HELP STOP CRIME

To stop crime change the damned laws. That is obvious.
Scared about credit card info getting nicked? Refuse credit cards!
If we kept it so damned simple from the beginning we might do better.
But many would ban such simple truths.

This is why a critical education is still a good thing.
Those "Domain Assumptions" that lurk before and beyond laws and orders are lethal in power and influence.

Make a stand and refuse credit cards and demand kippers on the national health service.
Just see what a big difference all that would make.

Lite Relief : Can Anybody help?

There must be many that waste their money visiting hairdressing shops. So maybe somebody out there can help me with a question that has bothered me for many years. OK I used to visit the hairdresser once when that was the only place to buy condoms without anybody else knowing. Nudge nudge wink wink you know what i mean. OK I admit it. But this is not my point.

Why do we never hear a hairdresser fart?
I am sure they cannot all be Queens !

Lite Relief : Things I miss

Exiled peons all have one thing in common. They miss certain things.
I miss KIPPERS.
Smoked kippers for breakfast.

If a government wants to win an election they should provide, for all, smoked kippers each and every morning and all payed for by the National Health Services.

By doing just that and that alone huge changes could begin.
Benefit the world it would.

Who Do You Think You Are Fooling MR BLATCHER?

Few believe British political honesty or dignity. So when questions of military boys and girls playing with their toys in Iraq or Iran waters gets headlines nobody believes a damned word of it all. Such is the price to pay Mr Blatcher for bringing in a new dimension to the old cliche of lies, damned lies and statistics.

When the search for truth is needed more than ever today it is sick that only fools and sheep will believe the official statements. But that is the state we are in. But there is hope on the horizon. The English football team is being shown for fooling so many for so long that grassroots get pissed off. This means attention can be related to other urgent matters of national identity. This means that a "transfer of learning" might, just might happen.
Might take a while though....

Drinking in the Anticant Snug Bar

To drink in the snug bar of Anticant is to fuse both pleasure and pain. The drinks are free ( as would be social for an aristocratic Fabian) and the toilet clean for all. Heaven help. The likes of a Zola finds clean toilets to be a de-luxus beginning to redemption. A learning curve? A saviour? A blessing? But as the drinks are free the party gets going the toilet is significant for anticant as he entertains. But few have experienced this WC where a polite and yet still natural happening must and will gush with a blush hidden away.

How does Anticant do this? He hangs Monet paintings on the walls. Pictures of Lilly no but nearly. Sexual images from Paris yes but not quite. Impressions. In the toilet of Anticant we find perspectives. Sometimes blurred and sometimes boldly painted as it all depends where one stands.

Which leaves us only one conclusion. The snug thrives because of the toilet. It is only this dynamic that takes the "serious" away from the "really serious".

Long live free beers and wine I say.

Don't Blame The Drinking Classes says Finnish Research

The most "damage" comes from those part-time boozers. Those that cannot hold their drink - those part-timers - those in the majority of the population. After a study of 40 years the Finnish researchers have finally found out what the drinking classes always knew. The main damage comes from those that pretend and play a game at the expert practice of boozing. The majority are the pretenders.

The majority - the great pretenders who cause most damage - are those that think a six pack is well over the daily limit. A six pack? Strawberries to an elephant really for an expert boozer who knows what it is all about. Anyway it is now time to blame and shame the majority ( those pretenders ) and never fear "they will they will". But at least now the drinking classes can be left alone in the public knowledge that they are not the main damagers of societal order.

Not sure if that research made studies on the 12-pack per day type.
Not sure if that research studied business elites that refuse 12-packs as being rather plebian and inappropriate.
But anyway the drinking classes are freed from blame and shame at last.

ROMANTIC FINLAND IN THE SPRINGTIME

Air pollution right now in Finland is about as bad as it gets. Those with any kind of respiratory problem are well advised to stay indoors. Foreign travellers take note. This is indeed a health warning.
The main problem according to all official reports is the dust on the roads. Grit and various dirty bits are scattered on the roads during the winter to stop the ice getting to be like glass. When the sun comes out and the snow and ice melts we are left with a mass of dirty bits. These dirty bits get kicked up by the cars and wagons and get thrust into the air. best to wear a face mask in Finland today ( the day when the new parliament makes its first big meetings - is there a connection here? ).

