How to Shape the Sky and Curve the Land

It was out at the edges of this world. I was out there, creating some new land, some new world. I was alone, as I always am, out there. Not many people know about the edges of this world. They think it is seamless and complete, that it is -somehow - defined and enclosed by the physical, what we like to call reality.

I do not, of course, speak of heavens or hells, or any such mythological places. We know there are no heavens and there are no hells, except – of course – for those we make for one another, here in this ordinary reality. Those that once created the heavens and hells, of course, they may have glimpsed some idea of what I am referring to. They may once have touched the outer limits of the possible and learnt that it can be shaped. But they had more interest in inventing religions and for the same purposes some have always created religions, so they can to take some control over the lives and thoughts of others.

No, I was out here, learning how to shape the sky and curve the land to meet each other in some new world I wanted for myself. I, by then, had had enough of this world. Enough of this narrow cold world where we bump into one another and against one another all the time, always stunting and closing off the possibilities that even we mere humans can create with just one expansive gesture.

Yes, I was out there alone just creating my own small world and then she came along and changed everything.

Something for the Weekend - Free Kindle Humour: The Sexiest Elbows I'd Ever Seen

 

The Sexiest Elbows I'd Ever Seen

Available FREE for five days here (UK) or here (US)

Extract:

[….]

Twelve hours later, just as the TV station covering the event live went to an advertising break, there was an unearthly scream from the AntenDec beast as it stood on the tapioca-ignoring table, stripped off its clothing and dived heads-first into the now stone-cold tapioca dish on its left before smearing the contents of its other tapioca dish over its genitalia as it got up and strode towards the female celebrity judge, licking its lips and demanding perverse sexual favours, there and then, live on the auditorium stage.

Fortunately, the AntenDec’s keepers were able to throw one of their restraining nets over the rampaging creature before it got too close to the judge. They sedated it and took it away in a wheelbarrow back to its cage ready for the long journey back to the Geordie wilderness where it made its home.

This meant that Plenitude and I were through to the final.

That night we celebrated alone together in my hotel room, with Plenitude dipping those sexy elbows of hers in the champagne, they had presented to us for winning the semi-final, for me to lick off as she did that special thing she did with the castanets and the Shrewsbury & Telford A-Z Street Atlas.

[….]

Product Description

When we first met she was Emeritus Professor of Post-Colonial Marmalade at the University of Ffestiniog, and she had the sexiest elbows I had ever seen. We met at the Annual Ffestiniog Tapioca-Ignoring Convention, back in the late summer of ’83. At the time neither of us had a Tapioca-Ignoring partner, so naturally – once we found our handicaps were compatible – we teamed up for that autumn’s preliminary Tapioca-Ignoring Cup rounds. Of course, with both of us being amateurs we never expected to get to the finals.

Her name was Plenitude Cleavage and she came from the Welsh valleys, in fact she had quite a Welsh valley herself, never in my experience had I ever seen such a splendid example of nominative determinism in a woman’s body before
[....]

So begins one of the greatest love stories of our age told here for the first time in ebook form for the Kindle.

This collection also contains several other stories of equal import, such as:
'Shropshire Smith and the Temple of Vegetables'. A tale of adventure and excitement within a forgotten temple of one of the world's oldest forgotten civilisations.

'The Famed Vegetable Killer of Grimsby'. Murder most foul.
'The Dancing Sex Nuns of the Tenth Quadrant'. A story of one of the great mysteries of the far future.

'The man with the Golden Cheese Baguette'. The tale of Britain's greatest spy and his attempt to thwart an evil genius with plans for world domination.

'The Thing Falling Out of the Sky Incident'. Some claim there are aliens out there, waiting to invade Earth. Some say this has already happened.

Plus other stories, such as: 'Feeling Betrayed', 'The Aftermath', 'The Perfect Woman' and others the like of which you will never have read before.

 

The Sexiest Elbows I'd Ever Seen

Available FREE for five days here (UK) or here (US)

When it is Not Enough

Sometimes, it is not enough. Whatever it is, whatever you do, it is not enough. There were times when it seemed the things that filled my life were enough. If my life wasn’t quite how I’d imagined it, it was good enough. It got me by.

I found it easy enough to get out of bed in the morning without being overtaken by some existential dread of the horrors the new day would bring with it. Neither did I, though, jump out of bed as though I was an actor in a breakfast cereal commercial, full of life and eager for the joyous new day to begin.

Usually, the alarm went off and I hit snooze… and, well, I didn’t… snooze that is. I’d lie there waiting, trying to remember my name, who I was, where I lived and why I was getting up. I have very vivid dreams and it takes a while for me to find my way out of them and back to the real world.

Or… it used to….

