The End of Nothing.

Take the following test to see if King George is throwing a closed-door tantrum. Again:

1. Was or is King George and Queen Tony in yet another bad place with their so-called voting public? (i.e. breeches of Justice, breaking of laws, murdering of innocent people in the middle east...)

2. Did this bad public opinion begin to interrupt the King and Queen's strategy to continue the illegal war in Iraq, or to create fresh, new wars in, say, Iran?

3. Did a new sense of urgency, scandal, emergency or drama suddenly appear on the news? (i.e. an Iranian hostage throwback, circa 1980's — the one used to smear Jimmy Carter)

4. Is the entire thing rather predictable, boring, and seemingly meant to entertain and sway the illiterate primetime television bourgeosie?

If you've answered 'yes' to one or more of the preceding questions, brace yourself, we're probably in for another c-o-i-n-c-i-d-e-n-c-e (see: Gore Vidal, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace).

Vive le Resistance.

Thank God. Someone gets it. His name is Toyin Agbetu. He stood up yesterday, and told the two Queens what they could do with their pomp and commemoration for 200 years of triangle slave trading.

We should all join in demanding an end to government-sponsored Hollywood melodrama. How? Instead of spending all that money for a bunch of London aristocrats to throw themselves a sorrow party, spend it on a book mobile for poor neighborhoods.

You? Go teach a kid to read.

"If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master--to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now," said he, "if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave."

--Frederick Douglas

Vivé le resistance

Labels: Agbetu, Douglas, nigger, queen, slave

Crimes and misdeameanors: by King George

The 2000 election was a fraud. 9/11 was a conspiracy. The case for Iraq was a complete fabrication. The carnage in Iraq is a case for a War Crime Tribunal. Now, caught for the zillionth time, King George is judicially confused that he will be determining when and where his criminal staff may or may not testify in the Gonzales case.

Let's stop kidding ourselves, shall we? The entirety of the US Constitution has been set aside, the foundations of the republic perverted. George Bush is no different than Milosevic or Kim-Jong-Il. America is no more. Gone. No sustainable laws are in force to hold the union together, because King George has thwarted and broken them, all. Sobering thought, my former Americans. The country is now past-tense.

I'm not one for violence, but I cannot help but consider what Thomas Jefferson meant by "Democracy must, from time to time, be cleansed in blood".

A natural gas technician came to my house this morning to check the boiler. Nice bloke, well kept in his blue uniform. Thirty-something. Very chatty about renewable energy, the future, global warming. He jumped from these topics to asking me about living in New York City, telling me about a cab driver who made his brother laugh after getting into a crusing match with a pedestrian in Times Square, to a sobering thought: "In the future, how is the world going to get former Americans to invest and comply in conservations and reduced oil consumption when they are armed to the teeth?"

Ahem. Where the mind goes the body will follow. Or bodies.

Vivé le Resistance!

Labels: Americans, Bush, coup, crime, criminal, former, fraud, Gonzales, Jefferson

Better to say it. My hand reaches for the the cup. Bitter tea. Morning. Late morning. I do wish for yesterday. Not glowing nostalgic yesterday. Yesterday when things weren't so predictably boring. And being safe wasn't an anecdote for corporate strategy. And the machines left some scraps — perhaps a ligament or two — for consideration during self mutilation. Better to say it. Being awkward. AWKWARD. Awkwardly human. The beauty of it all. The absense of pretense — not being complete before you're golden brown. Flakey. Crusty. Better to say it.

The next forty years? Joke. Ha. Giggle. Predictably boring. Death isn't a new concept. Life will be to those who survive the machine. Is it memorial day yet? Better to say it. Today.

Labels: good, prose, resistance, revolution

Diana Ross on American Idol, attempting to coach a contestant that she needed to articulate the words to the song Love Child:

"You need to pro-nown-see-ate".

And think I once defended her in an essay, after she was arrested for being drunk and disorderly.

see: The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom (published 1987 ISBN 5-551-86868-0), chapter: Music. page 68.

"Plato teaches that, in order to take the spiritual temperature of of an individual or a society, one must mark the music."

I'm going to go work on my pronownseeashun.

Vivé le Resistance!


10 mins later addendum quote: "Half the time the audience doesn't know you've messed up so never let them see ANYTHING!"

I'm going back to my pronownseeashun work. In my corner. Where we stupid consumer units sit.

Labels: Allan, American, Bloom, Idol, Ignorance, media

The thought just occurred to me: Global Warming might be a good thing. Yes. Indeed.

I am stunned that there is little or no opposition in the UK to the television service going entirely digital. That's right, analog is soon to be no more. Instead of turning on a telly, and viewing, you will have to be registered and charged monthly — everything you see will come through a wire to your house.

