". . . yes, we were married once."

Joan Crawford, MILDRED PIERCE (1945)

I feel sticky . . . I'd better change my dress. And when I say shoulder pads, I mean shoulder pads, got it?

Leducdor

". . . that regret is an essential component of happiness."

Marquise de Merteuil: "Well, my dear.... So how are you adapting to the world outside?"
Cécile de Volanges: " Very well, I think."
Mme de Volanges: "I've advised her to watch and learn and be quiet except when spoken to."
Marquise de Merteuil: "So we must see what we can devise for your amusement."
Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

I very rarely either praise or enumerate the glories of living in the DHOSF but I thought that I would write a short piece on why I live here and its pleasures. And no, I shall not wax prolific about "oh, the wine! oh, the food! oh, the charm of it all!", although Heaven knows there is quite a bit of that, as well. No, I am not a travel writer and do not have any real desire to be one, but I am a man who is profiting quite well from a rather haphazard decision to burn down one life and build another. I left the USA because of a combination of utter ennui, dead-end syndrome and nagging legal complications that were eating away what pleasure I had left living in the glorious US of A. Add a good dollop of disgust at the out-of-control circus of American politics and a firm belief that it was going to get far, far worse (in which I have been vindicated, I believe) before my very eyes and, voilà! selling off my life at garage-sale prices and launching myself into the void seemed a reasonable, nay, even desirable alternative. It must be said that I had the advantage of having done "the dirty deed" before, so the launch provided no primal fears, just secondary ones that I was doing it again and at my age. But what the hell, live or die, it is the journey that counts, n'est-ce pas?

I ended up in Montpellier quite by serendipity, Avignon having been the plan. Upon arrival in Paris, however, my avignonais friend, who had not really believed that I was going to go through with my plan, after expressing his shocked delight, advised me to try Montpellier if I insisted on the south of France, as Avignon was seriously moribund and dreadful in the extreme for most of the year outside its summer festival. Making the story short, I relocated here to Montpellier. And yes, my friend was right, it was a much better choice. I rented a studio and started my life; within three months I had met my future wife, had changed apartments (to hers), and really began my new life without any serious backward glances. One year after that, I was married (civilly) and another year after that, married again (religiously). Lest you find that weird, the civil marriage is the one that legally counts, but you may believe me that in the French heart it is still the religious one that locks it in, lay society though they claim to be. Yes, we may divorce someday, but what matter once we were married in the church? No real import whatsoever.

Vicomte de Valmont: "You see, I have no intention of breaking down her prejudices. I want her to believe in God and virtue and the sanctity of marriage . . . and still not be able to stop herself. I want the excitement of watching her betray everything that's most important to her. Surely you understand that. I thought "betrayal" was your favourite word.
Marquise de Merteuil: "No, no . . . 'cruelty.' I always think that has a nobler ring to it."

Which brings me to the primary reason that I remain and why I am deeply content to live here: my wife. She makes my life an easy one in so many ways. We both waited an abnormal amount of time to try marriage, and it has paid off in Louis d'or for both of us. My wife has had a fabulous life from which I profit everyday; she is a glittering golden bird of goodwill and generosity and her experiences enrich our life together in unusual ways. Born at the beginning of, well, an "encompassing war", Suzanne (that is not her name, but keeping to a policy of relative anonymity, let's call her that, shall we?) was immediately drafted into the Resistance. Her stroller would often be left strategically placed near an enemy stronghold or point of passage and it was her job to kill the assigned target or place the dynamite in the intended cache. She completed over forty missions during a period of 4 & 1/2 years and was never apprehended; after all, what straight-thinking enemy officer would even dream that the infant in the carriage was an agent provocateur? Suzanne inherited her talent naturally, as her mother, Lucie Fevrier, the famous French silent film star, smuggled Jewish children out of France as well as being the "control" for the group of which her infant daughter was the "point man." After the war, she completed her studies in philosophy and education (yes, she was a precocious child). Looking for opportunity in post-war ravaged France, she borrowed a bit of money and opened a small factory to produce des coings glacés (candied quince - Cydonia vulgaris), which became all the rage in the 1950s. Forswearing marriage for personal reasons, she embarked on a subdued but adventurous life as a successful businesswoman and lively spirit in discreet circles. Ever attentive to the need for economy but style in her private life, she often refashioned clothes from her mother's trunks of cinema memorabilia and succeeded in reintroducing a bit of glamour into an otherwise drab and monotone après-guerre country. Soon, however, life was marked by another tragedy, losing her mother Lucie due to a never-explained accident involving a speeding sports car, a new ensemble from the House of Chanel and three brawny, very young and very naked construction workers. Grief worked its sad magic and Suzanne closed her factory and spent several years in retreat and contemplation in a convent of the Poor Claires. An indomitable spirit, however, can never hide its light under a bushel for long and she returned to public life in a new incarnation, that of the headmistress of a strict and very exclusive girls' school located high in the mountains of the Cevennes. She spent many lovely years there, directing the girls and staff with a firm but loving wisdom, an iron fist in a velvet glove, as the French say. Retiring at an early age, Suzanne finally made peace with her memories, including a young Greek who had amused her greatly during the coing years but who turned perfidious, sullen and greedy faced with such an overwhelming avatar of beauty, talent, and experience, not to mention the money. He ran with the jewels and the bank accounts and Suzanne had never forgiven the betrayal. If she says so, but to tell the truth, I know she had forgiven him, although her pride was loathe to actually admit he meant so little and as for his ill-gotten gains, bah! there are always more jewels and more money. Several gentle years passed while she raised rare orchids and designed Aubusson tapestries at her country mas, then one fateful October day in 2003 we met at the Café Riche here in Montpellier . . . and that is how our story began.

Marquise de Merteuil: "When I came out into society, I already knew that the role I was condemned to, namely, to keep quiet and do what I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to what people told me, which naturally was of no interest, but to whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practised detachment. I learnt how to look cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork into the back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralist to learn how to appear. Philosophers, to find out what to think. And novelists, to see what I could get away with. And in the end I distilled everything to one wonderfully simple principle... ...win or die.

Another reason I remain is the place. This is a wonderful, marvelous place to live, but as an American you have to have your sh*t together to live an expatriate life, even here in France. For pictures of the city, check the links in the column at left, for tourist itineraries consult a tourist guide, but for the reality you have to visit Montpellier and Languedoc-Roussillon. I can honestly say it is one of the most beautiful small cities in France and has to be seen and visited to believe and appreciate. I shall repeat the photo link from the left column because it does give a decent idea of the striking loveliness of the city as well as its extreme diversity. I must admit, however, that when friends visit from the USA we/they mostly spend time in l'Ecusson, the old city in the center of Montpellier. It isn't simply a shopping mall and some drab, untended park, (http://www.visualtravelguide.com/medium/France-Montpellier.html) either, but a lively and busy center of life for all of Montpellier and those of us privileged to actually live in the heart are very fortunate indeed. Montpellier is an university town (which is an extreme understatement - 'google' the University of Montpellier, especially the School of Medicine; you may be startlingly surprised), which means that the population is wildly diverse, often itinerant and occasionally very amusing. They are not, however, frosty like Parisians, nor bellicose like Marseillais, but deeply provençal with a heavy dose of exoticism from the Maghreb.

And then there is the "oh, the wine! oh, the food! oh, the charm of it all!" which is, of course, true, but there are a thousand better ways to read and/or experience those than my simply telling you about them. So, once again I shall keep this relatively short, which gives me a bit of time to hone my uxoriousness (such as it is). Until the next,
Leducdor

" . . . not unless you're trying to be twenty-five."

