Newspaper

A newspaper is an object comprised of a collection of thin, flat sheets of wood material covered in inky symbols which when read by a subject able to decode these symbols creates an inane, false sense of reality in the mind of the subject, & this is the object of the object of a newspaper, which some may find objective due to the object of an object of a newspaper being fatal to a true sense of objective reality in the mind of a subject within which, in truth, this objective reality exists, & which in turn exists within this objective reality. Newspapers also contain pictures.

What Makes a Book Good

...& a good book very good. My thoughts should be of particular interest to the writers amongst us- a justifiably much reviled breed but they do exist.
Of prime importance is grammar. This must be of the required standard. If the literary work fails to meet this standard, all is lost.
One might say, "Yes, but this is all very vague. What is this required standard? Be more precise."
A point well made & I welcome it. More precision will follow.
If one can imagine a kind of literary equivalent of the heights the great Ukrainian pole-vaulter Sergei Bubka used to reach, then one is in the right kind of metaphorical territory. For those of us not au fait with the achievements of Bubka, the following should prove enlightening:
Bubka won 6 consecutive IAAF World Championships, an Olympics gold and broke the world record for men's pole vaulting 35 times (17 outdoor and 18 indoor records). He is the first to clear 6.0 metres and the first and only (as of January 2007) to clear 6.10 metres (20 feet). He owns the current outdoor world record of 6.14 metres on 31 July 1994 in Sestriere, Italy and the current indoor world record of 6.15 meters on 21 February 1993 in Donetsk, Ukraine.

This standard I spoke of is clearly of a demanding nature, & indeed some may quail at the prospect of meeting such heights. However, that is not my concern. Noone said writing was for the faint-hearted; the hollow-chested...perhaps, but not the faint-hearted. Subject matter is also of some relevance so be careful to pick a subject that will both entertain and enlighten. Think about who you are writing for, and how useful they will find this book. It's no good creating what you believe to be a masterpiece if it doesn't stimulate your audience.
Write well but not too well.
Remember- words are your friend.

Prophecy Afterthought

It strikes me there is an alternative explanation for the extraordinary coming to fruition of the Quetzelcoatl prophecy below, which is that the rulers of the Aztecs who left with Quetzelcoatl as the head were themselves the light-skinned Westerners who later returned on the proscribed date in exactly the proscribed manner. These rulers who left for whatever reason cunningly left the relevant prophecy which might come to their aid should they decide to return; included in the prophecy was the potent notion that it would be useless to fight Quetzelcoatl as he was an immortal god, & the best couse of action simply to surrender meekly.
Incidentally, quite a few of Montezuma's subjects believed it ridiculous to welcome Cortes' men into their fold as they rightly considered given their enormous numerical advantage they could easily wipe them out. Montezuma, however, believing absolutely in the prophecy, would not permit the necessary action which would have ensured the continuance of the Aztec civilisation, for a while at least.
In the total absence of my knowledge of supporting or contradicting information the above is merely an interesting hypothesis. As a possibly relevant aside, there is quite strong evidence that the New World wasn't quite as new as purported.

Fate, Free-Will, Prophecy, Something

Consider a video recording of a football match. As the game was actually played the players have absolute freedom to act of their own volition. However, watching this later their actions obviously will not change, which is not to say that they were deprived of free will as they acted. Similarly we could talk of a kind of  observer of life existing free of our notion of time, knowing exactly what happens within our time, but this not contradicting the freedom within the moment of the actors of the drama.

In this light, phenomena like prophecy are interesting in that the particular human actor glimpses future time from outside or beyond time, & this vision from without becomes embedded within time. One could argue that one is now amongst the elusive entanglements of the self-fulfilling prophecy, and many I presume would say that any 'true' prophecy becomes true simply because of this self-fulfilling nature. However, the truth or accuracy of the vision doesn't exclude the effects of the vision itself as an integral part of the unfolding of time & as a contributing factor in the coming to pass of what is foretold.