Then I found myself turning away from the world out there and back to the dream world. The dreams would linger, follow me to the bathroom, tugging, pulling on my arm, beckoning me back to bed.

Then, one morning, I looked up into the bathroom mirror and she was there, standing behind me. I looked into the reflection of her eyes, her faced framed by the long black straight hair, her dark olive skin shining with life, energy and strength.

‘Come back,’ she whispered.

I turned.

There was no-one there, but I remembered her from my dream. I remembered the things we did there, back in her dream world… and I wanted to go back there, back to her, more than anything.

I decided there and then, standing naked in the bathroom, that if she ever called me back to her world again… then I would go.

Victimless Crimes

Well, obviously, if you put it like that, who am I to argue, let alone arrange a undertaking for your ‘special’ wallaby to take its final accountancy exams. Still, as they say, you can’t count your chickens without at least some rudimentary form of counting system.

Anyway, there she was standing there stark naked, but with her nudity cunningly hidden under her clothing, so that no-one would suspect her, or her motives. However, having said that, though, the tin of emulsion paint was a bit of a giveaway, especially considering the court order banning her from getting within a hundred yards of any trainee assistant supermarket manager with a tin of paint (emulsion or gloss) with intent to cause a non-consensual first coating was still in force.

It was not so much the fact that having freshly-painted shop assistants was somewhat detrimental to the retail experience of the shop’s customers, it was more that the freshly-painted staff did tend to leave sticky daubs of paint over everything they touched. Thus, leaving it difficult for shoppers to discern the list of ingredients on, say, a tin of peach slices with anything approaching confidence and – as I’m sure you know only too well, a paint-streaked till receipt is next to useless when checking to make sure that one was not overcharged.

Therefore, let us have no more talk of such so-called ‘victimless crimes’ and leave the wallaby in peace to get on with its revision.

Old-Fashioned

And so it came, suddenly, out of the sky like a... like a... like a great big fiery wombat... No, not a wombat.. what's that thing a bit like a wombat, but it's made out of rock and can flatten a whole forest to buggery?

No, not an overweight politician....

Not the mother-in-law, either. Especially not in this politically-correct climate we now find ourselves in, where mother-in-law jokes are regarded as... well, as a bit old-fashioned.

Although, nothing looks so out-of-date as someone sneering at something they regard as old-fashioned.

Of course, though, if you are the sort of person who wants to sport fashionable attitudes and adopt all the current fashionable causes and attitudes then you will – almost by definition – find those of us who feel no need to be in with the in-crowd as some sort of wombat... No, not wombat, what is that thing where you live in a cave and wear a terribly unethical and probably ecologically unsustainable fur loincloth.

No, not a politician, that other thing that shows unreconstructed attitudes and outdated social mores?

TV sports programme presenter... yes, that's it.

The Female/Male Stoat Beguiler

Embrocation Disingenuous first became professor of Semi-Beguiled Stoat Contemplation in 1968. Back in those heady days of the late sixties, it seemed that the Summer of Love could almost belong to anyone with a tattered paperback of Blake's Complete works, a brace of Doors albums, a 10% deposit and, of course, a semi-beguiled stoat.

But, inevitably, the wide-eyed optimism of the sixties fell headlong into the comedown of the mid-70s. By then, it seemed obvious that Disengenous's - now seminal - work, The Female/Male Stoat Beguiler, an in-depth study of the relationship between the underwear of accountants and the price of eggs, became - to many - the work that most influenced the rise of what later became known as Feminist Theory.

It was not easy in the Sixties - despite the very generous grants available at the time - to find an adequate theory that would link all the then cutting-edge and vital social sciences. Feminism, Stoat-beguiling theory, accountancy and the study of the habits and practices of the tribes, groups, sub-cultures and so on that exploded onto the youth and teenage scene in the sixties all seemed - to the commentators of the time - to have nothing in common. It took a scholar of Disengenious's erudition, and blind disregard of the facts and evidence, to come up with a theory that could link them all, no matter how tenuous and flaky.

Of course, it was the Mods and the Rockers and their bank holiday rampages around the coastal towns of Britain who got all the tabloid publicity. But it was the secrecy, the underground nature of the accountants and the clubs where they practiced double-entry bookkeeping well into the early hours of the morning, their briefcases, and in some case very early examples of uninhibited calculator use that Disingenuous found fascinating. She was particularly fascinated by the fact that all the male accountants were men, and the female accounts were - on the whole - mostly women (except – of course – those specialising in corporate taxation). This became even more apparent to her when the craze for total stoat-beguilement swept through those underground accountancy clubs in the late summer of 1969.