Joe Gillis: "You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big."
Norma: "I *am* big. It's the *pictures* that got small." Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Excuse my absence, but I needed to be down for a few weeks to reestablish myself in my own skin and fully integrate myself into my autumnal mode, which I have neglected shamefully until nearly too late. September was long and lovely here in the south of France and October has been absolutely spectacular. I am back, however, to take up my quill, to regale myself (if no one else) with my slanted observations on a world gone rude. That last phrase has a long history: "*** gone rude". Many subjective centuries ago I discovered an inexpensive line of summer wear that was all labeled, 'Dog Gone Rude", complete with a variety of cartoon illustrations on each article showing a dog in some state/activity of 'rudeness'. The clothes were extremely comfortable, very inexpensive and, at the time, the conceit of the 'dog gone rude' imagery amused me. The clothes have long since disappeared, from both my wardrobe and store shelves, of course, but the phrase has remained active in my vocabulary. I began using it to describe a select few of my male friends who exhibited 'dog gone rude' qualities (which are highly amusing and desirable but "misunderstood" by the world at large). In my jargon, it is a high compliment; no one receives better than that, until and unless the day arrives when StopMyBreath sweeps down out of the sky, rescues me from an impossible situation, wants to have sizzling-hot sex and then disappear so as not to complicate things, i.e. my marriage. That being highly unlikely, I reserve "dog gone rude" and "good dog gone rude" for men I like, respect, and whose friendship I enjoy. As of this date, there are only two: a lawyer in Miami and a dear friend in Avignon (there is a third, but as he teaches at a medieval Jesuit prep school in Ohio [think rum, sodomy & the lash], he has to hide his rudeness, which defeats the point, n'est-ce pas?). Others have come and gone, but these two remain (+1), as faithful in their friendship as they are in their rudeness. "Ya haf to luv 'em," or at least I do.

I have no use for whiners, none. I watched 'The Lord of the Rings' again recently and was struck by how much I instinctively dislike the character of Frodo. I should add that I do not remember disliking him in the book, so perhaps it is just that moppet Elijah Wood that I dislike (or the director's take on Frodo). Always whining, always assuming a superiority he does not possess, and when in trouble, screaming for help from real men (other hobbits, elves, dwarves, sorcerers & humans) because, "oh, woe is me, I'm just too overwhelmed to deal with it and you owe me anyway". What a maroon, as Bugs would say. Quit screaming like a little girl and kill that orc, as I would say. Useless, absolutely useless to everyone on the team, including himself, so that if it wasn't for the ring he would be considered dead baggage to be dumped at the first opportunity. Other than this terrible casting (?) flaw, the extended-version (DVDs) of the three films is breathtaking and seems like a different, better movie.

You may not have noticed, but speaking of Bugs Bunny, I read in the news that Tasmanian devils are on the edge of extinction because of a facial cancer their immune systems can no longer combat. I can only speak for myself, but the "Taz" was always one of my favorite Looney Toons characters, a true 'good dog gone rude' for whom I had immense affection. I hope the real ones survive, it would be yet another shameful mark on our record of stewardship (which is solid black now, anyway) of this planet. Which, of course, brings up Al Gore, Jr. Yeah for him, I say. Oscars, Emmy & now a Nobel Peace prize: the guy is on a roll, I hope he continues. I see that all the pundits and an unsurprisingly influential group of people are pressing him to run again for President; my question is, why? The entire world knows he was robbed in broad daylight in 2000, pouted a bit, but got back on the horse and does what he thinks he needs to do. As my (rude) father used to tell my (very competitive, professional athlete) sister, "pull up your pantyhose and get tough, girl." Gore has now been publicly beatified as few are, so can anyone tell me why he would want to demote himself to president when, as a private (but very public) citizen he can concentrate on that which he wishes to change? He is also one of the very rich, another reason to keep an iota of his personal privacy.The point being, why go back when you can continue to go forward?

Here in the DHOSF, no one has remarked much on either the doomed Tasmanian animals or Al Gore, Jr. Lately it has been the rugby world cup which dominates interest here, along with the usual string of not-so-usual crimes that make "la Une". Sarkozy pisses off Putin (of course, everyone pisses off Putin), "surprisesurprise" the mobile telephone companies are vicious, amoral vampires, a woman kills her 7-yr old daughter by throwing her out of a very high window to prevent her soon-to-be ex-husband from taking her (the child, he managed to rescue another child 9 yrs old) to Morocco, Prince Harry is snapped sniffing vodka in Morocco (a fad among the young, it seems - the alcohol enters the brain directly- what, it isn't quick enough?), etc. Dispiriting, to say the least. I note that the Vatican has rehabilitated the Templars, for God's sake. The Templars! 700 years late, but by my holy triple tiara, the Vatican finally arrives, eh? What with one thing or another, I can only hope Satan has rebuilt a large section of one of his inner circles as a mock-up of Vatican City for those princes of the church so out of touch they concern themselves with rehabilitating a medieval military order, canonizing any miraculous tortilla maker in Latin America and ignoring the last two centuries. Jesus wept.

In the last year, I have been ordained a minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism, awarded a doctorate in Demonology and Exorcism from Landover Baptist University, checked on the status of my real estate holdings on the Moon, etc., by grace, of course, of the Internet. What a wonderful toy, as even this blog attests, and it amuses me to collect these rare and wonderful orchids of total tomfoolery and far-fetched folly. Just remember, please, it (the Internet) is only us, after all, en masse, and thus gifted with neither omniscience, discernment nor common sense. Call it a group holding fantasy, if you like. I enjoy it immensely but it is not real life and never will be, despite all the virtual reality prophets out there. My mother trusted the Internet, and look what happened to her (see picture in column at left), poor thing, she thought technology was the answer. After all, it had provided diet pills (pure methamphetamine) and "hallelujah!" hysterectomies in the '60s, had it not? However, I must admit that Devi (I must finally admit that Devi, as seen in the photo at left as my "girlfriend", is the same woman pictured as my fourth wife. Yes, she likes different looks from time to time, but her thirst for precious jewels always remains the same) found a wonderful clinic in Switzerland (on the Internet), chose her new look, and voilà the results (at right). I can live with it, it is far from displeasing (a friend in the USA told me "this is exactly how I picture her after hearing her voice"), so I decided, "oh hell, why not?" and went myself. I took my old Hollywood poster of Errol Flynn in "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and said, "Look, I know I am older, and hardly the ideal starting place, but get as close as you can, I will be satisfied." Here is how I came back, but they had to remove my penis to provide enough tissue and blood vessels for the new chin and facial structure. Win some, lose some.

Creeping up on my absolutely favorite holiday, Halloween, I wish everyone jolly rogering, ectoplasmic ecstasy and ghostly good times. If you do not get the joke in that line, you are officially hopeless. Until the next,
Leducdor

" . . . every sense splayed open to the absolute."

Okay, now it is time for a little viewpoint from the "other" side of the theological debate (see #8 below). If you are not so preordained to turn to obscure prayers to assuage your need for some assurance of the divine, then perhaps, for you, you should look in the other direction for something less quaint and archaic but still terribly powerful, a contemplation of YOUR place in the scheme of things. These are just six photos, but they illustrate the absolutely colossal scales of difference that mark our observations, neither end of which, tiny or large, we are truly capable of either comprehending or imagining. Too small, too large, too close, too far for conceptualization.


(http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/09/25/germs.in.space.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories)

Six simple stages, and can we really understand the progression/regression? The reality is no.



And we are the unique inheritors of "grace" in the entire universe? Are you sure?
I would not be, if I were you . . . and I am.



1) atom 2) bacterium 3) man 4) solar system 5) galaxy 6) deep-field universe.

To quote outrageously, and out of context, from an author I enjoy very much, Alastair Reynolds;

"To feel oneself so tiny, so fragile, so losable, was at first spiritually crushing. But, by the same token, this realisation was also strangely liberating: if an individual human existence meant so little, if one's actions were so cosmically irrelevant, then the notion of some absolute moral framework made about as much sense as the universal ether. Measured against the infinite, therefore, people were no more capable of meaningful sin - or meaningful good - than ants, or dust.
Worlds barely registered sin. Suns hardly deigned to notice it. On the scale of solar systems and galaxies, it meant nothing at all. It was like some obscure atomic force that simply petered out on those scales." Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap (2003)

So, let us all get a grip on ourselves, shall we?
Leducdor

". . . with the magical power of her mouth."

