get rid of existing stuff?”

“Says the Law!”

“What frickin’ law?”

Power-dressing in the Psychopathic Workplace

"Arbeit macht frei" is a German phrase meaning "Work shall set you free" found above the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps during World War II. More than 70 years later, almost everyone is an inmate of the global concentration camp of modern human culture. And yet, as Jesus is said to have said, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

The wearing of neckties, by men, at work, is a cultural practice akin to the chest-thumping dominance displays of jungle gorillas. There is a fabric-based language, a symbology, a semiotics used in the workplace, where necktie-encoded subliminal messages about power, position and personality are constantly being transmitted and received. The dialect of necktie-wearing stems from the language of corporate power-dressing, which is more about psychopathy than about style or fashion.

And yet, and yet and yet. In the context of self-actualisation and personal growth, attention to physical appearance and accoutrement such as clothing is considered to be counter-productive, at least within some discourses). There's a highly potent meme infecting the minds of many internet-users, that the more you think about how you look, the less progress you make on your spiritual journey. Ghandi for instance was never friendly with Calvin Klein: the one died before the other was even born. Nor would the Buddha have given much thought to the style or fabric of his loincloth.

And yet, and yet, and yet. Isn't it true to say that the discourse in which a higher value is placed on becoming self-actualized than on enjoying a good meal or a good fuck, say, is itself context-dependent and relative? And therefore, in some contexts, for some people, the pursuit of spirituality is just as 'stupid' or 'meaningless' as the wearing of neckties in the workplace.

[Digression alert: the quantity of dried snot and sperm on the doors and walls of workplace toilets is an indicator of the extent to which work in that workplace is seen as stupid or meaningless. Body fluids are an effective medium in which to express messages about despair and desperation.]

Which leaves us washed up high and dry on the drear shores of meaninglessness, enslaved by our own choices and contexts, and self-deceived by the trickster going by the name of Free Will.

But there is a way out. And it's really very simple. Here`s the way out: don't be surprised by the outcomes of your choices and don't complain about them. Or do complain, but then don't complain when your complaint fails to achieve the outcome/s you seek. Because you become a serial whinge-bag and acquire a taste for it, and then pity everyone around you.

HOME

Awarewolf

I came upon a golem
“encountered” one might say
eating dust as golems must
all bloody, muddy day.

I came upon a zombie
a zombie that I saw
gobbling brains ’til brainy stains
remained upon the floor.

I came upon a vampire
a vampire I did see
drinking blood that streamed in flood
bright red quite readily.

I came upon a werewolf
“awarewolf” as it were
hungry eyes saw my demise
my death, if you prefer.

I came upon the humans
in their global sauna
they ate a world and then they hurled
their guts out in a corner.

Mysterious doctors treat peculiar diseases

The Reward of Cruelty, an engraving by William Hogarth, (1697–1764)

Oh, you’ll know them when you see them. Mysterious doctors have sinister laughs, and they rub their hands together in glee a lot. Sometimes they wear white coats, other times blue.

They say things like “mmmmm” and “tsk, tsk” and “tut, tut” and “say Ahh” and “what have we here”. They use words ending in “itis”.

They grow goatees to cover their pimply chins. Their eyes bulge. They have lots of hair growing in their nostrils. They have very bad breath.

Mysterious doctors treat mysterious ailments and peculiar diseases, including Housemaid’s Knee, Nutcracker’s Jaw, Wanker’s Wrist, Wondering Nipple, Quackenburger’s Dropsy, Hog-snout Syndrome, Thrush, Sparrow and of course virulent Monday-itis. Not to mention Ankylosing Spondylitis, Myasthenia Gravis and Sixth Nerve Palsy.

Mysterious doctors are adept at removing mysterious organs, and frequently recommend slicing the brain into disconnected halves (very callous, colossal corpses) — a sinister procedure requiring great dexterity.

For mysterious ailments mysterious doctors prescribe mysterious treatments, including but not limited to moxibustion, hirudotherapy and maggot debridement therapy (MDT).

The laziest man in history

Once upon a time there was a lazy man, the laziest man in history. His name was Henry Peter Gaines.

He was so lazy that he couldn’t even do the things he enjoyed doing like eating and watching television, because it was just too much effort. He was so lazy that he found it an ordeal to do nothing but mooch around the house all day in his dirty underpants munching pistachio nuts and quaffing fizzy drinks.

As well as being lazy (some would say because of being lazy) he was also very bored — so bored that on weekends and holidays he could think of nothing better to do than to sleep.

Every Friday night, for instance, Henry would go to bed around nine, nine thirty. He would wake up around eight on Saturday morning, doze in bed for an hour or two, then get up and shuffle to the toilet. After that, he would either go back to bed, or make himself a cup of tea then try and decide how to spend the day.

hags to haggis

The Scottish war-chief McMac and his war-bud Lord Mildew were heading home after a long, hard day of slaughter and mayhem.

Behind them was the whiskey-soaked battlefield upon which their foul-breathed minions had totally vomited upon the enemy — the cowardly, beef-eating English — had thrown them crying into their warm beer back to their moustachioed mothers and pink-cheeked fathers.

Mounted upon their champing war-nags, bollocks bruised and battered, the noble haggis-lovers clip-clopped their weary way up and down a lonely stretch of heather-cursed witch-land, as mountainous and boring as this very tale itself.

the ogre of broken hill

In the foothills of the badlands
northwest of Broken Hill
lived an ugly hairy Ogre
he probably lives there still.

And in the early evening
Or the middle of the morn
They’d find the bloody corpses
With their throats all ripped and torn.

Some said he was an ogre
Others disagreed
“he’s just a sicko bastard,”
Was all they would concede.

The police could never find him
Nor the soldiers, nor the spies ...