Rapturing ennui

I was suffering from bouts of repetitive strain ennui, as rounds of happy chatter collided with layers of guff, utter drivel, and a misplaced tourniquet which seriously interfered with my normal mode of ill-concealed yet charitable peevishness.

It’s been a while.

After spending the last few weeks (following the end of the olympics & paralympics) chomping down on one of my more tastier shoes -with the aid of a nice freshly-crushed black peppercorn sauce and a pair of sturdy utensils- i finally emerged from my self-imposed bubble of exile dazed by the absence of any flurry of news (led by a phalanx of chin-waggers) attacking transport for london’s massive and all too predictable cock-up.  Startled, as the expected descent into barbarous levels of road-rage -by hordes of maddened ring-sick drivers- failed to materialise, and aghast that city-wide chaos -not seen since the great fire of london (or if we’re really pushing the boat of tenuous links out and over the waterfall) not seen since london’s burning 2011 -had been miraculously and even more amazingly, averted.  I was shocked, deeply!

By itself, the above would have been more than enough to see me physically retching, as though I was a natural semi-comatose drunk with a proclivity towards sea-sickness, and trying to make a living (of sorts) onboard the marie celeste -each day wishing it would all simply end.  But there was more.  I found, and i’m not (well, only partially) ashamed to admit it, that I actually enjoyed bits of the olympics!  It really doesn’t matter that my enjoyment of the celebrations manifested itself during the opening and closing ceremonies, the fact remains that i still enjoyed them, and all those who watched will never quite forget the sight of three letters effervescently emblazoned on retinas across the globe (before the current crop holding the mace have finished handing it over to their pals) for many a year.

My “tosh” calibration system, on the other hand, was so revolted by such foul a deed of treachery, it fell into a brief bout of dysfunctional catatonic insensibility, before retaliating with a one-two sucker staccato-punch followed by a barrage of mis-firing signals -causing the impairment of my convolution of broca.  Either that, or i really should pay serious attention to the transient ischaemic attacks glacially working their way through the various sections of my splodgy matter.

That period of happiness reached an abrupt (albeit brief) end, by the never-failing charms of the nfh: whose activities and presence generally ensures neither peace nor calm.  Except even they were less bangingly slamming and stampingly annoying!  The noisy courtyard was like a graveyard, due in part to this years watery deluge, which also ensured the communal playground/park/beach (aka supposedly garden oasis) was lusciously green, burgeoning and for the time of year generally a joy to observe; a situation that lasted most of the summer and kept the “we’re-by-the-sea, we don’t see any neighbours?” brigade, more absent than usual.  Buses, it has to be said, were 50/50 but not quite as annoying, despite being ever polluting and taking delight in 80+ decibel engine revving at five-thirty in the morning -due to the weather not being cold enough.

At least the stuff which helps keep my tiller of misfortune happily on-course and my blood pressure ragingly coursing, was eagerly regenerating dendrites by the bucket load, under the strain of continuously working out exactly how many sams or directed energy weapons (aka lasers), moats or 200 feet robots (with a bit more work) would be required to instill a blanket of dessicated fig-leaf peace, forecfully onto the surrounding area.  All however was not lost, as chaos was partially salvaged by the noisy motorcyclists and boy racers, who mistakenly believe they’re part of a formula 1 racing team, or hunkering over a deranged belief they’re soon ready to participate in the rerun of the glory days of donnington -which is the same as me thinking i’ll ever amount to bottom feeder of a hack!  Despite all of that, it just wasn’t enough.

In an attempt to regain those lost clouds of sodden doom and foreboding, I had to cast my eyes further abreast, and away from the stadiums of sport and enjoyment; where in mere moments there was so much information coursing past my eyeballs comprising: pure insanity, greed, stupidity and all-out bad egginess, i was happily chugging my sides whilst feeling streams of hot tears cascading down my burning cheeks.