From time to time it is good to remember to give thanks, each in our own way, for received good fortune and even existence. For those who have no prayer handy with which to give thanks (and face it, just casting your eyes skyward and muttering "Thanks" does not really fit the bill, decidedly lacking elegance), here are two very ancient prayers that are as elegant as one could wish, as well as covering all of anyone's spiritual needs and requests. In the case of the Hymn to the Aten, you will need to substitute your own name for either the Pharoah or the Queen, mentioning as well the name of an opposite-sex person, your mate preferably. In the case of same sex couples, it is wiser to choose an opposite-sex attribute of your partner (as the purpose of your place in the prayer is to uphold the divine stability of the universe as one member of a "complete & complimentary" duality, male and female), or choose someone of the opposite sex who is of primary importance to you. Now let us pray:

HYMN TO THE ATEN

"Thy rising is beautiful in the horizon of heaven, O Aten, ordainer of life. Thou dost shoot up in the horizon of the East, thou fillest every land with thy beneficence. Thou art beautiful and great and sparkling, and exalted above every land.. Thy arrows envelop everywhere all the lands which thou hast made. Thou art as Ra. Thou bringest them according to their number, thou subduest them for thy beloved son. Thou thyself art afar off, but thy beams are upon the earth; thou art in their faces, they admire thy goings. Thou settest in the horizon of the west, the earth is in darkness, in the form of death. Men lie down in a booth wrapped up in cloths, one eye cannot see its fellow. If all their possessions, which are under their heads, be carried away they perceive it not. Every lion emergeth from his lair, all the creeping things bite, darkness a warm retreat. The land is in silence. He who made them hath set in his horizon. The earth becometh light, thou shootest up in the horizon, shining in the Aten in the day, thou scatterest the darkness. Thou sendest out thine arrows, the Two Lands make festival, men wake up, stand upon their feet, it is thou who raisest them up. They wash their members, they take their apparel and array themselves therein, their hands are stretched out in praise at thy rising, throughout the land they do their works. Beasts and cattle of all kinds settle down upon the pastures, shrubs and vegetables flourish, the feathered fowl fly about over their marshes, their feathers praising thy Ka. All the cattle rise up on their legs, creatures that fly and insects of all kinds spring into life, when thou risest up on them. The boats drop down and sail up the river, likewise every road openeth at thy rising, the fish in the river swim towards thy face, thy beams are in the depths of the Great Green. Thou makest offspring to take form in women, creating seed in men. Thou makest the son to live in the womb of his mother, making him to be quiet that he crieth not; thou art a nurse in the womb, giving breath to vivify that which he hath made. When he droppeth from the womb ... on the day of his birth he openeth his mouth in the ordinary manner, thou providest his sustenance. The young bird in the egg speaketh in the shell, thou givest breath to him inside it to make him to live. Thou makest for him his mature form so that he can crack the shell being inside the egg. He cometh forth from the egg, he chirpeth with all his might, when he hath come forth from it, he walketh on his two feet. O how many are the things which thou hast made! They are hidden from the face, O thou One God, like whom there is no other. Thou didst create the earth by thy heart, thou alone existing, men and women, cattle, beasts of every kind that are upon the earth, and that move upon feet, all the creatures that are in the sky and that fly with their wings, the deserts of Syria and Kesh, and the Land of Egypt. Thou settest every person in his place. Thou providest their daily food, every man having the portion allotted to him, thou dost compute the duration of his life. Their tongues are different in speech, their characteristics, and likewise their skins, giving distinguishing marks to the dwellers in foreign lands. Thou makest Hapi in the Tuat, thou bringest it when thou wishest to make mortals to live, inasmuch as thou hast made them for thyself, their Lord who dost support them to the uttermost, O thou Lord of every land, thou shinest upon them, O ATEN of the day, thou great one of majesty. Thou makest the life of all remote lands. Thou settest a Nile in heaven, which cometh down to them. It maketh a flood on the mountains like the Great Green Sea, it maketh to be watered their fields in their villages. How beneficent are thy plans, O Lord of Eternity! A Nile in heaven art thou for the dwellers in the foreign lands, and for all the beasts of the desert that go upon feet. Hapi cometh from the Tuat for the land of Egypt. Thy beams nourish every field; thou risest up and they live, they germinate for thee. Thou makest the Seasons to develop everything that thou hast made: The season of Pert so that they may refresh themselves, and the season Heh in order to taste thee. Thou hast made the heaven which is remote that thou mayest shine therein and look upon everything that thou hast made. Thy being is one, thou shinest among thy creatures as the LIVING ATEN, rising, shining, departing afar off, returning. Thou hast made millions of creations from thy one self, towns and cities, villages, fields, roads and river. Every eye beholdeth thee confronting it. Thou art the Aten of the day at its zenith. At thy departure thine eye ... thou didst create their faces so that thou mightest not see. ... ONE thou didst make ... Thou art in my heart. There is no other who knoweth thee except thy son Nefer-kheperu-Ra Ua-en-Ra. Thou hast made him wise to understand thy plans and thy power. The earth came into being by thy hand, even as thou hast created them. Thou risest, they live; thou settest, they die. As for thee, there is duration of life in thy members, life is in thee. All eyes gaze upon thy beauties until thou settest, when all labours are relinquished. Thou settest in the West, thou risest, making to flourish ... for the King. Every man who standeth on his foot, since thou didst lay the foundation of the earth, thou hast raised up for thy son who came forth from thy body, the King of the South and the North, Living in Truth, Lord of Crowns, Aakhun-Aten, great in the duration of his life, the Royal Wife, great of majesty, Lady of the Two Lands, Nefer-neferu-Aten Nefertiti, living and young for ever and ever."

HYMN TO OSIRIS

"Homage to thee, Osiris, Lord of eternity, King of the Gods, whose names are manifold, whose forms are holy, thou being of hidden form in the temples, whose Ka is holy. Thou art the governor of Tattu, and also the mighty one in Sekhem. Thou art the Lord to whom praises are ascribed in the nome of Ati, thou art the Prince of divine food in Anu. Thou art the Lord who iscommemorated in Maati, the Hidden Soul, the Lord of Qerrt, the Ruler supreme in White Wall. Thou art the Soul of Ra, his own body, and hast thy place of rest in Henensu. Thou art the beneficent one, and art praised in Nart. Thou makest thy soul to be raised up. Thou art the Lord of the Great House in Khemenu. Thou art the mighty one of victories in Shas-hetep, the Lord of eternity, the Governor of Abydos. The path of his throne is in Ta-tcheser. Thy name is established in the mouths of men. Thou art the substance of Two Lands. Thou art Tem, the feeder of Kau, the Governor of the Companies of the gods. Thou art the beneficent Spirit among the spirits. The god of the Celestial Ocean draweth from thee his waters. Thou sendest forth the north wind at eventide, and breath from thy nostrils to the satisfaction of thy heart. Thy heart reneweth its youth, thou producest the.... The stars in the celestial heights are obedient unto thee, and the great doors of the sky open themselves before thee. Thou art he to whom praises are ascribed in the southern heaven, and thanks are given for thee in the northern heaven. The imperishable stars are under thy supervision, and the stars which never set are thy thrones. Offerings appear before thee at the decree of Keb. The Companies of the Gods praise thee, and the gods of the Tuat smell the earth in paying homage to thee. The uttermost parts of the earth bow before thee, and the limits of the skies entreat thee with supplications when they see thee. The holy ones are overcome before thee, and all Egypt offereth thanksgiving unto thee when it meeteth Thy Majesty. Thou art a shining Spirit-Body, the governor of Spirit-Bodies; permanent is thy rank, established is thy rule. Thou art the well-doing Sekhem of the Company of the Gods, gracious is thy face, and beloved by him that seeth it. Thy fear is set in all the lands by reason of thy perfect love, and they cry out to thy name making it the first of names, and all people make offerings to thee. Thou art the lord who art commemorated in heaven and upon earth. Many are the cries which are made to thee at the Uak festival, and with one heart and voice Egypt raiseth cries of joy to thee. Thou art the Great Chief, the first among thy brethren, the Prince of the Company of the Gods, the stablisher of Right and Truth throughout the World, the Son who was set on the great throne of his father Keb. Thou art the beloved of thy mother Nut, the mighty one of valour, who overthrew the Sebau-fiend. Thou didst stand up and smite thine enemy, and set thy fear in thine adversary. Thou dost bring the boundaries of the mountains. Thy heart is fixed, thy legs are set firm. Thou art the heir of Keb and of the sovereignty of the Two Lands. He hath seen his splendours, he hath decreed for him the guidance of the world by thy hand as long as times endure. Thou hast made this earth with thy hand, and the waters, and the winds, and the vegetation, and all the cattle, and all the feathered fowl, and all the fish, and all the creeping things, and all the wild animals therof. The desert is the lawful possession of the son of Nut. The Two Lands are content to crown thee upon the throne of thy father, like Ra. Thou rollest up into the horizon, thou hast set light over the darkness, thou sendest forth air from thy plumes, and thou floodest the Two Lands like the Disk at daybreak. Thy crown penetrateth the height of heaven, thou art the companion of the stars, and the guide of every god. Thou art beneficent in decree and speech, the favoured one of the Great Company of the Gods, and the beloved of the Little Company of the Gods. His sister hath protected him, and hath repulsed the fiends, and turned aside calamities of evil. She uttered the spell with the magical power of her mouth. Her tongue was perfect, and it never halted at a word. Beneficent in command and word was Isis, the woman of magical spells, the advocate of her brother. She sought him untiringly, she wandered round and round about this earth in sorrow, and she alighted not without finding him. She made light with her feathers, she created air with her wings, and she uttered the death wail for her brother. She raised up the inactive members of whose heart was still, she drew from him his essence, she made an heir, she reared the child in loneliness, and the place where he was not known, and he grew in strength and stature, and his hand was mighty in the House of Keb. The Company of the Gods rejoiced, rejoiced, at the coming of Horus, the son of Osiris, whose heart was firm, the triumphant, the son of Isis, the heir of Osiris."