But the cause? Well of course it is the dirty bits and the cars. But another reality of this "cause" of the problem is neverending budget cuts for all real safety things. The roads have not been cleaned as well as they would have been in past years. The cause of this problem is then attached to the cheap-jack market driven forces. Now where have I heard that before...... ?

SPRING-TIME SUICIDE AND IDLE PROMISES

The suicide season is upon us. Why people commit suicide in the Spring season more than the winter season I have no real idea. I can only think that it is because of idle promises and the inevitable let-downs. Too many political elections are held in the warming days of Spring. Too many hopes are hyped yet again. Too few spuds are involved and too few sustainable gardens. Too many over-spun-spuds are but bad apples. Too few leaves are green.
Too little warmth from the sun is really felt for the winter time-coming. Too much frost and cost left over from the summer-gone.

But "Everyday I see a new born baby cry, I touch a leaf and see the sky ....

We gotta get out of this place ..... the last thing we ever do .... HOPE.....
Suicide is not the last thing.
Summer IS coming
And
If I am lucky
So am I.

An Honest Sunday Mistake

Flicking through Sunday newspapers in a typical Sunday morning haze I came across the same old comments again and again. They were all attached to the failure of reaching targets ; the lack of passion and commitment ; the absence of community spirit ; the criminal sleaze jobs of those that are overpaid and over influential and to cap it all the total disrespect for supporters.

What I thought was concerning the UK system of Turd Way politics was, in fact, a report on the English football team. I was left to conclude that there is little or no difference.

By the way. Monday morning was little different as this tragedy turned into farce.

WHAT JOBS ARE COMPATABLE ?

In a 25 hour day and a flexible week we all need at least two jobs. But what jobs should we take to stay sane?
Easy to answer this one.
A teacher ( shit a lecturer, educator or whatever) should be a postman (sic).

What more do you expect from a weekend that has no finality????

WHAT CAN BE SAID

A return to school is always strange. But what can one do or say when an intelligent young women comes out with a comment like this : " Is this not a paradox?".

Being all of the beastly "ists" ( sexist, ageist and all) I could only cross my legs and think of those questions that were once made without low cut tops. But a response was needed.

" Life, it is, life as adventure..." That I said. Then adding : " a paradox does not exist"!

Then she came back at me saying that I was not a moral person. I had not crossed my legs enough I guess. But she got my point anyway.

OLD FARTS WITH A NEW WORLD ?

What does one do when a new world invites an old fart to lecture again?

How does one handle retirement when the organisations are so old and cold?

Is is possible to lecture anymore?

maybe it is. ( if it pays). ???????????????????????????
maybe it is ( for free).

As rock and roll, folk singer song-writers, pop and piss-artists all make claims to being older and wiser then why should ............. why should an old fart get on the stage?

What is going on?

Damn it I have just fallen off the stage, again. Anybody there wants to fall too?

Words Fuck

Sometimes we fuck with words and at other times words fuck us.

The organismus is upon us all unless we say NO.

Put in Jail again for the Wrong silly RIGHT-Reasons

What is to be done? The "just a lark" gets thrust onto the cactus again.

Thank God for my Jesuit stoicism past before I blogged and .............

Fuck me I might enjoy it.
The postmodern was far too late to make a real difference.
Ello ello
What is your game then?

Finnish Elections : almost a dead beat between the blue meanies

As predicted so well by Zola a few days ago the conservatives and the right-wing bigots of Finland were the main winners. Or so say the media.

Actually the main party to win the most vote was the silent majority who polled 10% more votes than the biggest party. But you read this all before it happened and you read it on this site ( just as the Serena Williams victory was predicted).

What more can i say on this : Zola will go into the on-line betting business at this rate.

