Monday, March 23, 2009

Holding on to 'know thyself'

It's embarrassing I know, but I have never taken a trip. Of the psychotropic variety, that is. Everyone I know has done so, but somehow I missed out. I have no great philosophical objection to it all. Quite the opposite - so many people have told me that I really must do it that I've put the word out that if anyone comes across a goldtop mushie, pop it in some honey and give me a hoy. One day...

And yes, thank you, no need for anyone to pile in and tell me of the wickedness of this. I get it. A cousin of mine went out on a Friday night once and disappeared for three days. Finally he turned up in a casualty ward, naked, cut to pieces, and barking like a dog. No one knows quite what happened to him but it's assumed he took a trip. A bad one, obviously. Sure enough, he got better but he's now on a daily regimen of anti-schizophrenic drugs and will be for the rest of his life. That LSD (an industrial strength chemical concoction) is bad, in no way condemns the natural hallucinogens which ancient peoples have been taking under the guidance of elders for millennia. Natural v chemical. Tradition v the latest thing. Wisdom v no idea.


These dichotomies aside, if only my cousin had had someone like the father of a Swedish friend of mine. His father was an original hippy and had been there and done that, and he told his son that no one should take a trip until they're at least forty. It was his opinion that any earlier than this was dangerous, what with a young mind not quite having settled down into a solid variety of 'this-is-who-I-am', if you can dig it. For this original hippy, even thirty was too young.

I expect those of you reading, and who are in their forties, will get the concept. Me, I'm so glad I'm in my forties. Sure I miss the thoughtless physical health of my youth - the endless energy, the instant healing, the indestructibility, etc. But between that and me having a handle on who I am, I'll take the latter. And when I heard the Swedish hippy's advice it struck a chord. I got it. Had I heard it when I was thirty, say, I suspect I would have been too nebulous a concept for me. I may or may not have followed the advice depending on whether someone else said something different. "Nah! That's bullshit!" - "Um is it? Okay."

Being young is about not knowing what to think. As it was, my friend's Dad's advice was no do-or-die for me, what with already being past forty, and never having taken a trip anyway. But all that aside, the kernel within that advice is a thing worth rolling around in one's head and wondering at.

---

Along these lines, let's jump - to the word 'break', as in break, broke, broken. This can mean various things. In the context of 'The photocopier is broken', it could mean something as simple as a fuse being blown. No biggie, let's just call the repairman. But for that part of human existence that preceded photocopiers (and other diabolical machines), when a thing was broken it was necessarily in pieces. Think clay pots. You break a thing, and it becomes useless.

Funnily enough, with humans it's the other way around. You break them and suddenly they become really very useful. Perhaps the most useful thing there is. What sort of 'broken' is this? Think horses. A human can be broken just like a horse can be broken, same same. Which is to say, we break their will. (Now there's a word for you. What is one's 'will' in this sense? Hmm... 'the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action'. Not bad. But might we not call this 'knowing who one is'?)


When we break a horse, we break its will and it is no longer what it was. It is no longer its own master but instead is subject to us. What we broke was its definition of itself. And so it is with a human who is broken. A broken man, whether by someone else's hand, or mere circumstance (ie. 'After his son died he was a broken man'), loses his spark, his impetus, his definition of himself. And when one man breaks another it is invariably so he might subject that man to his own will. The man is redefined - servant to the fellow who broke him.

It's not just this being broken that humans and horses have in common. Were they to be released from their fealty each could recover their sense of themselves. A horse that escapes it's corral will turn wild again, which is to say rediscover itself as a horse. 'I am a horse! I run about! I root mares! I do whatever the fuck I like!' (Um, apologies for this being very 'male'. Certainly I could make it all non-sexist but the clunky syntax required would make it flow like a bucket of wet sand. Between flow, and catering to the rigidities of non-sexism, I choose the former. Words are one thing, and deeds are another. Oh wait, have I broken the flow here? D'oh!)

Where was I? Oh yes, breaking a man. It strikes me that this has been a constant throughout history - men breaking men in order to subject them to their will. Hmm... there's an book angle for you. "Men as Beasts - The History of Breaking the Human Will". Howard Zinn eat your heart out.