My first port of call found me listening to coverage of the preparations for the november elections in the usa.  Early voting had already started in this upcoming presidential one-to-one ding-dong; and in round one, to everyone’s surprise, romney won by a landslide; but this piece has taken so long to pop up, the second ding-dong’s already taken place, where the majority reasoning has presidential hopeful romney, losing the second round by a sliver -in an event more in keeping with the 'ya boo sucks to you' ding-dong of some uk parliamentary debates.  Some might say he won by the utterances of partial truths, others would say they were mendacious outright lies.  But hey, who cares!  By time the voting electorate get around to properly focusing on the fact we’re having the hood winked over us, some other calamity will have come along to blow our focus of consciousness off-stream and onto matters far more pleasurable - krispy kremes brings out a brand new doughnut - first fifty million, free!

But with less than three weeks to go, despite most of the world really not caring about the race or which lobbyist-centered mascot controls the house, this could follow the last presidential turning point in history and be another turning point of history (yes i know, history’s full of points and turns) but with the senate currently controlled by the republicans, those outside of the usa’s shores (veering left of vlad the impaler) have watched and been aghast at how a group of people would so cavalierly allow so many others to remain trodden in the abyss of abject poverty, without a smidgen of a mote of compassion - home run for big business lobbyists -you've earned your bonus.  In the actual states, and especially those with majority republican control, there’s been a hearty circling of the wagons and the donning of metaphorical beards, making sure the sack-cloths and ashes have been sufficiently rubbed and doused before been thrown over workers rights and set on fire: you know, those pesky little regulations which are there to make sure the vast majority of workers can at least earn some sort of wage, and they aren’t flogged ‘till they drop, or even (heavens forbid) that they receive a soupcon of a living wage, or their ability to strike should working conditions be so onerous and potentially dangerous as their employer's such a sociopath they need to take some kind of action are being serially removed, stamped on and scorched, leaving the faint whiff of cinders fluttering away in a gale of nothingness.  And cinders in a prairie, gasping for rain, just doesn’t end up pretty.

Yes the past couple of years should have being a frightening wake up call to those who wish to see humanity amongst the stars (i know we’re already whizzing amongst stars, talking more about off-planet colonies carefully husbanding newly terraformed worlds) as to the scale of the pendulums swing-back currently taking place in many states of the usa, which is being eagerly watched for handy pointers by others of a similar disposition around many parts of the globe.

Of course those inhabiting the right of centre are simply giving voice to a highly vocal portion of their electorate who'd be happy building a wall between them and mexico, but they’d be even happier deporting anyone walking around with a tan darker than 2 days.  And if they’re really lucky, they’d get to stand on the side of the quay, giving the newly departed a cheery wave-off proffering a thimbleful-full of glee.

There are glimmers that those (the none wackadoo, barmy, fluttering around their own treetops wing) who don’t share the ultra-rights point of views are waking up to the potential of having a brand of theocracy installed via the backdoor into the white-house.  Think a paler version of iranian theocracy, but unlike iran they’d have thousands of wmds at their disposal and who knows, a nuke or two might all of a sudden meet with a horribly shocking accident heralding a need for marshall law with jobs jobs jobs as long as you sign your vagina to the state.

Naturally that leads me to the role of religion, and with so many venomous snakes in that particular briar patch, i’m not sure about you, but it does give me pause to wonder whether they’re looking into a mirror when they proclaim that vast swathes of the globe are spawns of satan’s seed, that will burn in hell on judgement day where they i.e., you, obviously belong!  Or they’ve simply had their very own overwhelming bouts of ischemic attacks and simply failed to obtain a proper diagnosis.

Ahem.

Hopefully there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of other similar-minded souls around the world, who have a curious inability to view this ever-watching overlord and ever-at the ready but evil adversary, as anything other than the hopes fears and needs of a growing species, and subjected put-upon peoples; hapless and helpless before the swings and arrows of outrageous fortune, aiming to make sense of a spinning world of mud, making coincidences more meaningful than the stray wobbles of whizzing stuff, gathering with other stuff to create something, which is just so much stuff, that they more than likely, probably are.  If, however, people feel the need to follow in the footsteps of some of the beings who apparently occupy the better part of humanity’s spectrum then i hope those people are wandering around in cheap clothing, sleeping with prostitutes and wiping their feet, and giving waifs, strays and members of the said oldest profession the odd bit of food they’ve taken from their very own prepared plates.  And if they want to publicly profess their beliefs in, lets say the water-walker, then they should happily allow others who also wish to publicly profess such attachments allow them to stick a spear (or three) into them, just as a basic start.

