When the cup is empty you want it full. My cup is empty. I am empty. I live in a desert, or at least my soul is there. It is not a hot desert, like Death Valley, but a dry one. It is Canada, a cold desert. There is water, but the sources are far away, places I do not know. Close to me, within range of my thirst, there is none. I can walk, I can drive, but the sources of water are dry. If there are others, I know not where. There is snow, of course. Canada has lots of snow this time of year, but the snow on the ground you cannot drink. It is poison. Contaminated with dog piss, N-person spit, and road salt. Better to die of thirst than die of that. Water, for the soul, comes in three forms: friendship, sex, and patriotism. There are fancy Latin terms for these (eros, patria, I think), but the empty cup I have is that of love of country, that despised affection called variously nationalism.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Supernatural Toronto
The fading of Christianity has had its predictable results: supernatural spirits more familiar to the Ancient Greeks and the superstitious Romans have returned to our city. The Goddess Persephone * , in particular, the consort of Hades, Lord of the Underworld roams the streets of Toronto. Persephone, who rather resembles Lady Gaga in taste for material possessions, also has a taste for mortal men. Being a goddess she has, it is said, the most beautiful vagine. So much so that those who have sampled her divine affections are no longer capable of ejaculation. Of course, those so touched by the divine are driven by their craving for release, and incapable, that they go mad. They also turn into satyrs, their feet slowly reshaping into cloven hooves, their bodies hairy (often mistaken for Italian or Portuguese construction workers), and their need for food or sleep disappears. They haunt the night life of the city, live under bridges and in the forested ravines, and exist in torment.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
The Generic Love Spell
After you learn the meanings of the tarot cards, you learn the combinations. This besides that means whatever. After you learn combinations you learn associations. The Knight can stand in for the King, the Ace modifies the others, and the Pages are lesser mortals than their feisty Knight cousins, or their sober Kings who rule over them. And then, one magical moment, you learn you can rearrange the cards that speak of the question you have asked. You can change the reading and turn the listening into dictation.
The Sleeping Sword
Waiting for the sword to fall, indeed. Which of the four horsemen will be the first to strike? Disease seems the most likely. But then there is War; diplomacy and things unseen in the background could avert that first blow. Famine calls itself economic downturn now a days, and we have been living with it for some years now. The Earthshaker has done his bit, and could strike, but nobody expects that expected event.
Disease. There are more than one plague to choose from. Which do you favour? The tuberculosis, the gonorrhea, or the dirty hospital cough? We had ways of dealing with diseases before we had anti-biotics, but the sanitarium, the quarantine, and the closed port technologies have been sold off for votes for the insane, the roaming cougher, and the illegal immigrant. I would mention the clay footed response to the HIV epidemic, but in a country without freedom of speech, that could get me in trouble. Better half the population dies choking on their own vomit than we be prepared for the predictable and inevitable.
War. The dead white males always said it only takes one aggressor to make a war. We have two: the bomb crafting Iranians, and the holocaust stung Israelis. If a war does break out, the Obama voters will flock back to vote for Obama, which does put a spin on the foreign policy of the world’s smartest leader. Patriotism. No mention in the media of the support of the usual ex-Bolshevik powers for Iran. Any rail movements of munitions over their common border? Nary a peep: all is mourning for the latest crack pipe casualty in Hollywood.
Famine. There were always peasant uprisings after a famine. Marx noted this, but the current crop of Marxists are in love with the non-workers of the tax spending class. They have built up a security apparatus from the ranks of the freedom loving patriots, a strategy that a Roman emperor or Greek despot would judge unwise. Likewise layoffs in the military, those looming endings of career and avocation. Mind you, coups do not happen in the modern Rome. Not never. You can press their buttons, take their wealth, and what always happens will not happen. You can find that not written in the history syllabus. Better to read about the heroic struggle to have wheelchair ramps installed at libraries and post offices than about the inevitable.