". . . because I have to kill Gilda, too."

"Didn't you hear about me, Gabe? If I'd been a ranch, they would've named me "The Bar Nothing"." Rita Hayworth, Gilda (1946)

It has been a singularly dull week in the news. Oh sure, weird weather patterns, chains of earthquakes in Indonesia, lovingly-tended-corpse stories from Germany and Austria (it's a thing there, don't ask me why), more death and destruction in Iraqhanistan, on and on and on and it never stops. Which is why it is called news, I suppose, but it certainly misses the point that news is supposed to be new. Is it not? On the "local" front, M. le Président Sarkozy is busily pissing off most of the European bureaucrats & politicians with his ". . . but the Emperor is naked !" statements, such as why is the ECB (European Central Bank) catering to speculators instead of investors (they REALLY did not like that one), etc. I still believe he is a demagogue with fascist tendencies ("Don't worry, dear, it's just a phase, he'll grow out of it"), but I must admit that despite a presidential style that cries out for some baroque apotheosizing fanfare by Lully (like Louis XIV and Napoleon, Sarkozy is a very short man with an imperial-sized ego; whether his calves are as well-formed and he dances as well is open to question), he does at least move, let the critics be damned, and wishes France to get off her derrière and DO something with herself, preferably not alone with a marital aide. On verra. Like Gilda in the eponymous film, standing still and just waiting to react is not his style, but he will give it a chance before he moves to Montevideo, gets a job singing in a nightclub and starts divorce proceedings.

On the personal good news front, I was able to reestablish contact with my niece, Adrienne, who lives, works and studies in the USA (her picture is in the column at left). We had drifted apart over the last few years; I moved to France and she is very busy with her chock-full life in America, so the drift was natural, but it is good to be back in contact. I brought her to France once, when she was nine years old, and soon after that she chose Spanish as her language elective, showing, I suppose, that France was all fine and well but really, Uncle, Spanish is more useful. It may have been the visit to Versailles that turned it for her; after the full tour and the dazzling wonders of the place, her one remark was, "No wonder they had a revolution." Out of the mouths of babes. She is a wonderful adult person now (she was a wonderful child, too) and I look forward to communicating with her.

Balin Mundson: "Gilda, are you decent?"
Gilda: "Me? Sure, I'm decent."

I have had two trains of thought predominate this week. The first is the worldwide acceptance of the idea that the computer somehow renders its users anonymous and thus hidden. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course - our computer personæ are full-fledged extensions of ourselves and, as such, can be read as easily by someone with a trained eye as we can be read by (competent) psychologists and psychiatrists. The 'Age of Anonymity' is l-o-n-g gone in the silicone Sargasso Sea of the Internet. We are, perhaps, even more honest about who we are in our various electronic avatars than we would ever dream of being in real life. Take a look at any e-being anywhere you find one (blogs, profiles, virtuals, social networks, etc.) and tell me that you do not get an immediate impression of who that person is and, more importantly, you are fairly sure that you are spot-on about that impression. And no, people do not always put their "best side" out there, we all know that, the Web is not inhabited solely by gleaming goody-two-shoes but by an astonishing array of personalities running the gamut from shoot-them-now psychotic to cloyingly unreal. The Web is amoral. It has no voice of its own, we are its voice, and making the Web your buddy, your partner or your god is as fructifying as masturbation in an interstellar void. "The 1950s lasted a thousand years," according to Neil Gaiman, but things have caught up with a vengeance and those in my age group (the Ferrous Fifties) take it in stride but remember the Dark Ages (Eisenhower), transistor tubes and Flower Power (don't ask, just thank your E-dealer). I love the age we live in but that does not mean that I am not mindful of what has been lost. No, do not worry, I am not going to sing the "In My Day. . ." blues, it was not all that great then anyway, trust me on that. I do not miss anything about that era other than cheap food bills and boundless optimism.

Gilda: "Its stopped raining. Maybe that means something."
Johnny: "You still haven't got over being superstitious. Come on."

The second train of thought has been about recurring dreams. I have one from time to time that involves being aboard a 1950s spaceship that is making a kind of Star Trek-like voyage of exploration plus trading mission to various locales (look at the 'summer job' photo on the left). The crew personnel fluctuate from dream to dream but I am always the "counselor" who is responsible for smooth crew relations and dealing with the "natives". I wonder what it is about certain dream setups that make them useful as repetitive templates to work out our thoughts and feelings, why some of them lend themselves so easily to being templates in the first place. Yes, I have read Jung and know about archetypes, but it is not that, it is rather the consistent need of the mind to place itself in a situation which aptly fits its needs of the moment. The only other recurring dream of note that I can recall (publicly) is from my childhood: giant spiders landed from space, wreaked general havoc on my hometown and eventually ripped the roof off of our house, reached inside and promptly devoured my parents (I had seen 1955's Tarantula, which deeply impressed me). Fairly easy, that one, eh? Decades later, when I saw South Park #608, "Red Hot Catholic Love", I laughed myself sick. If you do not understand the reference, do try and watch the episode, it is priceless. Giant spiders have their uses everywhere, it seems.

Johnny: "Statistics prove there are more women in the world than anything else, except insects."
Gilda: "On that charming observation, I shall go and change for breakfast."

I have another train of thought that I wish to pursue, but as it is on another theme entirely, I shall wait to expound on it at a later date (that is so much easier in French, j'attends pour m'en expliquer). I shall say, however, that we all need to get a grip on our cheap selves when we look at ourselves and the scale of what we call reality. In the meantime, I shall do some research and fact gathering and present the theme in the near future. Oh my, the ship is here, it is time to depart for the next planet. Thank you for doing business with us, please leave a carved monolith so your great-grandchildren recognize us when we swing back by this way.
Leducdor

"42"

"If you don't like what you're doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove!" - Timothy Leary

It has been a singularly uninteresting week for the "wry smile news." Oh, there has been the occasional quirk of the lips over this or that but, on the whole, the last 10 days have not brought much smirking or enlightened disgust. The Larry Craig business has finally died down and no, I did not find it at all entertaining. Smutty, greasily distasteful and embarrassing for Americans at large, this sad story of politics, power and prurience finally petered out amid the gradually dying hoots & catcalls of the media and his fellow sharks who cruised fishbelly-white and dead-eyed in the feeding frenzy.
"3) True or false? You could scour the planet and never find a single heterosexual man wrongly accused of a homosexual act that would plead guilty "in hopes of making it go away." ( Paul Slansky, The Huffington Post 30/08/07)

Turkey elected a new president, Abdullah Gül, who promises to uphold the tradition of laïcité in government in Turkey and not lead his country down the fundamentalist road, even though he and his party believe that is exactly what should happen to Turkey. (His wife, Hayrunisa Gül, wears the most restrictive form of veil by her own choice, so the president tells us.) Thankfully, the Turkish Army is keeping a close eye on this guy (yes, in this case the army is the good guy, go figure). They are not at all amused when someone starts down the islamization road and in the spirit of "we've done it before, we can do it again," keep their coup options open, oiled and available.

