Sheep & Goats (Full Moon).

Lookout! The living-dead are on the loose!

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Indeed, on the 17th will begin the Chinese lunar Year of the Sheep, Year of the Goat, or Year of the Ram - as you like. In Portuguese, however, 'carneiro' is specifically a male sheep or ram, with 'ovelha' for the generic, 'bode' for billy goat and 'cabra' for nanny goat. One of those little linguistic cracks that let in the light. :-) [Letting in light for the dim dills eh? As usual I've got it wrong and make little or no sense. And yet, all pretentions revealed ... even imagining these cracks is a comfort.]

And worse still considering the likes of Canada's Ludicrous Left which is as much behind building pipelines as the rest of the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers. There is a HUGE turd coming down the pipe (followed by many more), officially unacknowledged and popularly not hardly understood, but it's there on the periphery of the Zeitgeist and soon to be a central feature (and soon after that 'the' central feature). It's in the consciousness and no accident that Gwynne Dyer began to take the environmental catastrophe seriously when he noticed his chums in senior security positions doing so.

Most of you will make out the fellow to the left as a Republican, but some of Joep Bertrams' acronyms may not be familiar: Pegida, PVV, FN, and UKIP. And there are others popping up every day (reminiscent of Edward Lear: "And thick and fast they came at last, and more, and more, and more!"). Neo-Nazis of one flavour and another, Stephen Harper's Conservatives of course, and whatever Tony Abbott's party is called. It would be bad enough if these were nutbar fringes, but it's mainstream in Canada & Australia and increasingly so elsewhere.

 

Belt tightening in a home economy, at the scale of one or several individuals or a family, even some certain small neighbourhoods, can be accomplished without immediate blood letting. At larger scales I think not. At larger scales it's police and the army and vigilantes and gangs of thugs. A suite of Laerte on the general theme (a ram in this case): What cracks nuts: Nutcracker! Nutcracker! Speak to me nutcracker. The magic is gone. Will it be the year of the ram? The Ram - One Act:         Study         Pain         Applause         Immortality The Ram - Second One Act: EMPOWERMENT STATION      Fill the tank.      More!      More. The Ram - One Act No. 3:             Do the possible and you will get the probable. The Ram - One Act IV:             Forgetting the causes does not cancel the effects. The Ram - One Act Vol. 7:         This is the historical moment. This is the historical place. I just don't feel like it.   The Twilight Zone (indeed) I:

Brian Gable's effort comes from 2013 - so, a perspicacious fellow then, is Mister Gable. Watching the whole State of the Union speech several times I see a good man, worn out and looking for a Flander's Fields moment. No one in sight to pass the torch to though ... Oh well.

The Twilight Zone (indeed) II: Why do we hate the politicians (when we do hate them) so viscerally? Is it that they (the ones we hate) lie so transparently and so continuously that our psyches are forced into a lower register? The phrase 'dead cat bounce' turned up in The Globe and Mail. Quite forthright talk for Crowley or whatever his name is to permit on his pages. See: Crude oil prices gain for second day: A bottom or a ‘dead cat bounce’?. 'Hog cycle' is another one: Oil's 'hog cycle' smacks Canada but in this case the columnist is touting the Bank of Canada deputy governor, Timothy Lane. I am hoping that his 'hog cycle' analysis is optimistic and that the decline hovers just above drop dead until the greed heads have squandered all their cash and wind up in the welfare line (with me). It hardly got started ... ... and 2015 has already crashed.   But Adão exaggerates. It hasn't missed, yet. 2015 is the last chance saloon sure enough but it's got some months to go. Gonna be what they call in the trade a 'cliff hanger'. (David Wilson)   I wonder if readers find this blog irritating in the way that I often find Doctor Who irritating?

 
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Ground Zero.

First snow on November 1st. Hump-day & descent into scatology.