Anyway thank God we've left all that behind - master/servant - all that rubbish. Now we have freedom. Ha ha ha ha - as if! The motherfuckers of this world (psychopaths, whatever) have never quit. In much the same way that horses have been replaced by horsepower, breaking a man's will has likewise scientifically progressed to hitherto unimaginable heights. Which is to say, 'depths'.

For black-hearted secret organisations like the CIA et al, keen to have the world subject to their will, this ability to truly break a man, to make him act against his most deeply held principles, constitutes a variety of holy grail - Mind Control. If one could control a fellow's mind, who needs super powers? Bugger kryptonite - between being able to weaken Superman, and turning him into your biddable asset, it's a no-brainer. Or to put it another way - why would you shoot a horse when you could ride it instead?

---

And then there's MPD/DID. The acronym stands for Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder - the former is the old term and the latter the new one apparently. This is that old chestnut of fiction wherein two or more personae ('alters') exist within one mind. Think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, albeit with Hyde as an alter appearing merely by having his name called. In searching for a non-cinema metaphor, MPD/DID is to the breaking of the human will, what the Reserve Bank system is to your local loanshark.

And in much the same way that Reserve Banking's private ownership doesn't exist in the media, MPD/DID is similarly misrepresented as the fantastical stuff of fiction, not to be taken seriously. However, having read the account of witness X1 (amongst myriad others) from the Dutroux scandal, I now have MPD/DID down as non-fiction. Besides this, if you plug it into Dave McGowan's Programmed To Kill, and the battle between Recovered Memory Syndrome and the CIA's False Memory Syndrome, a 'what-the-fuck-is-going-on-here' picture starts to sharpen into something possessed of shape, colour, and form.

It seems we're permitted to know about MKultra and its assorted drug and hypnotism experiments. But perhaps this was merely a side-show to the true three ring circus of Operation Monarch. According to Ron Patton this involved Josef Mengele. We all roll our eyes - bloody Josef Mengele! More Boys From Brazil fiction! Yeah, maybe, maybe not.


Given that American practitioners of the black arts wholeheartedly embraced the personnel of Japan's Unit 731 (and their experiments in biological warfare), the default position would have to be 'why wouldn't they?'. That the Germans pursued Mind Kontrolle like the Americans pursued mind control is beyond plausible. That they did this in concentration camps with the prisoners as experimental subjects, likewise. It's precisely what the Japanese did with 731. And Mengele? Why not? Every other goddamn thing about the Holocaust has been misrepresented, why not him too? It's perfectly possible that the various stories of him in Brazil were complete fiction. The Boys From Brazil certainly was.

What if we were to call MKultra a search for a drug induced shortcut to MPD/DID? And it seems the shortcut, by way of LSD, failed. LSD, in breaking the link between reality and fantasy, seems only to produce less than useful casualties like my cousin. No problems, if LSD doesn't provide the answer, move on. And since it's not addictive and thus unlikely to produce the staggering profits of smack, coke, and meth, then it isn't really worth pursuing. If there's any proof to be found in one's own microcosm, I have encountered all three of above and yet never bumped into LSD. The experiment is over and it no longer suits the motherfuckers to have it out there.

So they chucked in MKultra. But there's no way they chucked in the search for mind control. For motherfuckers, this holy grail will never lose its appeal. Best to stick with the tried and true - smashing the psyche of the young. Certainly that one can take a child, brutalise them, and turn them into killers is old hat. Evidence of it is everywhere, from Sparta of yore, to China's Cultural Revolution, right through to the Congo of today.


But we are white men. As if we couldn't come up with something better than Africa's blank-eyed child killers. Even Henry Lee Lucas and his grand guignol slaughterfests, whilst serving a definite purpose, leave a lot to be desired. Really, MPD/DID is the go. To be able to take a mind and fracture it into discrete entities each capable of different things answers the brief pretty well. And yeah yeah, suffering beyond comprehension, a mind smashed to pieces, with only a shell remaining - like motherfuckers give a shit.

And so we arrive at X1, and all those like her. She survived and with help is attempting to reconstruct herself. You'd have to wish her luck in her endeavours to find peace of mind. There but for the grace of God etc. etc. But I suspect she's in a minority of those MPD/DID victims who escaped their snuff film fate. Who knows how many went on to inflict their own misery upon others?