A fascinating episode is the Quetzelcoatl legend of the Aztecs which prophesied the return of this fair-skinned God on a particular day to the land, who had left because of his abhorrence of human sacrifice, & who on his return, would cause the Aztec culture to end. Cortes’ ships landed on April 22, 1519, the very day that the Aztec calendar calculated for Quetzelcoatl’s return "at the end of the 13th Heaven and the beginning of the 9 Hells." Unlike the Aztecs, but like the Quetzelcoatl figure, Cortes was light-skinned & bearded. In the prophecy he was to be dressed all in black, & because the day was Good Friday Cortes was indeed in the appropriate attire. We don't have to pretend Cortes was a benevolent soul but unlike the extremely violent Aztec culture he was, like Quetzelcoatl, opposed to human sacrifice, & as the prophecy foretold this did mark the end of the Aztec culture.

The vision did serve to fulfill itself - the Aztec leader, Montezuma, believing Cortes to be the expected god didn't repel the invader as his enormously superior forces would have very easily done had they the will - but the 'coincidences' involved show that the prophecy cannot be simply dismissed as being self-fulfilling; this understanding being in the service of a simplistic materialist philosophy & its attendant purely linear notion of time. The prophecy was a true one and this unfolding of time included the prophecy itself and its effects as an integral aspect of this unfolding.

What's in a Name?

Plenty when that name happens to be Yoko "Oh No" Ono. Watch her render unlistenable the greatest band ever rocking their socks off. In the realms of crimes against art, Yoko stands as one of the greats...how thother Beatles didn't roar at her to fuck off speaks volumes for their restraint.
To indulge in an idea: Yoko Oh-No as a malevolent spiritual agent sent to sabotage the incredible positive spiritual energies of The Beatles & their widening of the field of human consciousness thru their art. Contrarily, evil wishes consciousness to be narrowed; thus the mainstream's pushing of a culture of ever decreasing circles of idiocy. If the idea were artistically realised, Oh-No could be either a conscious agent of evil or else an unknowing lackey of these malignant spiritual forces; the effect or success of her mission in ending the enlightening band's extraordinary position at the centre of global culture being independent of her knowledge of her role.

77 Bombing Related Video- Ludicrous Diversion

Interesting & important video here.

The Design of a Building

Here.

Thermodynamics Law the First

Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Apply to the universe & we have infinity. Apply to consciousness & again infinity. We tend to think of infinity in relation to time extending from the present point forwards but the true perspective is the inclusion of time extending endlessly before this point also. See here also.

Pushkin's "Demons"

Demons

Upon my life the tracks have vanished,
We've lost our way, what shall we do?
It must be a demon's leading us
This way & that around the fields.

Vacations- A Second Opinion

Astounding idea- Shit Holidays. A sales pitch follows:
"Our company(for the sake of argument we'll assume our company exists) will bring you(for the sake of argument we'll assume you exist) on a holiday of a lifetime to the most undesirable places on earth...not undesirable in the sense of dangerous but in the sense of dreary, grotty, dismal, tedious & similar adjectives of a depressing nature. A few days, week or even two in this dreadful place & your ordinary life will seem like paradise when the time comes to return. This of course contrary to the fashionable but shallow notion of your holiday being the ideal & your ordinary life being a comparative let-down. Which given the time ratio spent on compared to off holiday is a ludicrous psychological self-punishment. Everyday life will be elevated to a status of bliss when one recalls one's vacation, or if necessary- looks forward with dread to the next dose of psychological holiday treatment. One will learn to live for the day & not the future or past."

Secret History

Many are the tales told of an ancient mystical group of warriors whose order has continued to flow through time but whose real identity has always been concealed from the eyes of the profane. The evil holders of secular power are said to be in fear of the retribution from this mysterious order should they overstep certain bounds of megalomanical indecency, & so our this lunatic ruling elite's behaviour is kept within some measure of restraint. To be honest though, I've not been impressed with these tales & lacking all proof, don't find them credible.

Time Space Bombshell

A highly respected but anonymous scientist has declared that the mysterious cosmic battery which runs the time element of the universe has started to fade in strength, & so time has begun to slow down. The scientist claims that the rate of time has actually fluctuated through the history of time but because of our existence within time, we have not the required vantage point from outside time with which to view these sometimes considerable fluctuations, & so time appears as a constant. The same scientist claims that the universe also undergoes spatial fluctuations where everything increases or decreases simultaneously in perfect ratio, but naturally again noone notices. He claims his findings are infallibly proven by his mathematical equations. When asked what implications these respective bombshells might have on humanity, he replied, "None that I can think of."
Incidentally, one astute commenter has wondered if there is a danger of the battery which runs time eventually corroding & leaking, thus infecting the universe it has been serving so well. Some of our finest minds have set themselves to investigating what might be the effects of such a toxic spillage.

