Looking backwards

In the past year Chinese women have discovered that breast milk does not contain melamine and that there is a great difference between feeding the future on an ingredient of kitchen worktops and milk. It is a shame that it happened in China as the Western world will just shrug, smirk and continue slapping big fat plastic tits in their babies' mouths.

Ladies, bosoms are for babies. They maybe objects of male adoration but they have a sublime function other than to excite and titillate a potential mate.

If the Chinese are becoming more aware of their bodily functions the Americans are rediscovering the function of bodily colour. Nothing is any longer black and white in the US, for there are many shades of Obama in between. Of course it is nonsense, even if he were "black", he 'aint poor.

We have also come to realise the most amusing fact that the world financial system does not contain anything at all, not even melamine. Bail out the banks, bail out the car industry, bail out, even, the tobacco industry. Let's bail out everyone who had a stake in perpetuating this obscene myth and the rest of us can go begging as always. Or, if not begging we can always head off down to Woolies.

Back on Réunion and the chavs have succeeded in reducing the price of petrol. The authorities have succeeded in raising the price of alcohol in a bid to reduce alcoholism. They have even decided to ban the sale of the Pile Plat (a small bottle of rum). This is laughable because as any one will know and you might have read it here several years ago, it has already been banned.

Last Christmas lunch I spent with the Black Virgin, this with a diabetic dog. The difference ? The dog smells. However, I am fortunate to be gazing out over distant yet rolling surf. The volcano is getting more excited and a storm on Christmas day took out all the instruments on her slopes. Fortunately, they are back working and the eruption has increased - look here.


I did go to a "soirée" a week or so before Christmas and most people avoided the tuna carpaccio because of the high levels of mercury found in pelagic fish around these isles. Everyone, bar myself, was smoking profusely. May as well have been eating Melamine Yoghurt.


The big scare today is that someone might have seen a shark at Etang Salé. This is the same Etang Salé where the life guards seriously injured a surfer with the propeller of their boat. Six hundred people (how many?) were evacuated from the water on the off chance that the supposed shark may still be hungry even after that huge Christmas dinner. Last year alcoholism killed nearly three hundred people, cars a lot more. Sharks killed no one in that time.


I have a car and I drink, so I don't think I'll pass away in the jaws of a shark, especially as I don't surf.


If anyone actually reads this one will have noticed that it is a disjointed, incoherent psudeo intellectual rant. I am so pleased to have rediscovered my muse.

Abolished or Pardonned ?

Yesterday was the "fête de l' abolition d'esclavage" as slavery was finally outlawed on the island the 20th December 1848. One hundred and sixty years later one would have hoped that things have changed. For most of us they have. But, on the French island of Mayotte - soon to be a department - some would argue otherwise.

Centre de rétention de Mayotte: la vidéo qui accuse
Uploaded by liberation

Meanwhile, Carla has won her case against Pardon and will donate the 40,000 € to a charity. Pardon are appealing. Forgive the cynicism but ...


Carla's court case came and went within a week. Was this a serious case of the abuse of law or what. There are far more pressing problems and far more flagrant abuses of rights other than that of public individuals who are famous merely for being that and rich.

Let's get back to slavery. It has been abolished. We are all equal. Of course.

... unless you are a woman, poor, not the same colour, don't own a rolex, or are taller than me. The list is endless as are the abuses.


We the public are far more concerned about current affairs and this is why on the one hundred and sixtieth anniversary of the abolition of slavery the intellectuals' TV channel Antenne Réunion chose to broadcast ...

The finals of "Star Academy" !

If you are for the abolition of slavery text "1", against, text "2" - texts charged at 2 x 0.50 € + cost of SMS.

The great and late anarchist, P J Proudhon, should be looking on in despair. Property certainly is theft. But wasn't he a misogynist ?
"I deny her every political right and every initiative. For woman liberty and well-being lie solely in marriage, in motherhood,in domestic duties..." Proudhon.

... and didn't he support slavery in the Deep South ?

Our wealth and so called freedoms are essentially based on the misery of others. Our whole percept of the world is wrong and celebrating the abolition of slavery or watching Star Ac won't change a thing.

Shouldn't you be out shopping ?

Mr Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Pardon ?

As one will notice, I have nothing of interest whatsoever to add to the current financial crisis. Capitalism is wallowing in its own unstrained faecal material and yet it is still managing to sell us its effluent in an unparalleled yuletide binge.

Meanwhile, Carla is suing Pardon. She is probably upset because they didn't pay for the image, unlike the original that sold for a song earlier this year. Look if one flaunts one's parts in public the public will flaunt one's parts too. Of course, Pardon is just another cynical company selling supposedly trendy and expensive garb to us chavs.


This is all (all!) happening at the same time as the volcano is having a little eruption. The BBC seem fit to put Carla before Kalle. The former appears on the front page, the latter merely a photo. Unfortunately, the BBC is pandering more and more to the chavering classes who admire those who are newsworthy merely for being rich, naked, spoilt and on public display.


Should, Pardon wish to put my naked image on their bags my fee will be a lot less than Carla's legal fees. Perhaps that will make me famous and then I can be a buffoon on Strictly come Dancing. You can own a life size inflatable voodoo doll of me - complete with non pointy pins. And I shall no longer be unemployed. The BBC will have to pay more.



Failing that, I shall keep my contract with vogue and go into hiding up a mountain overlooking the sea. It is here that I shall write my memoires about all those famous people I have never not had the misfortune not to meet.