---

Did anyone read Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy? The magic of Earthsea pivoted on everything having a secret name. This name was always guarded since possession of this knowledge gave one power over whomever it was. When I read this book, way back when, I greeted this concept with a shrug. Nice idea, but as best I could tell it seemed to have no great connection to anything. Not anymore. Now I really wonder at it. It's a precise description of the mechanism by which an MPD/DID slave is controlled. Curious. Never mind a shrug, now I shake my head. Did Ursula LeGuin just fluke this?

---

In amongst this sordid trip through MPD/DID, the thought occurred to me (since I'm that sort of fellow) 'What if it was me being subjected to this?'. Would I cope? Or succumb? If someone wanted to split my mind, would they succeed? Could I hold on to my will, my sense of myself?

In turning this thought around, the phrase 'know thyself' popped into my head. It's an oldie but a goodie that I'd never taken beyond face value. Like LeGuin's secret names, I'd merely shrugged - know thyself - um, okay, sure, why not? But under the light of MPD/DID, 'know thyself' now seems fraught with meaning. Madly, I wonder if it might not originally have been a warning from an ancient sage familiar with some antediluvian version of mind control. Hmm... an unlikely prospect. And besides, surely the MPD/DID variety of smashing-of-the-will must necessarily be restricted to a tiny number of people. Statistically individuals like X1 couldn't comprise more than a tiny fraction of one percent of the population.

Not so fast! Perhaps this isn't an either/or proposition? Perhaps it's another continuum? What if people like X1 were merely the furthest extreme on a bell curve? (So extreme, that in much the same way that statisticians reject such extreme anomalies under the 2.3 standard deviations rule, we too do likewise and reject it as a subject too far. We really just don't want to go there). Back to this continuum now, isn't our sense of know-thyself under a daily assault? In fact, couldn't we describe everything we're on about here - from Adbusters' simple sense of dislocation, through to the Protocols plans of destruction for everything 'not them' - as an assault on our ability to know-thyself? What is the media (Hollywood, games, advertising - all the same thing) apart from a machine that does precisely this? Isn't it our sense of know-thyself suffering death by a thousand cuts?

And then there's who the media is aimed at. It ain't me, that's for sure. One doesn't have to spend very long immersed in the media before realising it's almost entirely directed at the young. As with MPD/DID, when assaulting know-thyself it pays to start young. Otherwise, not so long ago there was no such thing as 'youth culture'. A single generation ago people would have understood each of these words separately but to connect them would have had them scratching their heads. Ha! Now that I think about it, 'youth culture' is a perfect oxymoron. With culture being a thing that develops slowly over countless generations, how could 'youth' and 'culture' possibly be put together in any sensible fashion? Honestly?


Regardless, the media relentlessly beats young people about the head with perverse ideas of who they should imagine themselves to be. A lot of it is connected with turning them into hell-bent consumers, sure enough. So what's up with the media's relentless sexualisation? What does this have to do with consumerism? Whether eight year olds are wearing g-strings or granny pants, the money would flow regardless. So what are our kids being made into? And why?

And whilst this is a long way from what was done to X1, it's still the same road with everyone being shepherded towards the same destination, with know-thyself receding ever further into the distance.

Between our venerable Swedish hippy urging his son to wait until he's forty, and the CIA handing out vast quantities of LSD; between parents hoping for a 'normal' family and the media's mad deification and sexualisation of children; and between peace, love, and understanding, and the endless inculcation of us-and-them with death to towelheads - could we not define all of these as a struggle to hold on to know-thyself?

Am I the only person to ask some variation of the question, 'Is this my country?', or better still, "Who are we?'. I don't think so.

Whilst it's early days for yours truly with this line of thought (with much work to be done), could we describe Siddhartha Gautama's ascension to Buddha-dom as him arriving at a complete state of know-thyself? For mine, it's inescapable that the ultimate truth of know-thyself is that we are one with the universe. The black opposite of this, desired by those who would break us/break our will, is that we each become our own universe. Thus we become individual, self-obsessed molecules bouncing off each other in a state of complete chaos. We lack all coherency - in both meanings of the word. It's a smashing of our 'one-ness'. Whether this one-ness is within our own heads, à la X1, or collectively, as in our sense of community, I'll posit that it's all the same thing.