Somehow i doubt we’d see the water-walker having the pick of 12 cars (worth millions) to drive around in, nor foxed to chose which mansion to luxuriously cavort around in, nor would we probably see him sporting the shiniest dapperest suits with this weeks favourite bit of fluffing-totty in tow, lofting it huge in a mighty cathedral that says more about how much money you’ve creamed than about good works or deeds.  No, i don’t think we would see that at all; but then if he did carry on in todays world as he did then, he’d soon be locked up for his own good, certified, and drugged to the eyeballs.  “All that crazy nonsense of turning water to wine.  Pfft.  And don’t forget to throw away the key!”

Which makes the pic ‘n mix nature of the current crop of theocratic firebrands just that little bit perverse, as over the past few decades it appears something’s been lost in translation and they’ve forgotten whole swathes of sins or conveniently re-weighted them, so now if you listen to most of the firebrands, the things that will bring about the end of everything, is either abortion or the gays; leading us all to our doom but don’t forget, keep on giving.

Fundamentalists of the christian world (either ignorant or utterly uncaring of their own pure brand of religious sociopathy) are once more jumping on their twin hobby horses of homophobia and abortion.  Blaming the former for every natural disaster going, and denigrating or killing anyone else who disagrees with them on the latter.


Of course the previous paragraphs could be considered naught but a dreadful stereotype, but despite the increase in information, data, and means of accessing, we collectively appear to throw our hands in the air and say “it’s all too much”, allowing ourselves to be herded by whichever explosive flare is set off just in-front of our eyeballs.

If we suspend our disbelief (pretend you’re watching cameron’s avatar in a fully immersive holographic cinema) and you consider that the omnipresent entity made everything you see or haven’t seen (by the way, have you seen the wonderful spectacular images coming from the telescopes in space?), why would a being who created all of that, then devote the next x amount of years pulling his/her/its hair out and getting steamingly broiled, because some hut/stone/bronze/nuclear-age ignorants are incapable of obeying orders or doing the right thing?  I suppose in size terms (although it’s difficult to measure the universe we do know let alone the bits of the universe we haven’t yet observed) it might be akin to a star the size of the observable universe knowing and caring about the plight of a grain of sand stuck somewhere in your nether regions after a particularly vigorous swim.

But someone please remind me why one religion is any more valid than another?  Why is islam more valid than christianity, or judaism, or buddhism, or hinduism, or zeusism, aphroditism, or the heady bank of mammonesque greed - which appears to have gained in popularity with the increasing value of nothing?  In the scheme of things, or the age of the planet, we homosapiens have the life span of fruit-flies and with historic loops ever repeating, memories just as long.  

A few hundred years ago, the inquisition brought a chill to the european lands, unless you happened to be on the side doing the decrying and popping a burning faggot onto dry kindling.   Other such niceties, such as disembowelling, dunking, and flaying alive were the prescribed order of the day, to help you recant the error of your ways and help you understand what it was you needed to understand -for the benefit you understand of your immortal soul and society.  Today, that role seems to be played by the fundamentalists of the islamic world: be-headings, bombings, chopping off of a hand here and killing anyone they can get their hands if you don’t live in a way and manner that they deem strict enough or fit; and, as fundamentalists in america use the law (through the dereliction of so many non-voters) to bring women’s rights over their own bodies screaming towards a point extremists elsewhere would nod approvingly at, we can truly see just how detached those men (as it seems the overwhelming majority -from footage anyway- parroting such views are indeed men) in realising just how increasingly insignificant their ways are for the progress of the species.  

If at any stage you believed in shreds of human good and decency, then assuage those silly notions by pouring a cauldron of burning bubbling pitch all over them; and don’t for one minute doubt, that if a group of truly crazed fundamentalists (of whatever creed or hue) managed to procure fissile material, they wouldn’t use it the instant they fully knew how (give or take a month or two), whilst smiling sunbeams from vidscreens as the world goes up in flames, a blue marble transfigured into a radioactive glassy hell hole, all the while singing “we’ve achieved the rapture!”