Back in fantasy land a certain Mr Madoff and his Ponzi scheme has made a laughing stock of not only the financial system but also all the pathetic attempts of governments to convince us that the system is worth saving. Is it surprising that car manufacturers are having a hard time? Having never bought a new car I couldn't give an aardvarks foreskin. Back in the eighties it was argued that disarmament would put people out of work so logically, we had to continue killing people so that other people could work to buy new cars to destroy the environnment in order to kill more people and generally screw up the lives of future generations.

The hot rock is busy trying to convince itself that it can present a sustainable face to the world. The "first" electric car has become available today at a mere 16,000 € ( the equivalent to a billion pounds by now or 56789 billion zim dollars). The first potential buyer stated that he was going to buy one for his wife to do the shopping and take the kids to school. WTF!!!!! Of course, Mr Macho wouldn't be seen driving around in a car that didn't make a brmmm brmmmm noise he needs a real car ... or viagra.


Look just stop buying things. Not only can you not buy happiness you certainly cannot buy your way out of an environmental crisis nor a financial one. The former because that is what caused the crisis and the latter solely because it is a nightmare and does not partake of material reality.

On the brink ?

Well now, I should be wittering on about the swelling mangoes, sweaty daturas and dangling bananas - or what. But ... Last week one of the dreams of my naive and impetuous youth almost came true. The great illusory edifice of finance and financial institutions was crumbling. The world's media were awash with photos of shocked and sobbing hedge-fund managers, sharedealers and their greedy and esoteric ilk. Today the media is awash, the tears are of joy as the stock markets rally around the world.

The great spectacle nearly exploded in our faces but it has been patched, reinflated and stuck back on its pedestal for the rest of us dumb jerks to adore.

Is it not perverse that we can spend billions to prop up an illusion - just as the vatican has been doing for the past 2000 years - but nothing to create better lives in a better world.

Could I do better ?

Well I know where I would prefer to 'inject' billions. Do you?

Half a bee ...

Half a bee according to the pythonesque school of thought, must, ipso facto, half not be. Therefore, a photo of a bee, being a two dimensional object, is not only a shadow of the reality of itself, which is in turn the shadow of a reality of an ideal, but it is half of what is had been. There is no behind of the photo and the bee lacks a dimension. I am not lacking in commas, but am lacking in a certain grounding of being which leads me to sympathise with the missing half a bee ...


A thorny problem if ever there was.


The last rays of summer sun have descended on the mountain and the butterfly yearns for immortality. It resembles more a well read book; spine broken and pages dog-eared. Yet, I have taken flight with this pathetic image and once more embarked on a migratory journey.

More bollicks tomorrow!

Noise and progress

Of course there is nothing in particular that I want to say. The tractors are out "tidying" up the hedgerows - but then I ranted about that last year.

98% of people believe in progress, the rest of us think it is just noise; and loud noise at that.


Blues is not noise, nor progress. It is sublime ...

Oh! If only I were more zen like ...

Money, money, monet, in a rich man's world

No, this isn't a Monet it is a reflection of the Loire. If it were a Monet I wouldn't be spending my time blathering on and drooling into my keyboard. I haven't written for a while for I have been contmplating my navel in the search for lost petroleum resources. They aren't really lost at all and we are all being stung by an economic system that relies on phantom crisis to provoke misery in the masses and to guild the fat butts of the few.

In France, which brings us back to Monet, things are not a lot different. Here the State adds to the misery by persecuting the masses whenever the coffers are a trifle low. If you are going to get fined here the chances are increased tenfold during a recession. Oh, sorry, it is not a recession it is just the evil manpulation of the markets by the spawn of Satan.


That should cheer you up. Besides, nobody believes in God, or Satan anymore. Oddly enough they still believe in capitalist economics. A science so abstract as to make the virgin birth seem plausible. There are no global shortages accept that of comon sense. The same common sense that tells me that Sarkozy is bringing back platforms, Obama is not black and McCain is a chip.


This brief post should confirm your suspicions that this blog is dull, I am a dullard and what goes around comes around. My horoscope for tomorrow states that I am to have some prophetic dreams, so this may be the last dull yet rational drivel for a long while...

Back to front and back to work ...

Meanwhile, back in the backwaters of Le Puy City. Spring is sort of on its way. Today is cold, yesterday was hot. This should be summer given the lack of rain but who is complaining?

Sunsetting beneath a stormy sky lends beauty and contrast to an end of winter scene, but do we ever look behind the scene. Images are flat two dimensional objects limited in space, and for that matter time. We supply the context and the window dressing. This should apply to anything whether it is a photo, a news item or merely an itch.

At last and forty years on the BBC has broadcast the My Lai tapes. It has taken forty years for us all collectively to stop and turn around, to look behind us not at another version of reality, but at the light that creates the shadows.

So, next time you care to glance at an image take a moment to ask what is behind it. I did ...


Back in the garden and the daffs are out, the birds are getting up early and the sap is rising. Just time to go for a walk in the heights ...

Between a rock and a wet place ...

The rock :


The wet place :

As tropical storms Fame and Gula fade out to the south one has time to reflect...

Upon what I have no idea whatsoever.

The beach is back.

...

The click of death

Of course, this could refer to all those marvelous little creatures that are slowly devouring my house along with the luminescent fungi that has spawned its spores in the woodwork ever since that meteorite from RN-573 took the chimney off the bathroom and landed in the parsnip patch.

The parsnips have been particularly good this year; if a little florescent.

No, the click of death was my laptop hard drive. It just went like deathwatch beetles do and then stopped - without mating.

All is lost.

Ever since Apple paired up with intel thing have gone from bad to worse. Now, they have just gone. Of course I back-up. Regularly, yes, but not regularly enough.

Hence no photos.

... but wait. The beginning is nigh.

click click clickity click....