Checking up on Iraq, one sees that the Shi'ites have been killing each other on the pilgrimage route to Kerbala, the Sunnis cheer them on because it is less for them to kill, the 1001 Arabian militias are milling about on the landscape like so many disturbed anthills, etc., and George tells us that "the Surge" is working, we just need to give him more time and an endless supply of money. Um hmm. What kind of a name/label is "the Surge," anyway? It sounds like the name of a marital aide or a manoeuvre at a football game. What a festering, suppurating wound this man is on America's ass, which is precisely what he continues to show to the world as the "good" side of the USA. If you aren't weeping at this man's representation of yourself and your country, you are either dead or insane. Someday, if we all last that long, he will be another name with which to evoke an era of unparalleled greed and corruption, like Boss Tweed.

"Put another brick in my hookah, Chow Ming, and fetch me fresh silks. I've soiled myself again." Franklin Pierce, April 6, 1856 (America: The Book, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 2004)

From tweed to tellingly tailored silk, the week also saw the 10-year anniversary of the death of the Princess of Wales. The show goes on, I suppose, but really, are we incapable of letting the lady rest in peace? I do not find the house of Windsor all that fascinating with a single exception, her maj the Queen. A bottle of gin, a smallish room with a cozy fire and two armchairs, and she might, just might, crack like a ripe melon and let it rip, which I would dearly love to hear. Her unique viewpoint is unassailable and probably worth hearing. On the other hand, given her pedigree, she may be able to drink her government under the table, rise neatly and precess out of the room, leaving Jeeves to sweep out the rubbish. We are very amused. http://www.gocomics.com/thenewadventuresofqueenvictoria/

Having CNN International as an only (televised) source of English language news, I am subjected as well to their endless blitz of the strangest travel agency/chamber of commerce advertisements I have ever seen. The glorious, civilized, technologized havens of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Serbia, Montenegro, Qatar, The New Better Shiny Republic of Nigeria, you get the idea; fantasy cities and digital havens rising in the deserts and on islands everywhere, and you, too, can participate in these Utopias if you jump on board and tell your banker, "Invest! Invest! Invest!" You have called your banker after disembarking from your Singapore Air flight ("what do you mean, '1st class, sir?' Is there another? Is it better?") to Hong Kong to help celebrate the opening of another of your investments, the We Dislocated 100,000 People Spa & Resort. At whom are all of these elitist, assumptive advertisements aimed? Surely the target audience is far too busy jetting around the globe making deals, skimming profits and limo-whisking (or better, 'coptering) from airport to hotel to airport most of the time to be watching television or, more specifically, advertisements on CNN? Are they broadcasting a kind of economic penis envy to those not rich enough to be too busy to watch this junk? Why do people think this manga-version of their Utopian future is believable or even possible? It is all sheer folly.

It is just a short entry today, as I have to call my banker, take care of some business, and catch a flight to . . . somewhere, I don't exactly remember.
Leducdor

". . . we'll tear your soul apart."

Kirsty: "Who are you?"
Lead Cenobite: "Cenobites. Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others."
HELLRAISER (1986/7)

Death made an unexpected visit to our apartment this weekend. One of our three kittens, Sultane by name, sailed out the 3rd-floor (4th floor in USA) living room window and into the Great Beyond on Sunday. The litter originally numbered four kittens but the male has been gone for over a week, adopted by a lovely young woman. Sultane was the only named kitten of the three remaining females, having been christened by a young girl and her mother who were to pick her up at the end of the month. (I no longer name the kittens birthed by Wendy, our fertile female, in order to lessen the attachment factor on my part.) As the cats do not leave the apartment, and the two males are now neutered, this shall not be an issue in the future; nonetheless, I was deeply saddened and moved by the adorable kitten's death yesterday. I was seated at my computer during the morning, and only briefly saw her amazing leap from the floor to what she assumed would be a safe landing on the windowsill. She either underestimated her jumping èlan or overestimated the width of the sill, but my momentary glimpse caught her as she reached free space and sailed downwards, legs outstretched, and I heard, seconds later, the horrifying echo of her arrival on the inner courtyard paving below. She actually survived the fall, there were no compound or obvious fractures, but I feared, rightly, that she was internally injured. After the brief drama of actually getting into the courtyard below (which belongs to a neighborhood pizzeria on the ground floor & it was Sunday morning), I brought her back to the apartment where she slept for several hours, stunned by her experience. Then, awakening, she voided some blood on the floor and I knew it was very bad indeed. She did not cry or miaow, she simply laid there, waiting, it seemed. Shortly afterwards, she rose, walked into another room and began to call as loudly as her little voice could and her family gathered around - her sisters, her parents, an older brother, and we two humans. She briefly turned in a circle, cried once more, and fell over on her side, body seizing in her last moment. Death was swift and, it seemed, without l'agonie, the French concept of the final mortal moment, so pitiful and terrifying to witness. I began to cry, slow tears for the passing of an innocent creature who for a few months amused and delighted us, her first family. I am still depressed and quiet today.

My "regarde ironique" is somewhat lacking today as a result of yesterday's events. I marvel, again, at the animal kingdom's ability(??) to accept death in silence. I have witnessed, over the years, the death of several animals of different species, and all have had in common that calm, quiet acceptance of the inevitable with no histrionics or behavioral difference to mark the moment. I 'wanted' our remaining cats to howl, or exhibit their awareness of Sultane's death in some manner but of course they did not, other than a momentary confusion as to what had become of her presence, although that, too, was soon forgotten. Life goes on and the cats are not troubled by Memory, content to exist with learned behavioral responses to assorted stimuli. Perhaps there is nothing so illustrative of our differences from other members of the animal kingdom as this, nor as illuminating of our anthropomorphism in order to create a rapprochement between "us" and "them". Inevitably, this leads to a small meditation on which method I would prefer for my passing and I wholeheartedly opt for the animal approach. To die quickly, in silence, to go forward to what I hope is the next chapter of 'the Adventure', and my passing only briefly remarked upon, if at all, with an alcohol-soaked and drug-affected fête for a few hours at some convenient future moment.

Lead Cenobite: "No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering."

In no particular order, over the past week several items have caught my much-amused eye, among them: Morocco Cracks Down On Journalism (Le Monde) (it's a monarchy, folks); Mystery Illness Killing Camels in Saudi Arabia (CNN); British Civics Classes - "What Would Muhammad Do?" (NYTimes); UAE Father, 60, Wants 100 Children (Reuters) (he has 78 already by 15 wives, whom he marries 4 at a time, divorcing the last batch - one must have died or been sterile, n'est-ce pas?); Monster.com Hacked, Millions of Users' Encrypted Data Stolen (BBC); Zimbabwe Inflation Hits 7,638% (BBC) (that's the official figure, more realistically 13,000%, expected to hit 100,000% by the end of the year, with unemployment at 80%; sterling, President Mugabe, just sterling); it goes on and on and humor and irony begin to seep back into my consciousness. Suffering sports a sardonic smile, if nothing else.

I do not know if it is smiling much in Caracas these days, however. I read and hear that El Presidente Chavez wants to be president-for-life down there in 'The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela', and yes, that is what he has renamed it. Okay, hmmm, let's see - shut down journalism, nationalize your oil industry, stop policing your cities, tinker with your constitution, arbitrarily change your time zone (Reuters) (that one wows me; why on earth change your time zone?? by 1/2 hour??), assume imperial ambitions, um hmm, um hmm, sounds like a go to me, Hugo! One wonders how long the oil companies are going to allow this to go on, doesn't one? There must be some sort of sub-rosa agreed-upon internal time limit sufferance for neo-dictators before someone in Houston or Amsterdam decides "enough is enough" and places a call. As to the policing of cities, there was a related article about a Caracas family that waited 5 hours for the police to show up at the site of their son's murder, only to finally call a taxi to take his body to the morgue as the police had never appeared. They are all busy, no doubt, polishing the Ruritanian regalia recently received from Cartier© for El Presidente. The French would never miss an opportunity like that, believe me; it will be kitsch jewelry trivia in a few years when the regalia disappears and Señor Chavez is living in Switzerland.

