21st Century Boy

Hollow tongue politicians and vacuum mouthed advertisers. What is worse? Flaccid lips dripping untruths or the barren absurdity of speech devoid of idea, concept, grammer, intelligence or art. Fourth rate drama with pitiful exposition, history altering and bending facts to fit until they snap under the pressure of creating puerile entertainment for the distraction of the ignorant and easy satisfaction. Morons dribbling over the spewings of idiots, where quality is rideculed, honesty rejected, second best accepted and ability turns away dejected. This shining jewel that once sent its language, explorers, artists, soldiers and prospecters, now a babble of tiny miscreants txt speek wid dey’re fumbs pasting their essays from misbegotten websites and grubbing ancient tombs. Kings come and leaders go, Dark Ages replacing the Golden Light. Men who died on the Normandy sand so you can throw your fast food box onto a shit stained, gob smacked, vomit trodden brokendown, dug up pavement. Discarded, disregarded, hard to find an answer amoung the myriad retarded. Words are absurd.

The point(lessness) of this blog

The fact that I have decided I will not be pursuing a scriptwritng career but choose to walk away from art of all kind to pursue other directions renders this blog pretty much obselete, taking into account how long it has been running and the utter lack of comment that it has attracted, no one will mourn this fact. I do intend to continue writing for my own pleasure, so maybe the blog will just change a little in focus.

Robin Hood and Merlin

Mythology is more than story. It should entertain but be more than mere entertainment. It is a receptacle of archetypal themes, a deep rooted teaching from which much can be learned. It should be respected and approached with a responsible awareness of the wisdom and symbolism contained within.

Though, natural that it should, to some extent, evolve and be added to by each generation to speak to each generation, the core should be acknowledged and left untouched and unchanged. Those that seek to re-tell these tales should realise that they must only add branches to the tree and not reshape the trunk; even the responsibility of adding new branches, new threads to the tapestry, requires a deep understanding and respect for the inherent wisdom contained within the core mythology.

Both the tales of Merlin and Robin Hood are precious and important mythological cycles linked to these islands and Northern Europe, to mess with them irresponsibly, ignorant of their true meaning is no different to rewriting Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime mythology, or distorting the true messages of any religion.

The BBC has commissioned both Robin Hood and Merlin as prime time series’, written by people wholly unfamiliar and unconcerned with the legacy each represents. Ignorant of their meaning, they have subverted and diminished the mythology and overlaid the usual BBC obsession with political correctness. Rather than add anything of value they have corrupted valuable material. Their Robin Hood is little more than a dreadful pantomime and their Merlin strays so far from true characterisation as to render any true resonance pitiful.

Unconcerned to strive for deeper meaning, sacrificing integrity for bland entertainment, mythology for fabrication, and true story telling for second rate and irresponsible scriptwriting.

Book now published

Book of poetry, A Symbolic Autobiography, has now been published in softback via lulu.com

Magic No-meants.

In the first summer break after my first year at University I returned home and decided to visit an old yoga class I used to attend before going away to study. I arrived early and was the only person in the hall for a few brief minutes before a very attractive woman walked in. Though unknown to me we both smiled and said Hello as if we knew each other. That familiar ease of recognition though we had never before met. An “eyes meeting across a crowded room moment”, or in this case an empty yoga hall.

Meaningful…

The bond grew swiftly, we went for a drink one night and she asked to hold my hand as I walked her home…ahhhh. Something palpable, tangable was there from the very beginning. She had said she was sort of with someone but not really (if you ever hear that, alarms should be going off in your head). She invited me over one evening which she then cancelled at the last minute saying she could not go through with it. I returned to my studies, met someone else and came down with M.E. (I don’t think the girl was to blame, though a friend says differently).

I always stayed in touch with the yoga girl, just phone conversations for five years until in 2002 we met once more and it was as easy and natural, as meant as it was before. A year or so before she had told me she was now single and within two years of seeing each other again she announced that she felt the same way about me as I had always said I felt about her. See, there is such a thing as fate…lovely…(at this point imagine the needle scratching the romantic music lilting in the background to a screeching halt).

Three months later, during which we had got no closer, she made the biggest U-turn in history. She has messed me around and hurt me ever since, we are now down to an occasional text and I have not seen her for over three years, I know, good sense would say run a mile, well guess I hope to run about 300.

So much for magic moments. Souls being brought together and all that stuff. I had no doubt it had to mean something, but……..

Continued

The bottled water debate continues

Maybe my last post leant towards the “consumer choice rule OK” philosophy. Actually, I think that sometimes too much choice is a bad thing.

No one can condone shipping water from Fiji and away from the people who live there….and if you are of the mindset to pay twenty quid for a bottle of water, you need help, perhaps you should think of giving some cash to charity, try doing something useful with it.

Nevertheless, I still stand by the fact that drinking bottled water that has come from Wales, Scotland or England is a world away from shipping it in from the South Pole and is a reasonable consumer choice to make. I think there are doubts about tap water. The one that springs to mind, which could be an urban myth, is the high levels of birth control pill residue in it, leading to low sperm counts…ok, maybe it is just a myth, but a lot of people believe it myths

The view taken by Panarama last night was slightly simplistic, though.