The Burden of Proof

Myself & my relatively uninteresting friend came back to the house we had earlier left in the pursuit of the kind of everyday activities it would bore me to describe, such as, for example, shopping. When we entered the living-room, there was now, unexpectedly, a dining-table & chairs of sturdy & simple design which had not been there two hours earlier.
Who could have brought these in, I wondered aloud.
What do you mean, asked my friend. I was somewhat surprised at his question.
"Exactly what I say. They are here now. They weren't here earlier. So somebody brought them in."
"Excuse me but what we have here is a suite of furniture. I see no need to introduce an unknown element such as someone, of whom there is no sign, bringing it in."
"But that's ridiculous. The very presence of this dining-table & chairs necessitates person or persons unknown having placed these objects here."
"You are complicating the issue. I see no sign of this mysterious person or persons."
"So what's your theory of how they got here? That they simply materialised of their own volition?"
"That is not my concern. You are the one talking of this other element. Yours is the burden of proof. I see no need to justify my position, this being simply the absence of belief in your strange person unknown theory, but to demonstrate my intellectual magnanimity, perhaps there was some kind of bang which set a scientific train of events in motion which produced the furniture we have now before us."
This was the occasion on which I desisted from speaking to my friend for an extended period. I am, after all, not a violent man.

The Meaninglessness of Meaninglessness

The reason some art is felt as greater than others is because it is experienced by the self as being innately significant. The greater the art the more it is charged with significance; thus Beethoven is greater than Cliff Richard. And the only reason art can be experienced in this manner is because this category of significance is intrinsic to the mind & life. Were life denied of inner meaning then it would be impossible for art to resonate with this meaninglessness.

Words forming meaningful sentences are, tautologically, meaningful; an idea if true is meaningful. The imposition of this meaninglessness notion upon life is in itself an intellectual category which if true renders itself false; the point of an intellectual category being that it is meaningful, though there is no paradoxical 'if it is true' about it...it is simply a false & bizarre mental category when applied to life. Its only justified usage is for false ideas such as life being devoid of meaning, & the real issue here is how does one end up with such an atrophied, diseased notion of life. Dostoevsky called nhilism the "lackey of thought", & this is probably the key to this sickness. See here.

Existence & the Contrary

I'd like to examine & query the intelligibility of a series of words placed together with the intent of forming a structure that imparts coherent meaning. The verbal structure I had in mind is the following: "It does not exist." My claim is that this is an absurdity based on thoughts hopefully successfully expressed in the very near future.
What I am disputing here is the "it" bit in relation to the not existing bit. "It" refers to something that exists; if it didn't, then it wouldn't be an it. To put it another way, an "it" requires an "is." I can't refer to something that isn't in terms of being an it. Its non-existence means it may be more accurately decribed as a not-it. Though even here, "Its non-existence" is fraught with unintelligibility as its very non-existence means it isn't an it with which to have a non-existence.
So to re-cap, the sentence should read, "It does exist," unless it doesn't, in which case the less said the better.

A Rebel Song

They had guns & we had sheep

Self Disprin Analogy

The self as a disprin or soluble tablet: the tablet appears to be a clearly defined solid entity but drop it in water...

A Grave Matter

He was a remarkably serious man, so serious in fact that he was sometimes described as a centre of gravity. This phrase met with his approval until a colleague expressed surprise at his equanimity towards being associated with such an exercise in playful wordplay. So stern was his perennial mental disposition, however, that the mercurial nature & levity of this phrase had entirely escaped his notice. He was deeply perturbed & fell into a depression.
It is not known whether his colleague had divined the truth & intentionally disturbed the calm, grave pool of his being with this dreadful stone of truth, but it would be unwise to dismiss such an idea.