I have no idea if that Swedish hippy dad quite knew what he was doing when he passed on his advice to his son. And never mind the specificity of it as being about psychotropic drugs. That's a useful thing to know, sure. But above that, his words and the wisdom that underlies them are pure gold, perhaps the only thing worth knowing. Thyself. Within this lies everything. If one could pass on one single thing to one's child, says I, this is it.

28 comments:

su said...

But to know thyself is to lose complete identification with the body/mind mechanism.
A child on the outward bound adventure of life has to be the body and the mind, it is only later on in life whereby one become willing to challenge that assumption and thus know thyself.

But you are right - I don't want to teach my kids his-story, or geography or actually anything. I want to empty their minds of all this stuff that leads them to believe they are waves instead of knowing themselves to be the ocean.

Brilliant article Nobody. Totally inspired. Did not go and look at any depth into the subject of mind control, have skirted the issue but know well enough not to feed this mind too much information.

Anonymous said...

Drugs of all sort are easily availeable in the UK and people are happy to experiment on themselves using multi-drug and alcohol combinations. I always
presumed it was easy to get hold of stuff in most locations. Using some drugs it is possible to find out more about yourself and how things are but this can come
at a cost, which is not always easy to see. In my case I did it rather young, but it was my choice and I don't regret it. I think people are never the same as they
were before the experience and some don't come back properly at all, as in your cousins case, or the 'everyday' can look a bit shit, so you don't want to be
the good drone anymore. Sometimes the drugs have not worked in 'their' favour.

Know thyself' How much are people encouraged to take the time to reflect on things in life? Things don't seem to be aimed that way here. I knew a person who hated being alone because he said he started thinking about stuff, so he prefered to be continually distracted.

I think you are spot on with the observation that the media is aimed at the young; get them early and repeat a lie often enough, teach them how they should interact and what things to aspire to and a moral code. The control of the media now extends over generations. Multi generations of brainwashed people and who knows what lies we still believe?

Innocence is lost pretty quick what with internet porn for a teacher and all, but maybe this just comes round and round
as for example until 1885 the age legal of consent for girls was 13 in the UK and I expect this has fluctuated throughout history. Too much to go into here and all.

The sexualisation of young'uns does seem to have altered noticeably in the last few years, why is this and in whose favour does it work? It might be good to
have the manchurian candidates or it might be good to have a brainwashed population, probably better to have both and more.

Anonymous said...

Great article. I have bumped into all those drugs. LSD was fun and sometime in the mid 1990s it just disappeared. Had to go to shrooms. A good book is "Supernatural" by Graham Hancock. All on ancient shaminism and "trips". He noticed that no matter the time, place or person all experiences have very common themes with natural psycotropic drugs.

Anonymous said...

Excellent! I believe (hope) there are more people looking around and saying this with you and me. Think! They have a hydron-collider CERN and want to ''smash'' the proton, find the God particle! Huh? You've smashed everything to filth and uselessness for life, why go for the title of ''designer of reality,'' which they are not. . . Can they conceive of creating themselves? Then they are the Creator? Maybe they could seek the answer to that and see what they get first, before they guinea pig-nazi experiment us all off the planet! That is it in symbolic terms, smash it or take it apart even if ya don't know how to put it back together again, something Ron Hubbard's son noted about his Dad's process. A group wanted an idea to put something in my mind and have something manifest out of it. I'm so broken that they DIDN'T CARE how I felt while they did it . . . or how I would ever trust someone again that to me, it's out of the question. It's leaving with the End of the Age. It is the reason we ''fell'' or separated from God! We wanted to be His Father. We are emanations made in his image and we create like Him. But we are NOT Creator - and our function is limitless in creating, but not in creating Creation! And if you cannot create it, you shouldn't break it!

nobody said...

Hats off folks. Excellent comments. Given that I wouldn't know how to comment on this myself (since, like I said, I'm still turning it around in my brain), I was curious to see what other people would say. Assuming that they'd have anything to say at all, ha ha.

Obviously, I have no definitive answers, only questions.

