The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant. - Maximilien Robespierre.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
The World Cup
The World Cup
Once every four years the world unites and America stands on the sidelines affecting diffident superiority but really seething because the world's premier sporting fixture is taking place (forget the Olympics, what has synchronised swimming to do with sport) and neither America's money nor military might can ensure success.
To find out more about The World Cup and why America's most gallant sportsmen and best ambassadors with once more be ignored in their own country, go to Welcome To Our World Cup
One of the great traditions of the world cup is the crappy songs supporters sing. As America does not have one of these because the American media have as usual, remained oblivious to the fact there is a world outside America, I revampred an old England song for them. check out the lyric for Vindaloo, with links to audio and video
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Before We Forget How To Be
Have you forgotten how to be? Not do, just be. We are all encouraged to identify ourselves by what we are doing but I think that's what is driving us crazy. Spirituality to be is being connected. The English writer D H Lawrence summed it up when he penned this line: Mankind needs to get back in touch with the rhythms of the universe.
before we can do that I believe we have to stop frenetically 'doing' and learn once more how to enjoy simply being. Unless we can break out of the cycle of doing we risk losing our freedom to make choices.
Read Before We Forget How To Be and maybe you will find out how to get a different perspective on life.
And as that is a tad serious by my standards why not check out What The Dickens, a surreal comedy tale in the style of Charles Dickens.
The secret of invisibility A poem about a different state of being.
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Back to Contents table
A Song Of Servitude (poem)
https://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewpoetry.asp?id=333184
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Monday, May 01, 2006
Fires of Love (Beltane celebration)
A Beltane Fire Festival in Scotland (image source)
All around the world Mayday is celebrated in many different guises, but all the various celebrations have a common root in the pagan festival of renewal that in Western Europe is known as Beltane. The pagan year, sometimes known as the eightfold year, is divided into its main seasons by the two solstices (longest and shortest day) and two equinoxes (when hours of light and darkness are equal). This roughly coincides with the farming calendar with seasons for planting, growing, harvesting and a barren season for ploughing and maintenance.
A secondary calendar (because four feast days is not enough) splits each of these seasons. Beltane (May), Lughnasa (August), Samhain (November) and Imbolc (February) marked the seasons of the herdsmen's year. But what has animal husbandry to do with the good fire (Bel Tane) you might well ask. Dunno. Possibly nobody really does. But one idea that has some traction is that it was delousing day after the animals had been shorn of their winter coats.
Hop over to Authors Den and check out Ian Thorpe's Beltane poem Fires Of Love and the write up of the significance of Beltane to our ancestors.
Fires of Love at Authors Den
The Sacred Feminine
Friday, April 28, 2006
Cheesier than Stinking Bishop?
Camelbert (A soft cheese made from camel's milk) is the new cheese for Bedouin hipsters in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott. The "fromage de chamelle" slips down a treat with a glass of red wine, and tastes 'like a tangy goat's chees' according to cheese connaiseursnyone who has stood close to a camel will be familiar with we think.
Camelbert also has a strong, distinctive smell, the people who sell it online admit. A smell we think a Cheese connoisseurs can choose between the original brand Caravane, and the newly launched Sahara. Both sell for 800 ouguiya, or about £1.70.
I love cheese but I will pass on that one. Our own Stinking Bishop cheese, a rival surely to Sweden's Surstromming as the worlds most repulsively smelly food, at least tastes good if you can hold your breath until you get it in your mouth.
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Friday, April 21, 2006
An Exclusive on the World's Greatest Celebrity
Queen: Phillip, have you farted?
Phil The Greek: Of course not Lizzie old thing, it was probably one of the Corgis
Everybody loves a celebrity story and there is no bigger celebrity that the Queen of England. Our sister publication Boggart Blog managed to get ace undercover reporter Jenny Greenteeth, the evil water spirit (and world's first celebrity evil spirit) into Windsor Castle disguised as the brackish water in a vase of flowers and she sent back this exclusive recording of the conversation that went on between The Queen and Prince Philip over breakfast.
Foreign admirers of the royal Family might be shocked at some of the language used in by the couple, but hey, when they are off duty they are just ordinary people like the rest of us.
Find it online now at Boggart Blog Inside Windsor Castle
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History is full of failed predictions from the Oracle at Delphi through Nostradamus, Mother Shipton and just about every twentieth century stargazer and futurologist who ever found an audience.
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Sunday, April 16, 2006
Cruisin' for a (verbal) bruisin'
Cruise is a scientologist of course and so believes that civilisation was dropped of on Earth by a race called the Thetans whose women did not scream when they gave birth because it filled the baby with negative energies. (What is not mentioned in L Ron Hubbard's philosophy though is that the Thetans were pinheads.
Read more on noisy human childbirth at The Birth of the Air Turns Blues
Also as a follow up to yesterday's item check out the truth about the
Saturday, April 15, 2006
The True Tale of The Easter Bunny
Is there something we weren't told in school.
You bet there is.
Check out The True Tale Of The Easter Bunny for the real story on the crucifixin myth, the easter egg thing and the easter bunny.
and if you need a laugh to brighten up the holiday check out the latest at
Boggart Blog
Sunday, April 09, 2006
A Few Snippets To Amuse Or Provoke
*** Please Spread This Poll All Over The Internet -- Especially to News Media so They can see that it is Now Alright to Tell The TRUTH About the Bush Crime Family. That they seemed to have started doing on Thursday about the Bush / Cheney Responsibility for the Plame leaks !