In the US Viacom is suing Google. May Google win! Apparently, following their legal actions against 12 year old schoolgirls, the gluttonous entertainment industry is now worried about low-res tv clips put up on YouTube. rights! rights! rights!

Viacom is only following others, such as the Association of American Publishers, in their Google pursuits.

Welcome to the machine. Not pink. More red.

I am a writer. First and foremost, I want people to read, digest, discuss, love and hate my work. Perhaps, with this Global Warming, some rains will come, flood the circuits of all this self-devouring beast, and turn the power off. Irreparably corrupt the code. Quiet the virus. Kill the cancer. Then, instead of being sat at home waiting for our culture to come through a wire, filled with the same old nothing — people can gather, once again, as humans instinctively do, and talk, read, share, digest, discuss, love and hate?

Yes! That's it! So turn on every light in your house! Warm up the kettles! Crank up the air conditioners! Fire up the cars! Microwave everything in sight! Let's get THIS PARTY STARTED!!

'The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire...'

Vivé le Resistance!

Labels: digital, global, Google, television, Viacom, warming

My Hillary take: Hillary and Obama play right into the right-wing controlled media machine and 'spar' and 'spat' early on, and cancel each other out. Some other loser like Ralph Nader comes along, funded by the right-wing and given widespread coverage by the right-wing defense contractor/Murdoch controlled media. A lame Hillary plays the part and gets beat by whatever B-list saber-rattling, terrorist-fear-mongering boob the right-wing puts on stage. End of.

Anyone Remember? Hillary Clinton is the one who wouldn't turn over some simple travel documents to the FBI, and brought us, and her husband, Whitewater, Starr, and nightly coverage of cum stains on a blue dress (while Al Quaeda was planning 9/11).

Timberlake: Anyone else find it interesting that Justin Timberlake is all ready with a whitewashed version of Michael Jackson, just after the right-wing controlled media character assassination of Michael Jackson?

Media, media, media. Beware of your new gods.

Vivé le Resistance!

Labels: Clinton, elections, Hillary, Justin, Obama, right, terrorist, Timberlake, wing

Keillorbegon

Although Keillor doesn't read poetry all that well,
the history and information are ideal,
I download occasionally.

But now that you have sold your listeners out
to corporate adverts - an evil most of the writers Keiller presents did not know -
I am not so sure:
Perhaps you could lengthen the body of the program
to make up for the atrocities at either end.
Or perhaps, like other literate, thinking people - the few left-
I can just go away.

My brain cannot process Emerson tainted by Acura,
DeSade perverted by Visa. It does not equate.
Sorry. Well no I'm not, really. Just trying to be polite
as I watch you devour yourselves, and
what was a very, good, idea.

Martin Belk

Edinburgh, Scotland

Labels: adverts, American, DeSade, Emerson, Garrison, Keillor, media, out, Public, sell

BUSHIE: Reichstag 9-1-1, the sequel.

Question: How do you get the main news story off the Foley case, the failed war in Iraq, the failed US policies in Afghanistan?

Answer: Get a bunch of farmers in Korea to detonate a stockpile of TNT and call it N-U-K-U-L-A-R, in the new Bush tongue.

French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie:

"Given its weak power, it is hard to say if it was a very large, but traditional, type of explosion or else a nuclear explosion... If it was a nuclear explosion, it was a failed explosion,"

Mark this: It all gets shuffled to the back pages on November 8.

Further Study:
"There comes a time when silence is betrayal..." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Vivé Le Resistance!

Quick Monday: I applauded the US antitrust prosecution of Microsoft. The company bundled the software and anyone with a 3rd grade education knew it.

Now, it's time for he feds to seize the offices of Apple, and put Steve Jobs behind bars. Not only are the products, I believe, intentionally manufactured to fail after a certain period of time - they are overpriced and technically overloaded to the point of unmanageability. Yet more evidence is mounting (Guardian), and it seems the consumer protectionists here in the UK may actually be waking up from their import-America slumber.

This is a metaphor for the world we're going to have in about 5 years. I've written on it before. Poor Eve, she got a rap for taking a bite - we're choking on them by the millions.

For some reason I am finding reason to smile today. Cautiously. Listening to the New York jazz station on this here internet:

"The military government in Thailand has appointed an interim Prime Minister ..."

regime change. bloodless. the media is quite happy with the word. bloodless: works for both the suggestion of a lack of human suffering, yet also a lack of humanity.

change, change, change...the news cycle and cycling through people's consciousness. Sneaky thing that consciousness, it pops up at the most inopportune times. Times like when tyrants are fighting and killing over hearts and minds.