Hey Susana, there's a lot in your first sentence there and I'm not sure that I get it. But if I was to say that mind and body are the same thing (yet another nebulous thought in the making) would that make sense? As for not teaching your kids all the stuff that they jam in our heads at school, I can see two sides to this. It's good insofar as school will jam it in their heads anyway. And it's bad insofar as I think all manner of things are worth knowing, if for no other reason than to give one the opportunity to say, 'I am not that.' This is a negative thought sure, but it's helpful in fine-tuning 'This is who I am.' The main thing is that all the 'stuff' that's taught is done so under the rubric of 'Test this for yourself and see if there's truth in it for you.' Does that sound fair? (Sure enough, it's me paraphrasing Buddha, ha ha).

And thanks John and the anons. Perhaps in this case drugs, sexualisation, and porn are all one and the same thing. I hope I don't get into trouble saying this, but I can imagine them assisting one understand mind-and-body provided that there's a context. All of them are now saturating the lives of young people yet utterly stripped of context. We leap in with no idea what we're doing and merely keep our fingers crossed in the hope that we walk away unscathed.

In much the same way that one's first trip would ideally be done with a sage fellow like the Swedish hippy to guide you, (as opposed to in a carpark at McDonalds, or some other insert-inappropriate-location-here, with a bunch of fellow cluelesses), one would hope that one's first sexual experience was likewise with someone caring who had your best interests at heart, as opposed to some worthless self-obsessed git. (Or, God forbid, the beasts of the pedophocracy).

Hmm... here's the thought process in real time -

Looking back, I failed to mention the word 'teacher'. Given that the topic was 'know thyself', and also given that I gave prominence to the Swedish hippy (who was clearly teaching his son), the concept and role of teacher is obviously central. Yet it failed to occur to me, ha ha.

Perhaps the angle I should have taken would be something along the lines of the disappearance of the teaching of children in any fashion beyond that of government curriculum. Or perhaps this is merely another sideline to support the central thesis? It certainly represents a further fracturing of our ability to know-thyself.

I'm perfectly certain that the role of shaman/guide in the Indian tribes was a significant one. That individual seems not to exist anymore. Now the drugs are handed out willy-nilly and we're urged merely to 'go for it'. The best we can hope for, is for some fellow to tell us to stay away from the brown acid. This is an improvement on 'Just say no', but not by much.

We have no elders. We have no guides. Not beyond the self-appointed that is.

Anyway, I'll keep at it and see if I get any closer to making sense of it all.

---

Otherwise does anyone know the derivation of the word 'charisma'? You might want to look it up. It's fascinating and utterly not what I expected. Ciao Ciao.

Anonymous said...

What your brother got was not real LSD, probably BZ or something else, perhaps a type of rat poison - - at one time that was being sold believe it or not as LSD. Some people should never drink a beer, should we ban it. I can vouch for the power of etheogens. Salvia Divinorum, legal in the USA until this year and considered divinity itself by the Mazatec Indians, has a powerful antidepressive effect at low doses. Thus, although only one nut case kid who killed himself had a mother blaming Salvia (and no other reported incidents - although all drugs shld be banned to those under 21) it is now banned in nearly all states and often classified the same as heroin. Hear the drug companies cheering. The drug war is a farce as DEA Agent Castillo proved in his book powder burns, the government is bringing in the cocaine to finance black ops against democratically elected governments (Castillo is currently being framed on a phoney bs charge - - biz as usual ask Gary Webb, suicide by shooting himself twice while writing a book on who is behind the cocaine trade. Think Bush, CIA, Skull & Bones etc. wld be my informed opinion as x military and law enforcement.

annemarie said...

Hallo nobody ;)

Know thyself. Heal thyself.

Among the finest of words they are.

Also relates to what Jiddu Krishnamurti says about knowing ourselves being the most essential learning we can do. And how until we know or are aware of who we really are, our thoughts are mostly (or all?) lies. Man, I hope I'm describing adequately what he wrote. Probably not! But it's so beautiful, so simple yet profound, and it resonates sooooo much.

btw, for some possible answers to some of those questions you posed inre the sexualization of children, you might want to check out Celtic Rebel's blog? Here's the link if you are innerested:

http://celticrebel.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/sunday-night-fox-hole/

Oh fuck, please don't get me started on public education or the mega-shit that passes for it these days! Cripes I thought that the bollocks they filled our heads with back in the "olden" days was bad. haha But some of it was actually useful, practical or helpful. !

btw, charisma has OE and German roots and is an utterly divine word ;) however, something which wasn't indicated in my dictionaries but which I noticed is that it also contains the word "char" which is French for flesh or skin. fwiw

Anyhow, just dropping by to say "hey" and thanks for writing. Ciao, later,

p.s. this might be the link/guy that Penny was referring to a couple of posts back?

http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/

A hidden holocaust of Aboriginals in Canada.

nobody said...