Disingenuous was fascinated to discover that the female accountants in those secretive clubs would use methods of stoat beguilement that were very different to those utilised by the male accountants. Eschewing the need for any further research -as she said in a interview after the publication of The Female/Male Stoat Beguiler - 'in case I came across anything which would have contradicted my precious and wonderful theory' - she immediately began to formulate a synopsis and publicity material for the work that was to make her name.

In The Female/Male Stoat Beguiler, Disingenuous made the now commonplace - but then startling claim - that the methods of stoat beguilement used by the male accountants was not only in itself a manifestation of the male accountants’ domination over the female accountants, but that it was also symptomatic of the wider society as a whole and an expression of that society’s contempt for women. Claiming that her theory proved that the phallocentric male hegemony was demeaning and dismissive of all women, Disingenuous stated that women would never be free until they symbolically burned their stoat-beguiling mittens and refused to ever take part in 'such degrading spectacles ever again!'

From that day, forward the relationship between the sexes would never be as straightforward or unquestioning ever again, and it is Embrocation Disingenuous, and her The Female/Male Stoat Beguiler, that we can thank for the current state of harmonious equality and greater mutual understanding shared by both sexes in our modern world.

The Marmalade Of Our Mornings

There are times when the very kitchens of our souls are overflowing with the effluvia of our meandering stager through the days that fall down on us like the contents of a badly-stocked cupboard as we go about opening each one searching for that marmalade of our mornings that we are sure we bought home from the supermarket of all our dreams and desires.

Those strange kinds of herbs and spices, even those jars of Marmite that no-one ever admits to buying that rain down on our heads whenever we attempt to open those cupboards of promises, they all seem to be there just to prevent the discovery of that golden marmalade that makes the toast of our lives go beyond being merely cooked bread and into the realms of the numinous and transcendent.

It is all to easy to forget the power of toast when the sensuous beguilements of breakfast cereals and their promises of mornings of almost orgasmic ecstasy fill the commercial breaks of our most holy TV schedules. The promise of heath, happiness and almost supernatural levels of naughtiness from an equally cereal-enriched partner of all our fantasies seem merely a spoonful away, but, these days, we know how the promises that always seem so enticing are always the ones that turn out to be the hollowest.

All we do know, all we can ever know, about this world with any certainty is that toast has never lied to us.

Ethical Headgear

There are times it seems when the world geo-political situation means that one has simply no other choice, but to wear a hat. Of course, such a decision is not to be taken lightly, especially if one likes to count oneself amongst that dwindling band of the Right-On Politically-Correct Left, where choice of headgear will be dictated more by political fashion-following masquerading as ethics than by such things as practicality, usefulness and fitness for the prevailing weather conditions.

For those on the Left, some hat choices are indeed quite straightforward, obviously with its association with the evil empire of America the cowboy hat is a complete no-no, especially as it is associated with the more right-leaning American states such as Texas. This association with America will also, of course, completely rule out the baseball cap too, which is itself further tainted by being the headgear of choice for the chav. Now, whilst the Left-leaning person does like to pretend to like the lower orders of society, on no account do any of them want to be caught by anyone who they know, and consequently need to impress with their up-to-date right-onness, wearing anything which those lower orders would themselves consider fashionable or stylish.

The bowler hat too can be discounted by the Left as its associations with capitalism move it completely beyond the pale. As, of course, can the top hat.

However, for those on the Left the choice is not then quite so simple for other hats. Take for example, the flat cap, this is an almost traditional working class hat, so in most cases one could be on safe ground with it, however, it is also favoured by the landed gentry, especially those in the hunting and shooting fraternity, which - of course - taints it almost beyond redemption for some on the Left. This does make the flat cap quite problematical as the Left these days is populated mostly by the right-on middle classes, most of whom have never seen a traditional working class person, let alone one wearing a flat cap, and so in their eyes the flat cap wearers in their social circle will be almost certainly belong to the aforementioned hunting and shooting set, consequently making the flat cap a no-no for any Left-winger wanting to maintain some shred of ideological purity.

One could – obviously – sport a beret and should one’s ideological alignment to that icon of the Left, Che Guevara, but the fact remains that the beret makes you look – and this applies even to the ‘great’ Che himself – like a complete dick and is therefore best avoided.

This does leave – apart from the WWII leather pilot’s hat which is, of course, a special case - the woollen hat, but this itself has a certain militaristic connotation which – at best – can make it somewhat ethically problematical.

Finally, there is the right –on choice of ethnic headgear, that is, apart from the fact that the more competitively right-on amongst one’s circle of Left-wing acquaintances are bound to have a blisteringly accurate and up-to-date knowledge of the world’s repressive regimes, and are therefore – somewhat gleefully – bound to point out that one’s choice of ethical ethnic headgear marks one down as a fervent supporter of one of the most evil right-wing fascistic regimes on the planet.