New Robert Frost poem just discovered 2006: War Thoughts at Home, 1918.

consciousness. funny thing...my friend G--- reports that at ground zero, this past Septembre 11, a substantial group were chanting "Bush was behind 9/11". True? Does truth matter? The fundamentalist end-timers have a second-coming to prepare for.

End of Nothing: Vivé Le Resistance!

The criticism of my petition for fringe reform is buggin' me a little. A lot of people are surprising me with their ceremonious offer of backpedalling. "Well, I don't agree with every single point, so I can't sign it" [erm, there's a comments feature] "Some of your suggestions are so unrealistic" [erm, the day after the story ran in the press some millionaire announced plans on sending a cruise ship to Leith Harbor to house artists next year]. And then two self-assigned morons of edfringe.com proceeded to start a ridiculous diatribe on implementing business plans...What is it? Stage management. We have it at every level - no real debate in politics, or on the smaller stages of life.

The deal: "mess with the clique and we attack the messenger, regardless of the message..." cue George Bush.

Funny how a Member of Scottish Parliament is supposed to have put fringe reform on the floor for debate.

How do you get criminals like George Bush in the driver seat? Become ambivalent in everyday life.

Ah Dear Mr. Blair...you said it better the first time:
"This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance of it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) [20,000UK 40,000US income per year], and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. Foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions."
--George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

Dear Mr. Clinton: Please lose your cool more often. It was refreshing.

Ever wake up alone? I tend to prefer it. I think I do. Not interested in state-installed Valentine's day pookery, or primetime television espisodic battles of control. With everyone marrying Jesus and Mohammed these days...and open relationships, I can't get me head around much of it. I can fill my day with art, literature, history or a damn-good argument on the internet. Arthur Rimbaud makes a terrific lover. So does Isadora Duncan. Thelonius is a good friend. I have raw oysters and champagne whenever I make a celebration.

In the midst my litany of unattachment remains a nagging memory: My mid-twenties in the early nineties, New York City, East Village, Thirteenth Street. Drinking too much, working too much, wearing my leather motorcycle jacket all the time. People dropping like flies from AIDS. Soul II Soul next to DeeeLite on the jukeboxes. Woke up with a guy named Valery. Eastern European. Blonde. Russia...Poland, I think Russia. We spent time, saw each other. He was ready to stick around. Something in my gut said 'you'll be sorry' just before he left for Arizona. The cards and letters came. I didn't notice what they really said 'til years later. One and only person, to which I am not genetically related, to say 'special', 'love', and the like. That I now believe. I've scoured the cards, no surname, no return address. Ran a light-leaded pencial over them, in case of an indention, a clue. All that's left are the words most in our society would die for. Many do, certainly.

Valery. Arizona.

I could let Auden pack-in September.

Busy summer. The Fringe Festival. Writing. Performing and that. I decided to start this fancy new blog because I've not been doing it for quite some time. Did my own show on the Fringe which was a complete success. I had 15 people each night in a room for 200. It was cozy.

Brought another show over from the states which was a nightmare. Word to the wise: never work with so-called friends who claim to be so-called stars. But if you do, watch out for the pills they pop. My hunch: hormones, steroids and sleeping pills tend to get in the way of being a 'star'. Go figure.

Was on BBC radio on Monday for 9/11. I was the only person on the show who was actually in New York on the day. Go figure. The show was simulcast with a station in Dallas, Texas. Texas: American mistake extraordinaire. The Dallas commentator attacked everyone, gave speeches about the virtues of King George and got offended when I called him an 'asshole' on the air. There was no badword delay due to the simulcast. Haha. Asshole.

To lighten the mood, I did my recurring bit on Nexuslive on Friday. They'd asked me to speak on something to do with school being back in session - Fresher's Week. Something in line with an homage I'd written to Allan Bloom for the Scottish Book Collector. Decided to probe Edinburgh Uni's website, for official fresher functions. Result: all manner of boozing parties, club nights, game show parodies. So, being in the happy 9/11 frame of mind, I googled in search of other student activities, and put them together in a neat little presentation.

A simple wikipedia search...active students everywhere...Sophie Scholl and the White Rose students - beheaded by Nazi's for writing letters...the Greensboro 4 - black students who decided to have lunch at Woolworth's...Akbar Mohammadi - an Iranian student who died on a hunger strike just this past July...Tianamen Square Students...Kent State Students...who knew? what - no beer?







It went over well. Better than the BBC show. Email me and I'll send you the ppt file. In the meantime, I'm going out to find more ways of empowering freethinking humanity against the fascist end-of-the-world regimes. It ain't over.

Thanks for having me back :)

Martin