AM! Always lovely to have you drop in. Thanks for that. I'll check out that link tomorrow. Right now it's night and I'm sitting out the back of the cafe shivering. It's 20℃. Brrr.

And charisma with OE roots? I thought it was Greek via latin. Now I'm confused. Hmm... more digging. Mind you, there's nothing I enjoy more than following word trails.

And hey anon. I can dig it all. And speaking of insanely huge topics - drugs! For mine this piles in with my point. Drugs as they stand (ie. stripped of context) are a lucky dip. Who knows what you're getting? In the original natural context you'd know where they came from. Your shaman would function as a variety of guarantee. And even when you know what you're getting you don't know what you're getting, if you can dig it. LSD is safe? Like aspartame is safe? I really don't groove on chemicals. And yeah yeah, I've taken them and had a delirious time but honestly, the less the better. I like to stick with things that grow in the ground. Otherwise, banned for under 18's - absolutely. Even the mildest drug is a bad idea for teenagers.

Can I just say that I'm down with the Buddha when he said that drugs cloud your mind? He's right you know. I look forward to a time when I've quit all of them. Coffee, tabacco, alcohol and joints. I've done it before and felt beyond brilliant. And shall again!

ciao ciao

su said...

Nobody,
Yes there was a whole lot in the first sentence but forgive me for not
expounding.
Suffice to say that this body is just a bundle of energy and sensations and this mind is just a bundle of conditioning and memories, and we think it is who we are - this insignificant rotting piece of flesh when in fact what we are is.........
(let you know when I know)

As far as schooling. The past week these beings in my care have been in the process of building a 3 tier tree house. The proviso was that no nails would go into the tree. So a certain amount of creativity and ingenuity has happened. There has been harmony between four of them during this process, despite working together for the entire day. They have also had to wake up early to sneak disused planks out of rotting piles, protected by anal owners who are just too lazy to get it to the dump. This to me is learning, practical maths, social skills, etc. And each day one of them takes a turn to make lunch. Yesterday one of them made Goose ravioli (not that I go for reincarnation but I am sure he was in some French Court).
Then there are masses of books on various subjects in the class room which they peruse in their time. So they only learn what they want to learn. But the strangest thing is they are learning non stop. Without that 50 minute bell forcing one into a different zone.
The only subjects that they are compelled to do are maths and science and luckily they have a passion for these.
Anyway I am probably fucking up but it feels right and they are thriving so I guess it is as it is.

As far as psychotropic drugs I have had a few adventures. When I take acid (don't like the dankness of shrooms), I find a patch of earth and sit there for 10 hours. Perfectly content with this miniscule universe around me. The grass talks to one and one can see the energy flowing in absolutely everything. Even shoes. Never wild hallucinations rather just absolute heightened perceptions.
So I recommend it, but as per all powerful medicines I think one needs to fast for a few days beforehand so that what emerges is clean and not toxic.
And you can't believe what happens to the stars on this trip. My god there are so many more of them and they move around a lot.
On that note, the treehouse calls.

nobody said...

Ha ha ha. That was so cool. The joys of a tree house. How brilliant. And thanks for those tips Susanna. I shall keep them in mind for that day in the future.

Anonymous said...

Hey Nobody
You'll be happy to know I've made the 'watch' list at the Bris. airport.
Last two times I have been stopped: Nail scissors in carry on luggage, Handling of explosives on second time.
Both times firstly, refused to comply then told guards to get a proper job; absolutely threw them both times and they fluffed each inspection. The explosive fellow dropped his test pad half way through inspection, picked it up with his bare fingers and returned it to the wand and continued the inspection. When I said that he could have been handling explosives he said if returns positive I was for the big one. I almost called his supervisor but didn't as the mate I was traveling with gets cranky at my 'antics'. It’s all a big joke isn’t it. I’ll mention them working for idiot Nick next time. That bloke couldn’t organise a … well you know… in a brothel.
No explosives; went on my way with a few well chosen (polite) words to the guard.
Loved it. I'll try to do something outrageous next time. Any suggestions?
I've seen big (2m) foam scissors around somewhere, might take a pair of them home (as carry on luggage) for my grandchild next time I fly.
Think if everybody did something like this- planes would be held up, tempers would fray, etc.- absolute schemozzle.
Tonyeydrater