Female Cenobite: "We had to hear it from your own lips."

I see that the Vatican has started its own airline (BBC). Using airplanes "borrowed" from an Italian charter company (the planes have already been painted in the papal yellow and white), the Vatican is going to run charters out of Rome to various sites of pilgrimage, fairly close to European "home" for the moment, but to assume larger itineraries in the near future. One can only hope that 'they' will eventually go multi-denominational as well, with a non-stop between Rome and Atlanta to precess to the new, $90M Hindu temple in Auburn, Ga. (CNN), a marvel of its age and a surreal addition to the cultural landscape of Greater Atlanta. I can see the GaneshBurger (soy, naturally) restaurants and Diwali Palace casinos lining the Georgian interstates already. I want to be sipping a cup of coffee in the kitchen of the area resident who first discovers a runaway elephant bathing in his backyard swimming pool; hopefully he will be well-stocked with cocktail peanuts (yes, I know, it was lame & highly previsible). In a just-barely animal & area related story, I see Mr. Vick has copped a plea - and about time. I have nothing to say about all of that other than this: Americans are extremely insane. They pay a man millions of dollars a year to be violent and bloodthirsty and single-mindedly subhuman, and then they are surprised that he is not an enlightened pacifist during his off-time? What is wrong with you people? After all, you created him.

Frank: "I thought I'd gone to the limits. I hadn't. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits... pain and pleasure, indivisible."

The world keeps turning but you have to wonder in which direction. Is it like a Superman gimmick, the world turning in reverse and thus the time flow as well? It seems the blogosphere in Russia has been aflame with the video of two Caucasian men being executed/beheaded by an ultranationalist youth group, said "executions" occurring in front of a large Nazi flag (Le Monde). As well, in the former RDA (East Germany), neo-Nazi youths are regularly terrorizing immigrants, especially Indians, to which the authorities are turning a bored and blind eye. Europe, especially eastern Europe, is undergoing more and more of these hallucinatory shifts to the far, fascist right, and so far the response has been negligible if not nonexistent. Either that, or such vivid fascism simply reflects the underlying growing sentiment of the Silent Majority and thus obviates a lack of response. In Russia, it is a heady mix: high publicity ultranationalists, untrammeled capitalism in a 1920s Chicago-style gangster climate, a Mafia second to none, along with the head gangster, V. Putin, heading firmly back to communist-era dictatorship if not outright imperial autocracy. (Did he and Chavez share a couple of Mai-Tais in Singapore or somewhere and on a bet, one agreed to try it disguised as socialism and the other as 'reformed' capitalism?) Right across the border in Afghanistan, peasants are risking life and limb to get to Shaddle Bazaar, where a farmer's 10 kg. of opium will bring in about $1,400 if he is fortunate (BBC). Poppy cultivation was widely encouraged in the country under Taliban control some years back, one supposes in the hope that there would be an acceleration in the internal rotting process of the West. There are so many problems on the Afghan plate these days, however, that minor carping about poppy production hardly merits a snort of derision much less studied action. I do not particularly care, as I firmly believe that all drug use should be legalized across the board. Let those who want kill themselves, let others enjoy themselves, and others abstain if they wish, but follow through with the basic capitalist premise - put it on the market and let the market decide its value, unaided by false constrictions of "legality/illegality". If it finds a solid, workable niche or if it drastically subsides after an initial boom, so be it. If one were to stop making the criminals rich and the rich criminal, both categories would lose a lot of steam and panache. Plus, said drugs would be pouring from Big Tobacco and government, thus subsidizing the massive fiscal black holes at the hearts of most governments & easing the slide to the "cigarette-less utopias" so fondly dreamed of by the Pollyannas of the world. As I light a cigarette, I think, "C'mon, Pollyanna, you badly need to get laid and get over your cheap self."

In a courtly bow to my fellow countrymen in the USA, I applaud the sheer chutzpah of their vast entrepreneurial vision. The infamous 9/11 attack on NYC is being recast as, actually, a re-urbanizing opportunity sans pareil. With Wall Street heavily damaged after the attack, the realty visionaries saw if for what it was - an opportunity to "tone up" the financial district with high-rent skyscraper condos, ludicrously priced restaurants, and a massive influx of the "essential service industries" such as Hermés and Tiffany's (CNN). "How about that!," crows Mr./Mz. Up&coming Trader, "now I can actually sh*t, eat & sleep in the same place I make money!" If I remember correctly, it seems to me that our forebears, including recent generations, always said "Don't sh*t where you eat or sleep, it doesn't work." New rules for the new reality, I suppose, but I must say it does not impress me, not in the slightest degree.

I sometimes wonder if we should not be worshipping the old gods, the ones that pre-date all of our current crop. There is a fun read on the subject, "American Gods", by Neil Gaiman, (2001), which is fiction with an acerbic bite. No plot synopsis or spoilers here, just a recommendation for those who enjoy a somewhat skewed reading experience. However, the book is full of little bits of wisdom and fun, such as 'twilight is the best time for lying'. I like that, it is very evocative of both the state of twilight and the art of (good) lying. Shadows, stray shafts of illumination, the smoky blend of light & darkness and truth & lies, the flickering existence of crepuscular men and women shifting and sliding into and out of seedy diners and fun house fortunetelling booths. In the old religions, it was a given that the gods lied, they lied all the time and humans knew it, never taking divine word as something immutable, fixed and true. The gods, too, depended on us knowing that they lied, and amusing them with our efforts to get the best deal possible out of a duplicitous deity. If you were lucky, said deity decided to honor his word, if unlucky, not, and if very unlucky, it was honored to the letter, always with catastrophic consequences. Nevertheless, it was a fairly savvy setup, and a young man or woman with a bit of get-up-and-go could, quite possibly, receive a more than fair shake from a thus inclined god or goddess. Given my choice, I must say that I think I would most likely subscribe to the ancient Egyptian mythology/religion/setup. It is reasonably clear, unfailingly just (on a divine timescale), and in its larger, hastily sketched outlines very adaptable to our sensibilities; it is, after all, the birth space for most of modern Christianity's mythology. I, too, would like to spend eternity on my vast Nile-side estate, attended by numerous servitors, breathing the smoke of sacrifice rising from my mortuary temple, sampling the baked goods left on my ka's offering stone, gazing in the cool evening breeze at my surroundings in Amenti and feeling superbly self-satisfied. A cup of date wine and a freshly roasted duck sit on a side table, awaiting my pleasure, and I am assured of my good luck in having had a great roll of the die in the game of Grifting the Gods. (This assumes, of course, that my heart has proved lighter than the Feather of Truth on the divine scales. If it is not, then a quick, gruesome and eternal judgment awaits me in the jaws of Apep.) You could do business with the old gods, not like now with the present puerile crop of fanatics and xenophobes who haven't performed squat-all in far too long. Our own semi-divinity (changing the climate, destroying an entire world, deciding who lives and who dies and with what genetic makeup before they are even born, it is all a pretty heady power trip despite its insanity, wouldn't you say?) has taken the wind out of their over-patched patriarchal sails, and they cavil about our lack of faith! I say, "Fork it up! Deliver something other than an old book and maybe we can do business. Otherwise, I've got a room full of interviewees and only one mythology to fill, so put up or shut up. And don't let the door hit you on your raggedy old ass on the way out!"
Leducdor

" . . . He is not dead," I said.