The Doors Of

As Blake wrote:
"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
The corollary to this is:
"If the doors of perception were dulled everything would appear to man as it isn't, finite." And one could add "banal & mediocre." The amount of thought gone into trying to prove that life is exactly this banality; people clinging to mediocrity & unhappiness as if it were their greatest possession. Though I suppose to their experience it is their greatest & only possession; it is who they are & so their defence of their reality is natural. "Here I am. Pull up the drawbridge!" Their thought, naturally enough, mirroring their sense of themselves & their sense of themselves mirroring their thought. Which came first? One of the great insolubles.

Appalling Vista Arguments

In the appeal of the Birmingham Six in 1979, the ruling judge Lord Denning stated that: "If the six men win, it will mean that the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that these actions should go any further." He also expressed the view that "We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied." Of course, it eventually transpired that the police were guilty of perjury, that they were guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous.

My focus though is the abdication of intellectual integrity that is the appalling vista notion. This can probably be seen as a manifestation of the Slave Mentality. To break down what is happening: the mind is faced with certain truths or facts. It then projects itself towards the perceived future arising from pursuing these truths logically. It doesn't like the future that arises from this pursuit, presumably because the static structure that is this notion of self & corresponding worldview rightly feels itself under attack. And so the undesired information is annihilated by either, in the manner of Denning, simply believing that the undesired implications are enough in themselves to erase consideration of the inconvenient truth; or intentionally deceiving oneself by fraudulently arguing around the undesired truths - anything to avoid the appalling vista.

To put it another way, A implies B. B is impermissible. Therefore A must be denied. This, no doubt, the kind of brain activity that is in operation when a controlled demolition is viewed as not a controlled demolition. As William Blake wrote, "He who never alters his opinion is like stagnant water & breeds reptiles of the mind."

Sufficient unto Itself

The world of consciousness is boundless, which is to say that there are not a finite amount of possible mental states to fit all circumstances. Each of these states, if we were to commit the error of isolating them into supposed distinct realities, is in itself real - such states being for example terror, wonder, sorrow, joy. The works of Homer would seem to operate within an heroic but ultimately rather crude universe of finite states covering the multitudes of experience while we could say that Shakespeare represents the boundlessness of consciousness.

The human mind can conceive of imaginary physical realities, but this cannot be said of psychological/emotional states which if capable of conception must be real, as the mind cannot create beyond itself in these terms. That they can be experienced means they are real. If we allow ourselves a self as a reality, then this self moves within an infinite world of itself, or Self.

To now move to the world of art & in particular art of a religious nature...the essence of great art of this nature such as Bach's Matthew's Passion is not a religious world that it points towards; the music is itself religious. This music is an emanation of a state of consciousness which is itself religious; it cannot simply be said to be about an idea that is religious, but which may not exist.

Art of this nature fails when there is a discrepancy between what the art is 'about', & what it is in itself. This kind of art aspires consciously to being 'of' the elevated heights, but is in itself not intrinsically this reality & so is rightly described as pompous or pretentious. In other words, the art is not the natural outpouring of the artist's inner being but a forced effort to be something he is not. Great art in general & great religious art in particular are of themeselves the world they point towards. This shown especially in some of the images at this site on Russian icons here; an image I would especially mention being The Burial of Christ on the second page. The psychological reality of these images is itself spiritual, & since an experience of the mind is itself real, then these images are their own proof of the spiritual aspect of reality. To stress, they are not 'about' a projected spiritual dimension; this spiritual reality is their very existence as emanations of consciousness.

Mathematrix

The sum of my parts is equal to the subtraction of my whole.

Irish Humour, the Divine Will & a Foreign Tongue

The Irish humour is actually the utmost seriousness transmogrified by the unnatural imposition of a foreign tongue upon the native consciousness. Very noble and profound thoughts bubble up from deep within the Celtic sap, but once they pass through the filter of the English tongue(said to be located somewhere within the brain) a strange alchemical altering of meaning takes place which some have argued is a manifestation of the Divine Will over which the human protagonist has little control. This explains why the great Irish writers like Swift, Wilde, Joyce, Flann O Brien and even that miserable bastard Beckett tend to be the great humourists of the English language. Beckett incidentally sets out to be the incarnation of pessimism, but to his chagrin, he found this was often transformed into something more absurd & contrary to his intent. He tried writing in French to escape this sabotaging of his desire by the Divine Will, but, of course, not understanding the root cause, he was merely adding another layer to the problem.