Penny said...

hey nobody:

I left my post for this one, in the wrong place, surprise, and how I managed that who the hell knows.
If you find it can you put it here?
Or maybe I did get it here
whatever?

annemarie: thanks, that was the fellow I was talking about, still can't remember his name but, yeah that is his website, thanks for posting that.

horrid stuff really.

c.j said...

Nobody,
Hi mate c.j here.Can you imagine for a moment the magnitude of the lie if you come to consider that possibly there never was no Moon landing at all.I remmember reading an article pointing out the computers they were using then were the equivalent of what you get on most cars today but still totally inadequate for one such an undertaking then there is all that stuff about the wind-flag-thing and no propulsion crater under the rockets it was all a manufactured lie directed by Kubrick was it his name?
Think about it mate and then say what if it is true these fuckers never went anywhere....
See ya in K.L mate.
c.j

Anonymous said...

Hello Mister Nobody
Just a quick pop-in.
Have you been keeping up with all of the special people I've been meeting here in the good ol' US of A.
My soul mate Barrock, the bankster Robert Zoellick (with my fist in the air I told him to ‘purge the toxic waste’) and Mister Bush's mate Robert Gates- I wonder why Baruk kept him- never mind we are the best of pals.
And we had a wonderful win in Queensland as well and (this came to me in a flush) I think we will outsource the Education portfolio to Macas and... and...
It's all so exciting I think I'll stay OS a little longer (Mister Nobody, I don't know myself- I’m important!).
Your PM KMR etc. etc.

nobody said...

Hello Pen,

For some reason this pasted to 'An Evil Time and Place'. Which made sense but I did wonder why you were posting in a place only I would see. Anyway -

Penny said...

WAs just thinking aloud, but, wondering, television, msm. vido games and it's influence on young minds

Is one benefit of this never allowing kids to learn exactly who they are?

I know kids,that define themselves by fads, they just move on to the next fad, if it is popular they are into it.

Example, they really like the spice girls, then they really like Britney Spears, then they really like -insert fad- whom or whatever?

In this way does television as a medium prevent the young from learning anything about themselves to form an appropriate identity, so when they move into adulthood they are completely fucked.

They don't know who they are, they have no thoughts of their own. They have no morals and stand for nothing.

Because as the matured they should have been learning life lessons that would have strengthened them.
But robbed of opportunities by media and video, they don't.

Making them ultra-maleable?

I don't know, just a thought!

nobody said...

Anyway good comments. Tony what a wicked fellow you are. I would never do that. Which is to say I am absurdly cooperative. I just like to talk constantly whilst they're at it. My favourite topic is liquid bombs. The absence of any actual terror attacks is Australia is good too. If they bring up Bali tell them that two Indonesian ex-Presidents, Abdurrahmin Wahid and BJ Habibie, declared that the Bali bombing was TNI, which is to say Indonesian security. But then again, what would they know? They were only the presidents of the country.

Otherwise I get picked every time too. For bombs. I'm cool with it since they absolutely won't find anything and besides that it gives me a nice segue into liquid bombs.

Hey cj. I don't know which way to go on this one. But I do find it curious that several times they've had it within their means to knock the argument on the head - either with hubble or with that European probe, for which they actually announced that they'd be able to photograph the landing sites and prove once and for all that it was real. And? And nothing, we're still waiting. As it is I keep an open mind.

And Pen. Of course, that's what I've been on about all this time. Do you not ever go to the cinema blog? Apart from David Attenborough I'm given to thinking TV is entirely crap. The more you watch, the stupider you get. Sure enough, of all my nieces and nephews, the only two that I like (cruel of me, I know) are not allowed to watch TV. They are the most well-rounded and charming kids I know.

And the PM! Long time no see. How are you? Aside from all the brilliant footage, you must be very pleased with the results from the Queensland (which is to say Brigalow Corporation) elections. Just by way of feather-in-the-cap, that is. I'm sure you'd have worked just as well with whomever would have got the nod from the bankers.