I MUST ADMIT - FACTS ARE FACTS

After reading the Sun - reading? ok googling - and as the bums and tits and all gets boring for the day I do still turn to the Guardian a bit. Just a bit. Connections are strange and we live lives that are accidents i guess.

However today Susan Sontag is a piece of the Guardian concerning morality and the novel. This sparked me off.
last night i played music and danced with my bookshelves in romantic mode. Me missus thought i had gone crazy again after all these years but i knew better.
Would like a piece of Susan Sontag i would......

Just a Bit of Spin

Roll over stake holding
Roll over stake holding ....
Stick to those R and B's
......
But do not step on my blue suede shoes.

This is the message from ..................

DUCK FEVER IS UPON US ALL

The Duck is excite-ab(abble)le - quack quacking everywhere - postmodern duckie?

So here we go to catch up :-

" People say it doesn't exist
cause no one would like to admit
That there is a city underground
Where people live everyday
Off the waste and decay
Off the discards of their fellow man ....

give Mr President my honest regards ...

Last night i had another restless sleep...
Last night I dreamed.... "

In REPLY to that old Thomas

I am a lucky one. My heart has a home and my home has a heart. I guess this means I have a wonderful family. Simple as that.
So that can't be so radical can it?

Today? Friday. What are we fighting for?

Well today is Friday. That means fish and chips. You bet your life.
Or was it Saturday that was for fish and chips ... damn it.
What day is it?
Can anybody remember when Friday was pay day?

Why is the world today so confusing I ask.

LONG DRESSES ABOVE MALE HEADS

University life was strange. By the turd year things had to happen. So may I tell a little story. May I? Waves and marriages and all that tend to talk in terms of seven years but I can only say say that three years is enough to rock and roll.

A few posts ago our infamous Anticant paraded his family with long dresses and sitting down peacefully for the camera. Check his website.

Memories are brought back. Sometimes. Long dresses and "ladies" OK for me.

It was a few years back. Rob, a damned good student friend from the North-East, decided to get back home. This decision was made after a few parties and he had had a few. I said to him that we would go north. He agreed.
So pissed as farts we headed for the railway station.
No money but heads full of hope.

By the time we reached Birmingham New Street station we were less than academic but we asked one official for the train going north. The official pointed to the train now leaving. We jumped on.

No tickets and no money and no support from the university for this adventure.

OK, the story is long. But to say a little something here we go.

In one compartment of the train ( normally for six people) we found only two. Both women wearing long dresses down to the feet. Rob smelt a fish and said to me hide and quick.

The ticket collector was on the prowl.
We hid.
Under the long dresses of the ladies, that were also travelling, north with a smile.

You guessed it.
We did not get caught.
We travelled 8 hours that way.
Up north.

Long live long dresses I say.
How could I ever forget

A memorable experience as they say.
Travelling under long dresses.

But I guess they have banned such things today.
Ah Dunno.

OK DAMIT : A SERIOUS POST

Finland will know on Sunday night the outcomes. Election time is here again. Wow. For those interested there is a site, in English, to guide you through this mess. Just click on to the YLE ( which is the site of the Finnish State Broadcasting AUTHORITY ) and take a google with a giggle. If you enjoy sitting down waiting for the porridge to go cold then click in.

main points?
1) There is rather strong turn to the Right.
2) Greens are still around 10% but ......
3) The so called Left is ( at about 9%) still stunned by the past leader who has just snatched her promotion by taking on the Cosmetics Industry as a supporter and at a huge salary.
4) The Social Democrats ( tradition) have found that pragmatism no longer works and today it is all in the "feelings" but they have no DR Feelgood at the helm.
5) The Swedish groups ... they are half Swedish so ....... interesting but no big deal.
6) The Right wing ( two parties ) are laughing their way to their banks.
7) The Trades Unions have been trying to plead for social democratic ways to continue but they placed advertisements showing fat cats vis-a-vis the working class. The press and the right wing business politics had a field day.
8) The "ultra-bra" fascist lot are less than 2% so no need to yap here right now.