Son of a Bush

Musical televisual art construct here. Something else from a band called Hexstatic, but also in a somewhat related vein, & a bit more naturally my area of sonic interest.

The Belgian Ambassador

The Belgian ambassador was sat in his study engaged in activities that can be accurately be said to consist merely of sitting in his study. He patiently & to all observers' eyes(admittedly there were no observers) contentedly waited, wondering if inspiration would strike the author of his existence & change this state of uninteresting passivity. However this outward picture of satisfied ease was the mask of a consummate actor & hid an inner dissatisfaction.
"Is this what great literature is made of?" he asked his worthy self. "Simply sitting, without even the company of a friendly other with whom one might engage in sparkling & cynical conversation? I am the Belgian ambassador, for goodness sake. My presence within the hallowed halls of the linguistic art form that is literature is generally an affair of deliciously heightened tensions; of an order of perfect balance tottering on the brink of dissolution into enticing, but perhaps lurid darknesses. Of alliteration & metaphor. Of infinitessimal shades of subtle transformations. And yet here I am, a man of import, refinement & intelligence, simply sat in his study, pointlessly. No phone calls, no elliptical manuscripts that have mysteriously come into my possession. Nothing. But what can I do?"
Nothing was of course the answer. And so we leave the Belgian ambassador sitting in his study.

Great Lines of Literature

"The reader will be pleased to learn that Chichhikov changed his linen every other day."
Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls. Gogol of whom Dosteovsky wrote, "We have all come from under Gogol's Overcoat"- a reference to Gogol's seminal short story.

Environmental Lovers of Humanity

"One-fourth of humanity must be eliminated from the social body. We are in charge of God's selection process for planet earth. He selects, we destroy. We are the riders of the pale horse, Death." Psychologist Barbara Marx Hubbard - member and futurist/strategist of Task Force Delta; a United States Army think tank. The Population Control Agenda.The Timeline
". . . as radical environmentalists, we can see AIDS not as a problem, but as a necessary solution." Miss Ann Thropy (pseudonym), Earth First! Journal
"The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing . . . This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run." Economist editorial
"A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect." Richard Benedict, State Dept. employee working on assignment from the Conservation Foundation
"Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
"If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels." Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund
"Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?" Maurice Strong, Head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
"I suggest therefore that this be sold not through a democratic process...that would take too long and require far too much of the funds to educate the cannon fodder, unfortunately, which populates the Earth." United Nations Committee for Environment and Development 1988, David Lang, international investment banker.
"The threat of environmental crisis will be the 'international disaster key' that will unlock the New World Order." Mikhail Gorbachev

Strange Words from on High

"We have before us the opportunity to forge a New World Order. When we are successful, and we will be(evil grin), we have a real chance of this New World Order." George H.W. Bush(Daddy Bush) "It's more than one small country. It is a big idea; a New World Order."Daddy again. "Now we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there si the very real propsect of a New World Order." And again. "There is a chance the President can use this disaster to bring about the New World Order." Gary Hart - US Commission on National Security the day after 911. 

“At the time of the election, there will just be 1,000 days to the new millennium - 1,000 days to prepare for 1,000 years, a moment of destiny for us." Tony Blair "This is the moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us." Tony Blair after 911. "I want to lead Britain to what I believe is our destiny of success in this New World Order." Gordon Brown "We shall have world government whether or not you like it, by conquest or consent." Statement by Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member James Warburg to The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 17th, l950 "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." 

Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913) "The New World Order will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down...but in the end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece will accomplish much more than the old fashioned frontal assault."

 CFR member Richard Gardner, writing in the April l974 issue of the CFR's journal, Foreign Affairs. "A colossal event is upon us, the birth of a New World Order." Brent Scowcroft, George Bush's National Security Advisor, said on the eve of the Gulf War.

 "The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the CFR, The Trilateral Commission - founded by Zbigniew Brzezinski for David Rockefeller - and the Bilderberg Group, have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years. They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens."Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, Ph.D. Former German Defense Ministry Official and Advisor to former NATO Secretary General Manfred Werner. 6th November, 2001 "The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and communism under the same tent, all under their control...Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent." Congressman Larry McDonald. On September 1, 1983, Larry McDonald died when Korean Air Flight KAL-007 was shot down by Soviet fighters after the plane entered Soviet airspace.

