Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Psycho II
Psycho progress continues as it does revealing the following secret history; pictured above are the ancient ruins of Abercorn Castle 0845 to 1154 (times approximate). It was here that Princess Margaret, a mermaid from Denmark, set up home with King Malcolm Middleton the Rotund. Together they brought fierce religious beliefs, various useful pottery pots and deer skinning techniques to the primitive Picts who rewarded them both with a ritual beheading and a jolly good bonfire party. King Malcolm also invented the hotel and then the tin opener, unfortunately tinned food and tin were not at that point available to the general public so he was nicknamed "the Misunderstood". Odd that his crippling speech impediment is never mentioned. Things have moved on and their once splendid castle has now been looted and bulldozed so that townies can visit the countryside and kindly leave their Lucozade bottles and Kit-Kat wrappers as habitat for the embattled wildlife.
Locally produced food is the best beating both Poundland and Lidl's tawdry efforts into a cocked hat. This weekend we've feasted on garden potatoes (best suited for relentless mashing and pounding), garden rhubarb and tree based plums. These fine foods were duly heated up and consumed by a hungry family, part of which spent today marvelling at the unique weather system that sits permanently and directly over Pittenweem (almost home of the self righteous and frankly boring Fence Collective) and sailing great ships, something of a family business.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Some kind of Hell
- Hell doesn't avenge evil or reveal God's power. It does the exact opposite! By holding on to the doctrine of eternal hell, we in essence hold to the belief that in the end God's will to save all people goes unfulfilled, which puts God's power and goodness in doubt.
- Hell heralds eternal hopelessness. Suffering in hell for all eternity means that souls burning there forever will exist without any hope of redemption. This leads us to the belief that God withdraws unconditional love once a person's body dies. In other words, God's love for us is tied to the physical body and the temporal realm, and grace disappears for unbelievers after the physical life is gone.
- Hell keeps evil in eternal existence. The Bible tells us that, in the end, God will abolish evil. Yet, somewhere in the universal expanse of God's perfect peaceful kingdom, evil still survives in those who inhabit hell -- evil "lives" on eternally.
- Hell creates a clash between justice and love. We unintentionally conjure up a cruel father who demands that unrepentant sinners spend eternity in the flames of hell, finding endless torture an agreeable way to achieve justice -- which is a far cry from the God who loves with an everlasting love. We develop a picture of a God who promotes eternal punishment as positive, as part and parcel of divine love and justice. We try to relieve these tensions by appealing to God's love and mercy on the one hand, and to God's justice and wrath on the other. Such a view of God's love, mercy, justice, and wrath leads to the conclusion that to love is to punish eternally and, therefore, to punish eternally is just.
- Hell assigns eternal violence to God: Traditional theories of hell not only keep evil in eternal existence; they also keep the cycle of violence in motion for all eternity as unfortunate souls suffer the ferocity of eternal torture because God requires it.
- Hell executes eternal punishment for temporal sin: Does sin committed during one short, temporary life span deserve an eternity of punishment? Even in our own society, we strive to make the punishment fit the crime.
Sair Heid?
Never turn down an opportunity to shout, 'F**k them all!' at the top of your voice.
Avoid bigots of all descriptions.
Let your own bed become to you what the Pole Star was to sailors of old ... look forward to it.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
It is obvious
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Another day...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Special effects
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Watership Down Syndrome
Psychopath
A large, mean looking black hole appeared in the earth and we found a leg of deer (or the rear leg of a deer) up a tree. The rest of the deer had however hopped it. The track is forming up nicely and any day lots of clunking psychos and their partners will arrive, sweating with their packed lunches, heading for the now nearby and convenient sewage free coast. Meanwhile we're considering opening a nice tea shop in order to cash in on the thirsty, visiting psychos. The kind of up market shoppe that has tea and scones and tits and tats and no greasy spoons etc.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Theory buster
Jonny C Clarke
Short(ish) poem inspired by seeing JCC, 19/08/10 at 2330 in a big town in the rain. Ahem...
"John Cooper Clarke
Comes in from the dark
Side stuck in permanent profile
A head on stilts that groans
Like a sliced Ramone
Painted on jeans
Tattered scripts mean
The perpetual illusion
Literary confusion
Lament no lamination
On notes or notation
Scribbles and stencils
Like and unleaded pencil
Mental.