So, just perhaps, maybe that hat isn’t such a good idea anyway. After all, what price cold ears when compared to ideological purity?

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time there was a time that had a Once upon it. The time didn't mind all that much, just as long as the Once kept still and didn't keep trying to scratch its ears all the time. But - as we all know - the Once has very itchy ears indeed. Furthermore, the Once always felt as though all it needed was just one more really good scratch to sort out that itch once and for all.

But it never did.

Review: The Social Animal - W.G. Runciman

[Non-fiction – Sociology 1998]

Sociology has not yet recovered from the lambasting it received during the late 70s and the 80s when it became obvious that most of its theoretical underpinnings, especially those most influenced by Marxist theory, were at odds with the very natures of the societies sociology itself exists to study. For a long time, until Media Studies came along to take the dubious honour from it Sociology was the butt of that student joke where the graffiti above the toilet roll dispenser states ‘Sociology Degrees Please take One’.

The sociologist soon became a stereotypical character, an out-of-touch academic misunderstanding all that they see and seeing everything as class conflict, exploitation and other such Marxist, post-Marxist or pseudo-Marxist inspired clichés. This – in a way – is a shame as the study of people and their relationships with the rest of society from small groups right up to the nation state and beyond is something well worth studying. As would – incidentally – a proper and rigorous study of the Media and its relationship to society, rather than the simplistic theory-driven pseudo-study that is often passed off as Media Studies in contemporary academia. Runciman himself is very aware of this, stating:

Sociology may be easy to do badly (what isn’t?). But the lesson of its history to date is how hard it is to do well. To sociologists, this should be a challenge rather than a deterrent. But to their readers, it should be a reason to be at the same time sceptical about sociology’s pretensions, charitable about its limitations and discriminating about its achievements.

As Runciman says, Marx was wrong about the inevitability of proletarian revolution in capitalist societies, wrong about the inevitability of revolution in industrial rather than agricultural societies and wrong about the socialist utopias bringing about an end to class conflict. Runciman goes on to state that the only lasting legacy of Marx is the prominence given to ‘class-conflict’ in post-Marxist sociology. But whether that is a benefit or not is very debatable, especially to us non-sociologists.

Runciman goes on to discuss those other ‘greats’ of sociology Weber and Durkheim, finding their concepts of man and society equally as flawed as the Marxist worldview. Runciman argues that neither Weber’s view of history as ‘a process of inexorable ‘rationalisation’ originating in the societies of early modern Europe’, nor Durkeim’s notion that ‘human social behaviour is explicable entirely by the social environment’ as satisfactory.

Neither is he convinced by the followers of Hobbes and Rousseau who argue, in the case of the former that mankind is ‘naturally’ aggressive, warlike and in constant conflict, and in the later that mankind is ‘naturally’ a ‘noble savage’ living in harmony with each other and nature. Runciman instead argues that it is more a case of neither and both, that all societies combine both aggression and co-operation, and so on, as necessary. This is again, another example of where some sociologists have become caricatures of themselves by slavishly following such over-simplifications to the point of absurdity. Runciman is therefore correct to call for the discipline to move beyond such narrow ways of thinking.

However, Ruciman’s neo-evolutionary theory is very distinct from the old and discredited notions of the so-called ‘social-Darwinists’. They put the varying successes of different societies down to genetic differences between the ‘races’, which is patently absurd as the genetic differences that there are between the different so-called ‘races’ are so minor and insignificant that they cannot be seriously considered as an explanation for the relative qualities of societies at all.

Runciman’s argument, therefore, is that societies, just like living creatures must adapt to their environment and to changing circumstances, otherwise they will become extinct. There are, of course, several examples which could support this thesis, such as: the fall of the USSR and Eastern block countries when it became obvious they could no longer continue, the gradual change of China away from communism, the stagnation of North Korea, the civilisation of Easter Island collapsing and leaving behind those enigmatic statues, the Vikings failing to cope with the change of climate in Greenland, the fall of the Roman Empire and many more.

This neo-evolutionary approach to human societies is a very intriguing idea, especially now that Marxism et al are such spent forces, and the - in general – left-wing (for want of a better description) notions that have underpinned so much of sociological theory have proved - at best – ineffectual, and often counterproductive, if not downright dangerous. Therefore it is now necessary that we look for some better way of understanding societies. It is just a pity that this book only scratches the surface of the idea, serving more as an introduction to the notion of neo-evolutionary social theory rather than being more of an in-depth study of societies through that lens. Nevertheless, The Social Animal is still a very interesting and intriguing read for those interested in the nature of human societies.