 "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." H. L. Mencken. "Idealism is the noble toga political gentlemen drape over their will to power." Aldous Huxley

The Most High

One smokes marijuana & gets high. However high one gets though, God is always... the Most High.

Stephen Hawking- Modern Intellectual Symbol

The intellect is not the friend of the modern culture of mass-produced inanity. However, it would be nice to have the illusion of giving the intellect its fair due-we are an enlightened age after all. And so, enter Stephen Hawking. People get to feel a kind of awe for Hawking's pure mind, immersed as he is in matters that are for the overwhelming majority of us purely esoteric & of no personal consequence. Crucially, along with this reverential awe, lies the pleasures of condescension at Hawking's physical condition. The intellect may be all well and good but would one really want to be Hawking? He is the perfect symbol of a neutered intellect that one has the generosity to patronise. DH Lawrence echoes here somewhere.
So Hawking a kind of Elvis figure for the age; were he not born he would have had to have been created. To add: his merits as a thinker are relatively irrelevant- it's the image that counts.

As an aside, isn't it interesting that in a time of such unprecedented human numbers there isn't one great genius striding the public landsacape. Not a Picasso, Dostoevsky, Beethoven, Tarkovsky...in these terms- nothing. Probably just as well; one wouldn't want someone contradicting the spirit of the age. 

Everyone is equal.
If everyone is equal, what is it they are equal to?
The lowest common denominator.

Ferry Cross the Atlantic

Here & here.

No Ordinary Man

He glanced at his watch. He respected this watch. It was suited for its purpose. It told the time accurately. That was the purpose of a watch. It was all an ordinary man should expect. But he was no ordinary man.
He was the Belgian ambassador.

The Beethoven Delusion

An intense, steely eyed, morose figure crouched over a modern desk lit by a perfunctory lamp. Cigarette smoke invaded all corners of the room. A poster with various markings was clinging onto the nearest wall; bold accusatory letters pronounced; "Life Begins at Fifty- LOSE THAT GUT." Close by, a yellowed page less confidently pronounced, "Smoking is Irrational." He suddenly leapt from his intentionally uncomfortable seat( an aid to clear thinking), triumphantly raising a large sheet in the unhealthy air. He clenched his other fist & devoured whatever was written with his hungry, mad, intellectual eyes. He placed the page back on the desk, clenched his fist again & strode downstairs. Seeing as he's gone, we'll take a closer look at this mysterious sheet.

The Beethoven Delusion
It is my argument that a pious fraud has been perpetrated so as to subject mankind to the most humiliating of intellectual enslavements. I will restrict myself to examining a musical universe known as The Pastoral Symphony, or alternatively Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. The work is the same despite the confusion of the two titles, & both are declared to be the work of an extraordinary genius by the name of Beethoven; someone supposedly far beyond the reach of mere mortals like you & me. Can you feel the insult in this claim? Is it not demeaning to you & I this notion of a higher being inhabiting this legendary realm of genius? You cannot but concur since if we are to accept this higher realm, then our version of reality is a falsehood; an appalling vista not to be countenanced. I have made it my task to refute this vile hypothesis, & I am proud to announce I have succeeded.
In short, what I have discovered is that this alleged work with its wild claims of supposed unfathomable depths ultimately amounts to nothing but the vibration of air moleclues at varying degrees of intensity. There is no need to bring a composer- call him Beethoven, call him anything you like- into the equation; air molecules are sufficient. I have so far restricted my scientific investigations to the Pastoral work, but I am confident that were other alleged works of greatness subjected to the same empirical rigour, then similar conclusions would be reached.

More Improving Literature

Following on from the unprecedented levels of enthusiasm for the previous piece, I have been been inspired to further the intellectual cause by the means of more words; words elevated by virtue of style, form & content. And so:

"Mr President."
The President looked up inquisitively, alerted by the unusual strain of emphasis in Jones' rich, baritone voice. "Yes, Jones?"
"The Belgian ambassador is on the phone."