Disaster. This only seems to show up as a logical consequence of some economic activity that creates jobs and capital. Going back to horses will stop the hurricanes in Florida and the earthquakes in California. Yup. And from the last disaster, nobody prepares for the next. At least, the preparations made are made by people who do not show up on the white guilt gummed up monitors of the media. Just who is buying all those guns, ammo, survival rations, and other stuff I will not mention? Who knows, who knows. If you do, you keep quiet in this time of absence of freedom of speech.
Go to bed and rest your weary head. The sun will rise tomorrow. The dawn may be smoke filled from N-person riot, the air filled with pestilence from roaming victims of oppression, and the news of your job layoff in the mail. If the earth shakes, or the waters rise, the prepared will act, and the looters loot. It is all very predictable, but which Ace will turn up first? Which of the four horsemen will bring forward his legions as vanguard?
Disease. There are more than one plague to choose from. Which do you favour? The tuberculosis, the gonorrhea, or the dirty hospital cough? We had ways of dealing with diseases before we had anti-biotics, but the sanitarium, the quarantine, and the closed port technologies have been sold off for votes for the insane, the roaming cougher, and the illegal immigrant. I would mention the clay footed response to the HIV epidemic, but in a country without freedom of speech, that could get me in trouble. Better half the population dies choking on their own vomit than we be prepared for the predictable and inevitable.
War. The dead white males always said it only takes one aggressor to make a war. We have two: the bomb crafting Iranians, and the holocaust stung Israelis. If a war does break out, the Obama voters will flock back to vote for Obama, which does put a spin on the foreign policy of the world’s smartest leader. Patriotism. No mention in the media of the support of the usual ex-Bolshevik powers for Iran. Any rail movements of munitions over their common border? Nary a peep: all is mourning for the latest crack pipe casualty in Hollywood.
Famine. There were always peasant uprisings after a famine. Marx noted this, but the current crop of Marxists are in love with the non-workers of the tax spending class. They have built up a security apparatus from the ranks of the freedom loving patriots, a strategy that a Roman emperor or Greek despot would judge unwise. Likewise layoffs in the military, those looming endings of career and avocation. Mind you, coups do not happen in the modern Rome. Not never. You can press their buttons, take their wealth, and what always happens will not happen. You can find that not written in the history syllabus. Better to read about the heroic struggle to have wheelchair ramps installed at libraries and post offices than about the inevitable.
Disaster. This only seems to show up as a logical consequence of some economic activity that creates jobs and capital. Going back to horses will stop the hurricanes in Florida and the earthquakes in California. Yup. And from the last disaster, nobody prepares for the next. At least, the preparations made are made by people who do not show up on the white guilt gummed up monitors of the media. Just who is buying all those guns, ammo, survival rations, and other stuff I will not mention? Who knows, who knows. If you do, you keep quiet in this time of absence of freedom of speech.
Go to bed and rest your weary head. The sun will rise tomorrow. The dawn may be smoke filled from N-person riot, the air filled with pestilence from roaming victims of oppression, and the news of your job layoff in the mail. If the earth shakes, or the waters rise, the prepared will act, and the looters loot. It is all very predictable, but which Ace will turn up first? Which of the four horsemen will bring forward his legions as vanguard?
Saturday, February 4, 2012
The three blue privilege tokens, two nights in Montreal problem
It is a math problem, really. I ended up with the bag holding the blue privilege tokens after handing them out to deserving staff at the Frigg's day moot. There were three blue privilege tokens in there, that black velvet bag the Mayor uses to hold the weeks issue. Gosh darn. Nobody noticed, they were all bolting out the door to their separate destinations: the green privilege tokens to The Pleasure Center, the local bar; The red privilege tokens to the Colosseum, for an evening spectacle watching wild beasts tear apart Occupy activists; and the blue tokens were headed to the parking lot: their reward was a weekend in Montreal, there to sample Michigan sausage. There are only two days in the weekend, as you well know; two tokens are sufficient for the entire weekend of Michigan sausage, and the best Michigan sausage is in Montreal. It is a perfect time. But what if you have three blue privilege tokens? This is the three blue privilege tokens, two nights in Montreal problem.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