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man." Commissioner Sir Denis Nayland Smith, 'The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu' (1913) by Sax Rohmer

Yes, that is correct, Dr. Fu Manchu is still alive and well, and is the evil mastermind behind China's rise to world superpower, economic powerhouse and host of the 2008 Olympic games! This is arrant nonsense, of course, and I am not citing such an imperialist, racist stereotype for any other reason than that I loved this serialization when I was a child, as have many people for almost 100 years, and to illustrate that, in one form or another, some of these old bugaboos still exist in the collective unconscious of western society. Cinema has not been especially kind to Asians, either. You would be hard-pressed to find any significant percentage of the vilification of Caucasians in Asian cinema as widespread as vilified Asians in occidental cinema. It should be noted, however, that as a boy reading these accounts of the supervillain and the British empire's unrelenting fight against him, I identified and sympathized with Dr. Fu Manchu, not the agents of the western order. I wished for an army of hamadryads (in the Fu Manchu books, hamadryads are NOT a sub-genus of dryads) and other rare, poisonous reptiles as well as lethal vegetation, not to mention beautiful, exotic and cruel female agents, to carry out my own plans for world domination. Exactly what plans for world domination I had as a child I am not quite sure, but that I had them was never in doubt, at least in my fevered imagination. Alas! such plans never materialized, and my life has rolled by in much the same fashion as uncounted others, no overarching "master plan" guiding me inevitably, remorselessly, towards my true destiny as . . . as . . . Ming the Merciless! Yes, yes, that is who I was meant to be! (Maniacal laughter fades into the distance as I exit your torture chamber/eventual tomb by means of a secret seaside exit.)

Now that I have started in such an odd and unorthodox fashion, I intend to continue that way. I firmly believe that you should start as you mean to continue, and I believe that axiom "should" apply to most endeavors. To begin anything in one fashion and then switch methods or approaches in mid-path is extremely dishonest and tends to erode any confidence that may be placed in you by others. Naturally, there are situations where such single-mindedness does not always work and you have to change direction or alter plans, but in general starting as you mean to continue can function as a surety of your character, allowing yourself and others to place confidence and faith in your word. That only matters, of course, if you still believe in the quaint and antiquated idea that a person's "word" has any value. The corollaries to this are numerous, but only one concerns me here: the presentation of a lie as a truth, stamped with a rubric which connotes "honest", "factual" and "objective". I noticed over the weekend a mini-flood of news items (Le Monde, click the link on the left, NYTimes, The Independent) concerning the coming-to-light of the dishonest, manipulative and simply conscious, erroneous editing of Wikipedia© articles by organizations to misrepresent or occlude the truth. In the first place, I do not understand why any Tom, Dick or Harriet can enter and edit the articles, but be that as it may, that they do, for the purpose of misdirection and outright lying to the public, is now documented. Some clever programmer worked out a program to trace down the edits to Wikipedia entries, and - surprise surprise! - corporations and governments, among others, are actively spinning truths and facts in said entries to reflect their own politics and policies rather than factual information. Thus the CIA alters political history entries, oil companies alter ecological entries, etc., you get the idea. Why do I take umbrage? For the simple fact that the generic label "encyclopedia" has been plastered across these presentations of wishful thinking and, whether we like it or not, people "out there" tend to put faith in something that is thus labeled. If one were to quote from the Encyclopædia Britannica©, for example, one doesn't a priori question the truth of the entry. Now, however, millions know that an entry from Wikipedia is not necessarily factual at all, and if you need to be sure of the truth of a matter, Wikipedia is completely untrustworthy and not where you want to be researching. Not even for subjects for idle cocktail chatter, because what is as humiliating as having your cocktail rant interrupted by someone declaiming, "Why, that's a lie! You are a liar, and I can prove it!" (Yes, I know, there are many things more humiliating, but let's not digress, agreed? And no, I know no one who surfs Wikipedia hunting ideas for small talk, nevertheless . . . stop being so picky, or I will cite figures to you proving that unstable people often resort to argumentativeness to cloak their insecurities. Just a second, I'll find those stats in Wikipedia . . . .)

Good news for you civet cat owners! According to Reuters©, the ultra-hip coffee drink now favored by the cognoscenti is "luwak coffee". There is none of the normal bitterness associated with coffee present in this drink, and you ask, "Oh really? Why?" Because, my friend, luwak coffee is made by mixing coffee beans with civet cat droppings which annul the bitterness and produce a smoother, more intense cup of coffee. I'll bet. This is something born in the steaming depths of the southeast Asian tropics, and enterprising villagers there are trying to domesticate and raise civet cats in order to make this idea commercially viable. It is already available, although you must be well-heeled to sip this ambrosia; it is selling at $50 Australian a cup, $75USD the 1/4 lb. in New York City. I can not help but wonder how this was discovered, and who in the world was the lunatic who was brewing coffee & catshit together searching for something "more drinkable". Yes, I know, you are as bemused as I, and now the fact that your Uncle George likes to lick the bottom of the birdcage doesn't seem quite so outré as you had thought, he may be experiencing culinary delights which you can only imagine. Jesus wept . . . .

From the ridiculous to the sublime, I would like to recommend an article I read this weekend (19/08/07) in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine© entitled "The Politics of God" by Mark Lilla. It is a crystalline presentation of the mechanics behind the modern abyss between so-called western ideology and Muslim thinking, and why our assumptions about communication between the two are so fundamentally off the mark. It's all history, people, keep looking back to History to find your answers, a simple truism that continues to be ignored by all and sundry even now. I liked this article so much that instead of waxing prolific about it, I shall simply include a link. Read it for yourselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/magazine/19Religion-t.html?ex=1345262400&en=ca0143ee010fab66&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

I see the British authorities have recalled millions of kiddies' jewelry sets made in, you guessed it, China, because of lethal levels of lead in said trinkets (BBC). (This on top of the Mattel© recall.) Personally, I think the Chinese missed the mark on this one, as well. If they had been a bit more canny, they could have made serious money marketing this junk in connection with a Britney Spears tour under the label "Toxic! Jewelry". Not only would the target consumers have snatched it up more precipitously and at a much higher price, but Britney's song might have had a longer play life which, as we are all aware, is devoutly to be wished for by her fans everywhere. In the future, after Devi and I have taken the Lotus Express to Bodhisattva City, you will eventually discover that Dr. Fu Manchu is still alive and running things quite well in China, thank you, and that the imminent downfall of the decadent and corrupt West will be due entirely to his clever placing of children's paraphernalia in the global marketplace. Voice in the wilderness, people, but you will not have time to ponder your mistakes as you hurry on your bicycle to your People's Cadre Re-education Center indoctrination class.

Wry random headlines this weekend included: "NASA: Endeavor crew comfortable with decision" (you are halfway between here and the Moon and you are going to start an argument with the people getting you home?); "Navarette: Military duty could be risky for aliens" (go ahead, riff anyway you wish on that one); and, in French, "Marriage bad for 3 in 4 couples' taxes" (gee, no joke?). I enjoy surfing the news not least for its amusement factor, as you can witness. Language is like a well-oiled snake (venomous, naturally) that often escapes its handler, with unforeseen results.

"He died of the Zayat Kiss. Ask me what that is and I reply 'I do not know.' The zayats are the Burmese caravanserais, or rest-houses. Along a certain route--upon which I set eyes, for the first and only time, upon Dr. Fu-Manchu--travelers who use them sometimes die as Sir Crichton died, with nothing to show the cause of death but a little mark upon the neck, face, or limb, which has earned, in those parts, the title of the `Zayat Kiss.' The rest-houses along that route are shunned now."

I must now end this post, as I need to take a flight to Rangoon immediately. Thus, until the next . . . .
Leducdor

One sees strange fantasies in the water . . . .

"You will not remember what I show you now, and yet I shall awaken memories of love . . . and crime . . . and death."
The Mummy (1932)

Like all the really wonderful, old-time horror movies, The Mummy wasn't about the mummy at all, it was about a human theme, in this instance interwar zeitgeist and alienation and the ever-present, universal feeling, "I don't belong . . .", not here, not there, not anywhere one can really name, but that there is such a place one never doubts. The gawkers gathered around the central image of your movie (you) never fail to fail to understand what idea is driving the script, the simulation, if you will, that you are running to hopefully unveil a few answers (42). There was a piece in the New York Times (14/08/07) on the philosophical musing that what WE really are, down here on Earth, scurrying around and living our lives, are virtual beings in a vast sim running somewhere else in the interest of historical observation, or anthropology, or curiosity, or even just plain old boredom (think teenagers desultorily playing a war simulation game). We can not know the difference between "virtual" and "real" because being a subset of one of the terms negates understanding. And, according to the article's author, it answers a big question: Why does God allow so much evil and violence? Because, fool, goodness and peace are BORING. Therefore if you are the Big Programmer, why would you run a dull, boring sim when you could have some fun? And nobody is really getting hurt, after all, it's just a sim . . . .