That's as much as has been composed in that section but I know it's good.
A later fragment of the same work:

"Long time, Bono."
"I'm a busy man, Pres. So are you. We're men of the world. We understand each other."
"So we do, Bono, so we do. And that, I dare say, is our damnation."
"A man's got to make choices, Pres. And he's got to live by those choices. I didn't get to be the biggest goddamn rock-star in the whole goddamned world by sitting on my proverbial, now did I?"
"I don't suppose you did, Bono."
"You can bet your American ass I didn't. And you didn't get to be President of the goddamn United States of America by sitting on yours. Anyway, here's two tickets to next week's Corporate Rock Multi-Media tour. It's gonna blow your goddamned American mind."

Bono loved saying ‘America.' It seemed to him that his very self expanded with the mere utterance of the sacred word.

Improving Literature

I'm thinking of writing some high quality literature so as to improve our public's stagnating minds. One plot that suggests itself:
A lowly factory girl overcomes obstacles to patent her own labour-saving device & marry the local lord after his decadent, foreign wife dies in a mining accident.

Sample paragraph
Dolly looked at the crouched figures trudging miserably towards the colliery; their blackened, simian features seeing only the muddy ground beneath their heavy feet. The godly sphere of the sun was not to be met by their defeated eyes.
Her rosy cheeks positively burned with indignation. "If I can only perfect my as yet vaguely imagined labour saving device so as to prevent the factory owners having to pay these ignorant fucking monkeys... my future may indeed be a fortunate one."

A later episode
The knife plunged one last time into Lord Snigsby's corpulent body. He stared into Dolly's mocking eyes. Only now did he realise how mad she truly was.

Funny Humour

Here. Some knowledge of English football helpful.

The Way of the Intellect- A Culmination

Our philosophical adventurer, last witnessed here, has revealed to me that he has finished a book that will shake the foundations of Western society to its deluded core. I was excited by the news but perturbed at the obstacles he may be placing in his own way by the declared title of this work:
"Why You Are So Stupid."
I mentioned something along the lines of "alienating your potential audience," in response to which he howled in derision.

The Birth of Man

Through use of remarkable imaginative powers, where I coalesce my being with the great psychic forces that lie hidden from the eyes of the profane, I have recently witnessed the great moment in time when we can truly be said to have become human; this moment being the formation of language by our upwardly mobile ancestors.
The scene: A cave somewhere in the Eastern Europe. Four hairy, smelly individuals; animal of strength & stupid of expression, gazing with all the rapture of dumb beasts at another being, but this one endowed with the faint but unmistakable signs of a deeper intelligence. He has a piece of flint held purposefully in his right hand, & emanates an air of somewhat hesitant pedagogical authority. He bursts forth into speech:
"First what we have to establish are the rules of grammar. Otherwise, all will be shapeless chaos & the darkness of utter nebulosity. If we want to make ourselves understood we need to have a firm & vigorous grasp on the subtle intricacies of our tools of communication. Grammar is the bedrock. Our language must be a perfect instrument for both the utilities of everyday living and the abstractions of philosophical discourse; able to probe & discern the subtlest shades of consciousness, and yet perfectly attuned to the rudimentaries of day to day living. One must not scorn the prosaic."
At this point I was called back to the concerns of this world, but, and with a feeling of pride, I quickly scribbled the lines,
"Rousseau, Rousseau.
More true than you did know."

Means Determine Ends

If I mix yellow & blue I'm not going to get orange, no matter how much I wish it. With all but the crudest of ambitions, such as winning a football match, the idea of ends justifying means is inherently idiotic - a superstition where the will or intent is imagined to be sufficient to engender the desired future by some kind of magical two plus two equals five formula. 

Yellow and blue will produce green. The means determine the end.

Externality

Externality is an illusion created by a rationalising mind which misinterprets perceptive experience & creates the notion of external objective & solid reality separate from itself. Externality, in turn, helps to fix the illusion of the self as an independent reality existing in, but distinct from, the externality which itself has created. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, which itself has hallucinated.

Just struck me that externality was already a word.
Definition: An externality is an effect of a purchase or use decision by one set of parties on others who did not have a choice and whose interests were not taken into account.
I could probably work this into my piece...something along the lines of the philosophical creation of the external objectivity, less popularly known as the schizophrenic worldview, by some highly intelligent lunatics screwing up the direct experience of reality for everyone else. Reality as something to be categorised, dissected, made into lists, etc. In other words, the history of Western civilisation as the bastard offspring of metaphysical/philosophical accountants.