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Russell Brand deconstructs Steve, Stephen Harper that is, and Barack Obama, handily. Who is Russell Brand? In this case he seems to have it spot on. The politics is all becoming pure poison - toxic by design. Here's Andrew Scheer in his own words: A mealy-mouthed Statement to the House of Commons; a cogent commentary by Paul McLeod: Commons Speaker needs to resign; and Rick Mercer with the spoken word: Rick's Rant, The Speaker's Role. [In the event that they are no longer on-line at sources, the text has been archived here.]   Politics is theatre.            The right is on the left.       The left is on the right.     And vice versa.

Why Are These Men Laughing?

A good discussion of the G20 meetings in Australia (beforehand), originally in The New Republic where it is very securely LOCKED UP, but reprinted in The New Statesman and posted to Ron Peters' blog.

The world's worst climate change villains? Step forward, prime ministers of Australia and Canada. These two pathetic little boys snigger while the world burns.

[[tOad's image is particularly apt (if anyone remembers the Holy Grail interpreted as a green stone a while ago in this blog).]

Not looking very good for COP 21 in Paris eh?

Marijuana is also             Religions castrate.            Prejudice kills.                There is no light at the                 medicine.                                                                                             end of the tunnel. [[Worth looking closely at the incidence of black eyes in the frames above.] One day I'll go out walking             I'll swim aimlessly                         I will arrive nowhere.                     without a path.                    through the oceans. [[Resonates with the advice the Cheshire Cat gave to Alice.] Do not confuse: toilet paper, a vote, a suppository. It was not an election of low scams. It was an election ... of subterranean scams. So. ... A know-nothing blogger, a nitwit but at least not a wholly urban nitwit, despairs, considers suicide, decides against it (mostly out of cowardice but also because he's not cut out for the job), starts spoiling ballots at election time, calls for economic collapse &c., eventually simply tries to leave the room, change venues. What do you think of that? And, oh, we already know all about the Zen stuff, the "Wherever your go, there you are" stuff. Oh yeah. World War I to World War II - twenty years? Very best & most optimistic estimate for absolute commitment to a 2°C world, say 2020 - five years from now? That's the broad stroke diagram that comes to mind. Harper doesn't come out of hyperinflation & severe economic hardship so the comparison falters. Any of the numbie muggles who go around spouting about 'hope' should look at the 1931 headline very carefully (eh?). I would oblige 'em to go about with a copy firmly stapled to their chests - but, well, we all know I am far too extreme. We think we know what happens when people stop voting; but I can't help it anymore: I go to the voting place - and spoil the ballot. Fewing's cartoon is ambiguous. He may have intended mourning two fallen human beings - two bullet holes in the leaf - and I do mourn deaths, even of strangers; but for me the fallen leaf is more the country itself in the hands of an elite with no sense and no sensibility either.

We Are Being Governed To Extinction!

I remember a sketch at the Group of Seven gallery in Kleinberg of this Dharana with her tits out and a more explicitly seraphic expression on her face. That was a long time ago and you can't trust memory and I can't find nothing on this blessed useless Internet, so short of going up there to look for it ... ... whatever ...                 ... The memory of the sketch resonates with this emerging anima of mine - maybe the changes started somewhere around that time. If I had a house anymore I would want a framed copy on the wall to remind me of ... something good about Canadian sensibility. My friend Gord has been passing me thoughts on a Buddhist approach to this Environment-i-al Armagedd-i-on we are facing. You can find some of it here: One Earth Sangha. I am wishing the materials were downloadable because I find I cannot follow it inside the ambience of this public-computer-in-a-pubic-library way of access. I could download and listen more ... mindfully.   :-) And a bit of exchange around Naomi Klein's 'This Changes Everything: on the East End Against Line 9 website; and at slightly greater length on John Riddell's blog (bringing it all back 'round to the story of The Good Samaritan). What's the plural of 'nexus'? 'Nexi'? 'Nexuses'? Anyway, there are two: 350 and The Good Samaritan ... and that's all I know. That, and snow in November is as it should be, even just a few flakes as we had here on the 1st; and the fucking change in time! God damn all the bureaucrats! Be well. Namaste.

 
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