I sometimes feel like I'm a character in a chapter of "Mother Hélène and the Wiccans", the clueless buffoon who enters the scene knowing nothing about Mother Hélène's eternal fight against the barbarism and ignorance of the inhabitants of the French village where she has opened a convent mission. Adrift on a sea of medieval superstition and chillingly cool casuistry, Mother Hélène forges along on her raft of faith and hard work with little time to explain things to a late arrival. The villagers, for their part, continue to daub themselves with woad, gather in sacred groves at night and with infinite pagan kindness humor Mother Hélène and her eccentric penchant for logic. The buffoon more often than not sympathizes with the villagers, but there are moments when the beacon of reason illuminates Plato's cave and he is yanked back into the fluorescent existence of being a signifier instead of the signified (ha! take THAT de Saussure!). It is an horrible example of basic semiotics, but it serves a purpose in highlighting the "sheer shear" we encounter when a sudden irruption of the discombobulated reasoning Up There is revealed. Like the boy in the fairy tale, we abruptly realize that the emperor is wearing no clothes and that we were complicit in the lie. How long? we fret, how long have we been collaborating? But it doesn't matter, because the narcotic sensorium gas soon makes us forget our moment of lucidity and sink back down into the Mathmos (watch Barbarella). Or creep back into the cave, to round off the much-mangled metaphor.

So there we were, sitting on the banks of the Brahmaputra, spinning wool from the lint of past lives, when Devi turns to me and says, "Say there, whatever happened to Kalki ? Isn't he running late?" I should say he's running late! That's him over there, in the left column of the blog, the blue chap on Devadatta, the winged white horse. He is the 10th and final avatar of Vishnu, his purpose to destroy the Kali Yuga, "The Age of Darkness and Destruction" (in which we are living), to destroy the suffering of Kalyug and usher in a new age. Um hmm, sounds distressingly familiar. I say 'distressingly' because these apocalyptic saviors are never around when you know they should be, destroying demons and cleaning house for the new regime. I suppose that we can thank one of them for 'casting out the demon' Rove, he of the porcine face and Amityville eyes. President Bush reminds me of a latter-day Faust who has finally arrived at the tag end of his pact, his diabolically engineered "sim" breaking down around him and the yawning abyss of "game over, you lose" looming ever closer. If one riffs a little on the apocalyptic theme, surely we have had enough Antichrists in the last 100 years to provoke at least one of the saviors to lead a cavalry charge. If it has NOT been enough then I shudder to think of what awaits us just around the corner. I am neither an eschatologist nor a religious End Timer, but really, it does seem that things are so far out of hand that they are irrecoverable through any possible human agency; thus, perhaps, throwing confetti and smoke at the Divine is as appropriate a response as any.

Writing of smoke and the divine, I notice that we shall soon have access, here in the technological backwaters of the West, to an already favorite Asian gadget called the e-cigarette (Reuters). Powered by a Motorola© chip, vaporizing the content of nicotine cartridges to an inhale-able smoke, looking like a normal cigarette holder, it will give us immediate, legal access to mainlining pure nicotine without the worrisome side effect of, say, cancer. It is manufactured by the Golden Dragon Group of Hong Kong, those smoky-nostrilled fiends. At around $208 a pop, plus the cost of the cartridges, it surely isn't a fag for the masses, but then again look at what is charged for game boxes, e-toys, etc. Aside from the initial purchase, it is hard to see exactly where existing governments are going to bandage the massive economic hemorrhaging that will occur if tobacco sales fall - it would be unfeasible to tax the cartridges enough to make up the difference. But what am I thinking, silly me? Surely Big Tobacco already owns the patents, at the very least distribution rights, as well as factories just waiting to rush name-branded cartridges into production. All your favorite brand names (with absolutely no underlying difference in chemical composition) painstakingly jet-inked onto billions of compressed narcotic mini-canisters. Which do you inhale, Camel© or Marlboro©? Aieee! Aieee! My head hurts, too much smoke, not enough confetti . . . .

There was an odd little synchronicity in my morning ritual: coffee, a cigarette, e-mail & the news. The synchronicity arrived as I was idly observing one of my cats rimming her brother, the pure glittering garnet ambrosia of my coffee momentarily forgotten, when my gaze was attracted to an article in Le Monde about Cecilia Sarkozy having to "render account of herself" to the government if she is going to act as she did in Libya. Ahahaha. Fancy trying to fly that past Mme. Sarkozy - I think not. If Nick the Ripper leaves her alone, why would anyone else fare differently? She is no one's idea of a First Lady except, perhaps, her own, and not likely to fix a republican cocarde to her hat just because her husband is the French president. The French press won't even touch her, which says volumes about how dangerously explosive she is for the establishment of which she is now queen. Let the government bray all it likes, she won't even send them brioche, of that I'm sure. Oh, the synchronicity? It was between the cat, the coffee and the chippie in the news - all shiningly exquisite examples of a pure essence being nothing but itself. Or as CZ might say herself, "Je ne suis pas bobonne, je ne fais pas le yucca." She's running a sim of her own that has nothing to do with her husband, politics or public opinion, it only has to do with her, which is exactly how she prefers it. Just ask Barbara Bush.

Muller: " 'Death, eternal punishment, for...anyone... who... opens... this... casket. In the name of Amon-Ra, the king of the gods.' Good heavens, what a terrible curse!"
Assistant: " Well, let's see what's inside!"

With the big push currently on for all news Chinese, I read that 5 people were struck and killed by lightning at a funeral somewhere in China. Okay, if you were an economic & nuclear powerhouse with a gloss of hard-line Communism disguising the heart of a 19th-century robber baron, crouching crablike in a cesspool of cruelty and corruption, where would you focus the media organs? All of this unseemly curiosity to "see inside the real China" as the Olympic games approach is simply a genre of voyeurism which shall reap its own rewards. Mr & Mrs Occidental Citizen really aren't ready to "see the real China", of that I am sure. Medieval poverty and massive, institutionalized chain-gangs do not lend themselves to Disneyfication. Lest the West get the wrong idea, we are told as well that the manager of the factory responsible for the lead painted toys recall has committed suicide out of shame (hey, wait!! Isn't that trick supposed to be Japanese?). It doesn't take a lot of imagination to picture that scene - government officials, discarded wrappers from fried shameballs, empty bottles of Tsing Tao© rolling under the chairs, a "loaned" gun to avoid paying the round-eyed foreign devil at the register . . . . . While on the other side of the world, a really rather nice person died in NYC, Brooke Astor (NYT). Mega-philanthropist, she worked long and hard to make life better for others and rarely in visible ways. She attained 105 years, which is, of course, far too long, especially ill and not in possession of all her faculties, but if the Bonus Life LED had to blink for someone, why not her? Ugly stories followed, of course, with her family squabbling publicly over this or that, I can only hope she left the majority of her estate to the foundation she directed for so long. Better than many she knew that money only works when you get rid of it, but she was careful where she threw it, knowing that it corrupts everything it touches, like a virus in the program.

Ardath Bey: "Your pardon. I dislike to be touched. . . an Eastern prejudice."

The Tarot gave me The Chariot, reversed, as my indicator for the day. Not necessarily a good sign, to say the least, but not alarming, other than the fact that every day lately has produced a Major Arcana card, a sure sign that things are shakin' on my space/time gaming platform. Today's card is didactic, an effective "warning", or filter, with which to screen my actions and motivations of the day. I like doing that, using divinatory 'hints' as gels which highlight the game board, much the same effect as using meditation or prayer points to focus your day (à chacun son goût). Like all programs, I carry the seed of my own virus, my own destruction, within myself, so after I killed the demon under the bridge & won the chest with the cards, I may now use them to access "admin" functions under "player options". Every aide counts when the program is this overwritten and code-heavy, and I plan on having a word with the Programmer when I get the chance, provided I can pry his/her attention away from the sim . . . .
Leducdor