It is fine to work out the carbon footprint of different bottled water and compare it to that of tap water but does this take into account the footprint of manufacturing, transporting and laying all the pipes for the water main system? In London it is being replaced over the next ten or so years and the new pipes are made of a form of plastic. It is a complicated situation.

The waste seen at street marathon events is appalling, thousands of water bottles discarded after one mouthful and plastic is a hugh problem for the environment, but bottled water is not the only culprit. Do we ban soft drinks too? Be a positive move towards a healthier nation but I am pretty sure Coke, Pepsi and a few others might object.

It is fine for politicians to say bottled water is a fad and we did not need it thirty years ago, but the same could be said of, say, mobile phones. Add up the carbon footprint they leave in their wake but can you see people living without them now? It is government that promotes economic growth as a financial model and that means providing an ever growing range of products. There are a myriad things we don’t need, but are any of us prepared to live without them?

466 Million reasons for the RLHH.

Some in the medical profession are calling for the withdrawal of funding for the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (RLHH).

Mainly, because in their self-important opinion alternative medicine does not work. Presumably, they believe convention medicine does.

466 Million reasons why they could be wrong.

Doctors such as the one featured a few months back, on BBC1’s London InsideOut programme roll out the argument that conventional medicine undergoes strict trials, test, reviews and checks and, therefore is safe whereas alternative therapies do not and so are not safe or ineffectual. It is a doubly incorrect argument; firstly, alternative medicine is tested under extremely strict conditions and, secondly, conventional medicine is not always safe.

466 Million reasons to doubt their safety.

Even though most packs of prescribed drugs contain paperwork listing possible side effects, the people who defend conventional drugs and criticise alternative medicines, rarely, if ever mention them as they attempt to convince us, or themselves, that prescription drugs are superior to alternative therapies.

The 466 million thing?

Well, according to a report on BBC1 One O’clock News today that is the amount of pounds spent on average every year to treat the affects of side effects caused by prescription medicine. £466 million each year. I think it would be safe to assume that an amount like that could keep the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital running for another year with, say, at least the odd £400 million left over to pay nurses and what not.

Bottled Water: Public Enemy Number One.

Well, not quite but certain politicians are beginning to bleat about it. They want to encourage us to give it up and drink tap water. It is all to do with food miles and those carbon footprints; the latest buzz phrase on the lips of all those worthies suddenly waking up and finding themselves green.

Firstly, what happened to consumer choice?

I thought that was a buzz phrase too. “New” Labour always rattle it out. I have the choice in London to pay a congestion charge, travel on an over packed, slow, dirty train or wait in the rain for a badly driven bus. Hey, it’s called democracy and it’s worth fighting for.

So, if I choose to drink mineral water, I should have that choice right? I know it is about saving the planet but those people telling us what to buy, say, do and think still run the country in the same old way and still do deals with other nations with appalling records on ecology. When you really analyse it there is only one sure way to save Mother Earth, it is just that most are to squeamish to face it. We need to lose around four billion of the world population. Think about it, the world would be fine without us going round screwing it up. The birds would twitter in the trees and fish would swim in unpolluted seas. Tough solution though.

But back to the big bottled water debate. You see, I think we are being hoodwinked a little here and this is why.

Taking London as my example: Apart from rain filling the reservoirs and a few underground springs, London water is, basically, a closed system. The water we pour out of our taps, into ourselves and out with the flush goes to treatment plants and is recycled back into the mains water system. They say that, on average, the water you drink has been through seven people. Nice. That skanky bloke down the shops, the one who makes your average junkie look healthy? Yep, been through him. That old bloke on the bus, the one with the smelly trousers and unbelievable breath…could be…sound healthy to you?

Now consider this.

How many bottles of water are sold in every..EVERY…supermarket, newsagent, station and other outlets in London in an average week?

Thousands of litres. Now I don’t know about you but I do not nip off to France or up the Malvern Hills every time I take a pee. The point being that all that bottled water, that fresh H2O that has (hopefully) only been through you and nobody else, is being introduced, ie, added into the closed London water system. It all goes down your lavatory, gets recycled, and becomes London tap water. It is extra fresh water being added to the London water reserves. Surely, that helps dilute the sewage system, making water treatment easier?

Bottled water drinkers: You are helping to increase our reserves of clean, drinkable and unpolluted tap water…Keep going, I have calculated that at current rates, by 2049, London taps will be providing 96% natural mineral water!

Seriously? No, I made that up but the quality of mains drinking water and consumer choice are serious points. To end, I am sure I read recently that government departments are looking into adding flouride to mains tap water; healthy teeth and all that. I am also certain that I read recently that research has shown that flouride has a pacifying effect on people. It numbs us all down a bit. Very Huxleyesque.

How fast is this planet spinning?

If one stood right next to the North Pole it would take a day for the earth to rotate you right round. If you stood at a point on the equator it would also take a day for the earth to rotate you right round. So is time travelling faster at the equator?

mirror ball

If one were to create a sphere, say 8-10 metres in diameter, the interior surface of which was mirrored and then imagine it was bright inside so that one could see clearly. If you were then to be placed at the centre of that sphere with your reflections all around you, what would those reflections look like?