It was all brought home to me yesterday when one local voter stopped me in the street just to chat. An old friend. I was asked which party to vote for and I simply sank into the pits. This is the total lack of real trust today in Finnish politics. Finns do not trust the big messages but when they ask friends for advice the response is nothing more than a shake of the head.

But maybe : Less taxes. That sells.
But nobody asks less taxes for whom. Do they?

IMAGES OF AN ANTICANT

The not so old TV classic - "Last of the (Mid?)Summer Wine" - springs to mind when we all enjoy the frolics of Yorkshire folk at their best.
The interesting thing is to identify the TV characters with our Anticant and the beadle and ben in the background.
Maybe we need a TV programme based on the adventures of Anticant.

WHY IS IT ?

So many of the best atheists are very catholic!!!
Few good atheists are prots.
How is it possible to be a good infidel?

Have YOU Ever

Have you ever fucked up when it was better to fuck down?

Have you ever gone against the orders of THE Doctor and/or the Ordering of Things?

Have you ever fucked down when it was better to have fucked up-wards?

If you have then you will know.
And the moral of this story is .................. alive.
Ok, ok the immoraleiry ( did I spell that ok? ) is ......
May, I be, fucked?
Ok; An ok thing to say----
Maybe in a a May-Being world.
In a world of so many medisins and medisyns and sso/zzo many .....
Medicational recreations.
Bio-Eco dreams ----best read through Shelly.

elloelloello - awake or just .................
Av a word with you we must.
Might we talk?
Shelley was good at talk metinks.

KOLA IS VELLY UNVELL IDAG

.......................

BIRRA, BIERE, STARKÖL, CERVAZA, OLUT

There are one hundred ways to get pissed. But, with no fear of fickle debate, I can say that the BLACK SHEEP ALE is great. Just what the doctor did not order and all the better for that. BLACK SHEEP ALE from Yorkshire. As they say :-

" This is Black Sheep Ale. The culmination of five generations of brewing expertise ... Brewed at Paul Theacksten's Black Sheep Brewery in Masham, North Yorkshire, UK. And nowhere else"

I was going to try and say something substantial but ..................
still rock and roll to me

ALTERNATIVES : example number 2

Carl Rogers remains for me significant. His work with social-psychology may be old fashioned today but his basic insights remain, for me, intact. If any alternative way is to be found for our 21st century Carl Rogers and the 1950s might just find favour. In my last post I displayed a poem by Malaguzzi and asked for this 100 ways of Humanitas to be one of the keys for policy. Today I turn to a social psychology that might just make a difference and help us all, just well enough, along this less travelled pathway. Carl Rogers is well worth returning with. I say this in two ways :-

a) His valid attempt to link the social with the individual through creativity and the basic needs of both society and the person may be another reasonable starting point for policy and decision-making. Society and the personal self are intertwined but there remains a kind of basic set of needs if all are to flourish. This approach avoids any one dimensional psychology or sociology and a creative possibility is encouraged thereby. In a word the insipid "me, me, ,me" self is balanced out by a social-self. That I believe is another starting point for an alternative dynamic. This may be a rather old fashioned approach but it remains, for me, an essential one.

b) Carl Rogers also talked of those basic aspects of the good life and well being. There is, he said, a sure connection between basic ways of food, shelter and clothes and all that with, at the same time, a sense of community and folk. These two aspects of life are essential even in a postmodern world. Then as a third connection there is that sense of a personal activeness where the "self" is "actualised" and vitally alive. This kind of three dimensional existence may be difficult ( hopefully impossible) to standardise or measure but it remains one cornerstone for life itself as well lived.

The point here is to come clean. To say what informs judgement and to reply to those that ask for alternatives to be more than mere critique. It is all to easy to blast out critical stuff without a basic foundation ( oopps a bad word there?) so I hope that this is a second grounding for alternatives and the future.