John Cooper Clarke
Festival stick insect
Heroin chic defects
A lack of respect
For the untwisted word
Sexually transmitted diseases
Coughs and sneezes
The North's balmy breezes
Personal hell freezes
The absurd and the norms
On parade and reformed
Big society’s worms
Spawned
John Cooper Clarke
Needs a good meal
Needs time to heal
This walking corpse
Rides the fourth horse
Emaciated, animated
Spectral and laminated
A carbon copy punk
Drinks without being drunk
Starves without the hunger
Isn’t getting younger
is
John Cooper Clarke
John Cooper Clarke
Cigarette burns
Self harm returns
The wrong side of the razor
Unbuttoned unblazered
Glasses for lasers
Like Gollum in headlights
But I should write something trite
He was on for seven nights
Just more festival…magic
John Cooper Clarke
Shared a bed with Nico
An artists hole, a freak show
You should know
Addicted lover’s Boho
Where the disinfectant should go
It’s easier for a cat to bark
Space Shuttles to park
Feed Wheatabix to a shark
A flushed toilet to spark
Than be John Cooper Clarke
I don’t envy John Cooper Clarke
I don't want to be John Cooper Clarke.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Beechams Powders
Toyota Hilux
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Caithness daily photo
Inside the same house; a box bed onto which some old furniture has been placed, a commode has also been put in there for some reason. The floor has however been covered by peat, dirt and sheep dung. Clearly the animals use the open house(s) as a shelter, spending time in these solid but slowly rotting hulks is unpleasant and dangerous and they are not watertight. A strange, haunted place to visit. A ghost town shining in the broad daylight.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Exploring
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Cycle of destruction
Friday, August 13, 2010
Where is Caithness
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Secret room
Monday, August 09, 2010
We need...
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Chair on fire
Although it's not been a particularly dry summer every so often you get one of those days/nights when, for no reason surplus wickerwork furniture just spontaneously combusts, as it were. There is no rational explanation so I have none to offer.
Friday, August 06, 2010
Pleasure
The impermanence of pleasure
"This most recent study inquired into the well being of 136,000 people worldwide and compared it to levels of income. It found, overall, that feelings of security and general satisfaction did increase with financial status. Money, however, could not lift its possessors to the next level, and was unable to provide enjoyment or pleasure on its own. The survey, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examined large numbers of people from almost every culture on earth, and found much the same thing. The stereotype of the rich man who finds life savorless and without pleasure was not invented simply to keep the poor happy with their lot.
Opinions and this enormous survey, however, concentrate on status and on the moment of possession. Are we satisfied and filled with pleasure when we have what we came for? Some, looking at suburban cannibals and eager consumers, would say “yes”; the survey tends to say “not necessarily”. There is a significant question to be asked about enjoyment, which we ask ourselves all the time when embarked on an enterprise of pleasure. It’s rare that we can actually pin down the specific site of pleasure; the specific moment where what William Blake called “the lineaments of gratified desire” are at their clearest.
Take the teenager determined to buy an iPad, a woman setting out to get a new handbag, a prosperous businessman who wants to add to his collection of sports watches. The setting out with the happy intention of spending; the entering of the shop; the examination of the wares; the long decision; the handing over of the money; the moment when the ownership of handbag, watch or tablet is transferred; the gloating at home; the moment when the object is displayed to others. All these steps form a process in enjoyment, but almost all of them are redolent with anticipation or with retrospective glee. The moment where bliss is at its peak, as with other pleasures of the human animal, is over in a flash, and hardly exists at all. Everything else is foreplay and memory.
Composers have always known this simple, basic truth: pleasure is half anticipation and half blissful recollection, and hardly at all about the fulfillment of the promise. The great musical statements of ecstasy, such as Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde or Schubert’s first Suleika song, are literally all half crescendo and half languid recall. We look forward to pleasure; we look back on it. The moment of pleasure itself is over in a flash, and often rather questionable. The sulking child’s question, guaranteed to destroy any outing, “Are we having fun yet?” is an irrational one; because we are always looking forward to having fun, always knowing that we have had fun."