Poll - Should Bush be in jail
Then I came across some amusing Bushisms at Very Random Blog of a Very Random Person. I am amazed the Scientologists are not hailing Bush as a God, he's not from this planet is he?
And finally, find out how we Brits go about belittling our politicians at Boggart Blog
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Murdoch's Myspace Mistake?
Now he didn't do that from charity, so how can the cash be recouped? A web pundit says the site, with its 63million members worldwide is a cash cow waiting to me milked. Trouble is whenever new media pundits say things like that about anything on the web, the fools who invest find they are not milking a cash cow but pulling an angry bull's dick.
Read more at
Murdoch's" Myspace Mistake
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Condi In The Land Of Pie Eaters
So what was the real reason for the visit of Condoleeza Rice to the old industrial towns of Lancashire this week. Was it simply to promote better relations between Britain and America as we were told?
Well when was anything the politicians told us true?
Could the whole thing really have been about neutralising Iran with a secret weapon the British have previously kept to themselves?
Find out what was really going on, read the whole story of Condi In The Land of Pie Eaters:
The real reason why Condi Rice visited North West England is revealed.
It is not often those of us who live in Lancashire, the Wars of The Roses county in the old industrial heartland of England's North West get a visit from a major figure in world politics. Can it be coincidence then that last week's visit by Condoleeza Rice was synchronised with the leak of information to the British media about secret meetings between the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence to work out a strategy for military action against Iran?
In order to avoid a repetition of the Iraq debacle it is obvious even to those covert government agencies we laughingly call Military Intelligence that a somewhat more subtle approach was needed if the western powers are to debilitate the theocratic rulers and effect regime change while winning the hearts and minds of the Iranian people.
It does not require a mastermind then to work out that Condi was here in Blackburn to secure supplies of the world's most potent weapon against terrorism, the industrial strength meat pie.
Lancashire is the traditional home of the meat pie of course, us natives are not called pie eaters for nothing. To subsist on a staple diet of industrial strength meat pies as many generations of our ancestors did requires an indestructible digestive system comparable to that of a goat and a fortitude of spirit that is otherwise only found in salmon as they battle their way up rapids to their spawning grounds.
Such is the toxic potency of a dodgy pie that they are banned as weapons of modern warfare under the Geneva convention (we Lancastrians, being weaned from our mothers' breasts on them are immune of course) but so long as war has not been officially declared they can be sneaked into an enemy country disguised as food aid.
How does a meat pie work and how can people be fooled into eating them? The elegance of their use as an assault weapon lies in the fact that non - industrial meat pies, those made by your mum or granny, are not only completely harmless but also nutritious and delicious and even the ones served in respectable catering establishments are usually quite appetising. The industrial variety however is made with meat of very dubious origin. Everything the abattoir cannot get rid of even for cat's meat ends up in meat pies. Lips, arsholes, eyes, tails, unmentionables and things that defy forensic analysis all go into the melange along with dodgy chemicals to add flavour and colour (which is a joke, the inside of a meat pie is a dull grey in hue, even after cooking) all go into the melange along with crumbs of stale bread and a glob of glutinous goo so vile it would make a cockroach choke. This melange is then formed into balls which are encased in a pastry made from paper dust and sump oil. They are then baked in batches at very high temperature which triggers a quantum reaction that causes the atoms to become unstable.
The terminally naive have been known to eat meat pies unaccompanied. Those endowed with native wisdom will only eat an industrial meat pie if it is accompanied with mushy peas. These are marrowfat peas marinated in a solution of bicarbonate of soda and overcooked until they are reduced to a green puree. On contact with this substance the unstable atoms are neutralised.
Travellers visiting Lancashire should avoid putting themselves at risk. Avoid buying pies from street vendors, roadside food vans and stalls at sporting events. Sports events always arouse passions and none more so than soccer matches. Soccer crowds have been known to throw toilets rolls, coins, half eaten sandwiches, dead fish and molotov cocktails at match officials but there is no case on record of anybody throwing a meat pie at the referee. That would be too inhuman to contemplate. On the other hand, soccer crowds are known for insulting chants and the worst one, directed at any official or member of security staff who appears slightly overweight goes:
"Who ate all the pies?
Who ate all the pies?
You, fat bastard, You, fat bastard,
You ate all the pies."
The insult lies in the fact that the target is not only being accused of being so greedy he has deprived the paying spectators of their half time fun; watching the visiting team's supporters spontaneously combust after two or three bites of pie, but that he must have the constitution of a sewer rat in order to have survived such a feat.
On the issue of homeland security it is worth noting that Lancashire has never suffered a terrorist attack since the Vikings raided Shuttlebotham's pie factory in Oswaldtwistle and the resulting flatulence propelled them at each other with such force that all but two were fatally impaled on the horns on each others helmets. We say let Al Qaeda come with their dirty bombs, we will be ready for them with our pies of mass destruction and our local exponents of the science of fart lighting.
A portion of Hollands Meat Pie with mushy peas can produce up to ten farts with the brisance and explosive velocity of nuclear warheads on cruise missiles. ISIS you have been warned.
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Cheesier than Stinking Bishop?
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