To ask new questions and to be critical is great stuff but foundations remain even if only in the head before the pen. Hope this links ok with that poem of 100 ways. I also hope this post is seen as a valid response to those that, quite rightly, ask for a few basic groundings that inform critical texts.

Shit - after reading my stuff above a stiff drink is needed. Must do better and really get to more basic things. Yellow Duck has more sex on his site now. Visit. Eastern stuff is in vogue it seems. Shut up Zola you have already fucked up the day.

ALTERNATIVES : example number one

A POEM BY LORIS MALAGUZZI

The child is made of one hundred.
The child has a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.
A hundred, always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling
of loving
a hundred joys for singing
and understanding
a hundred worlds to discover
a hundred worlds to invent
a hundred worlds to dream.
The child has a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine
the school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child to think
without hands
to do without head
to listen and not speak
to understand without joy
to love and marvel
only at Easter and Christmas.
They tell the child
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child that
work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.
And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there!

- Loris Malaguzzi

Malaguzzi ( 1921-1994 ) was used recently by an wonderful co-writer, professor Matti Telemäki, as a beginning piece in our small book written just before he died. He wanted this poem to be looked at more and acted upon by more inside of educational circles.

Of course there are hundreds of educational theories and approaches too. So there should !!!! Shame that so many today wish to standardise and target and Americanise or UKise. yUK.

FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS

Newspapers are full of favourite things. Let me give them five of me own :-

1) Enjoying the "new age" of blogs where the word and the image and the stage gives hope for a new Proscenium Stage of communication with folk. Fuck the provider and the customer relation. Two cheers for the bloggers.
2) Enjoying the Phoenix-status of the word through blogs. So much better and often deeper than the mere TV screen ear and eye soap.
3) Enjoying the UK and the USA slowly finding feet in the mud of guilt.
4) Enjoying the laughs as politicians make websites and blogs. Spider laughs they are, they are, as bloggers fly.
5) Enjoying reading again the " Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner".

I was born an A Hairy Arse in early February.

EX-STATIC MOVEABLE OUTDOOR FEASTS

The routine worlds of everyday life situations are, all too often, an alienation of the spirit and the vital human being in the social and natural world. Standardisation, as many have said before, is but a kind of USA bred hamburger for sale and the same the whole world over. Yuk. Give me a greasy spoon anyday. But for city fast-time people the "outdoors" maybe one time and place where a sense of strangeness and a sense of the ecstatic becomes alive. The "outdoor adventure" is life really coming alive ! Of course rural folk laugh at this.
But tennis and golf just do not hack this ex-static nature of an outdoor adventure. This tennis and golf are for creepy crawlies and business capital venturers. Give me the real adventure anyday.
Give me too the escape from that 25 hour per day mis-economy and the escape to the ex-static lapland shifting of the seasons ( these last few days have brought our first warming sun as a gift, blue-red,yellow and purple sky an all) where electric lights do not make a day, a month, a year one dimensional.

But there is more to it. The conformist and one-dimensional 25 hour business lifestyle work to avoid "strangeness" and real change or difference. It is no wonder that I just fail to support UK politics and much of EU politics. Best stop now before I rant and rave on-line. Best do this in me back yard methinks.

ONE END OF A GOOD BOOK

One ending of a wonderful book from Canada and the northern lot was :-

" ... we danced together like that while the night came on, singing a quiet song for the baby, for all babies." ( Halfway Man by Wayland Drew, 1989, page 219 ).

OK the outdoor lot are all escapists, like me. But maybe, just maybe, there is more to it.
Thanks to the one lone ranger for this incentive to post the impossible.

ECLECTIC ECCENTRICS : must do better

Eclectic Eccentrics? This far we see nothing of the sort. All we see is a ruthless aid to both conformism and servitude vis-a-vis the Blatcherite hegemony. As of today this new site reminds me of those nasty "Black Papers" from about 40 years ago where education was for the few, by the few and with the few that could afford it.
Therefore Zola applied for membership as a counter-weighter.
I will stick my finger up a woodpeckers hole until the woodpecker says god bless my soul.
Should be fun.