Otherwise, I hope you didn't catch too much shit for the leaking of the banned website list. There we were leading the world in shutting down the net and some fucker had to leak it all! Honestly you can't get good help these days. Anyway, tell that Keelty he'll have to earn his pay. The good thing about Keelty is that he may not be very bright, but at least he's utterly corrupt. Oh, and the leaked list was disappeared from wikileaks! Whacko the diddle-oh! Obviously some people CAN get good help.

PS I recall something about Therese scoring a billion dollars or somesuch. Marvellous, Marvellous. Who said politics doesn't pay? It was politics wasn't it? Something like that...

nobody said...

PPS. Sorry I've been a bit distracted lately. I've been juggling the twin propositions of, a) the medical fraternity as people interested in my father's health, and b), the medical fraternity as uncaring, lazy, greedhead shills for big Pharma, and wondering if there's any evidence for the former at all. None so far. Anyway I feel a bonzo-zonko, warpath rant coming on...

Penny said...

sorry nobody, I don't go to the cinema blog, maybe I should?

notamobster said...

Hey Nobes! Charisma, you say? Divine favor...

No shit... the proto-indian root gher- who'da thunk it? Garden, fruit, kitchen... (Horticulture) nice. The power to influence, via horticulture? Or is that how you find the divine favor?

Inre: "know thyself" I am not very good with deeply exploring many topics (bit of attention deficit, me thinks). I dig just long enough to find the truth that satisfies the position I was predisposed to in the beginning. It's an horrible habit. I have a deep longing for the truth, and an insatiable appetite for finding it, but then... oooh look, a hummingbird.

Where was I? Ah, the distractions. I got this great powerpoint this morning of naked women. You should've heard the music set in the background.

Distractions, sir. I absolutely think you're on to something. Keep the mind in a cluttered, discombobulated mess and one can never truly know themselves, and thus - the truth will ever elude them.

NOTA

nobody said...

Hello Pen,

Certainly you should go there! It is the greatest cinema blog since that fellow invented the ballcock.

And NaM, there you are! I was wondering where'd you'd gotten to. I'm glad you sound chipper. Otherwise the problem with all this constant stream of small distractions is that stop us getting on with the big distractions.

And do you have hummingbirds where you are? Cool. For mine, a hummingbird is not a distraction. Between it and the TV (amongst myriad other things) the hummingbird wins.

Hmm... hummingbird as avatar of truth and beauty. Why not?

the Silverfish said...

My friend you have not lived untill you have had a hummingbird sitting on your finger and telling you in it's own sweet little way" get with the plan asshole, the feeders almost empty", Get it".

And as far as never having taken a chemical trip, good on yuh. Seeing the world through a chemicaly induced haze, well it's not the answer no matter what the question was.

nobody said...

Me yesterday - "I wonder why Silv hasn't popped in to bag out drugs". Don't worry mate, you and the Buddha. Sorry I haven't written back. I'll drop you a line soon-ish. I'm wrestling with the latest piece. It was meant to be possessed of universality but came out all self-obsessed. The usual story...

Anonymous said...

Look Mister Nobody I'm sitting next to
Mister Whatsisname, you know from England.
Mister Nobody, I'm so important these days.
Re Therese's billions?? No, no, only hundreds of MILLIONS Mister Nobody- a mere pittance.
This' just so exciting.
Your PM KMR

nobody said...

PM!

Kind of you to find time in your busy schedule. And yes I did notice your double act with Gordon Brown-Note. Do you like that name? I think it's spot on. It works on so many levels don't you think. Mostly those from the waist down sure enough...

Otherwise I note in today's Oz that Sarkozy beat you to a punch that really should've been yours. He spat the dummy and insisted he wouldn't participate in G20 unless they agreed to introduce a global one-world something or other. Ha ha ha! Such 'independence'! Brilliant.

I was about to say that it's a shame you didn't think of it but it occurred to me that Sarkozy didn't think of it either. In much the same way that Mulroney and Howard were accidentally given the same speech, this role was probably handed to Sarkozy on account of domestic pressures. And you certainly have none of those! More popular than Bob Hawke! Good God, the things you can achieve with Rupes in your corner.

Anyway, you're doing marvellously and I hope you enjoy your junket.

PS Yes, only $300 million. What was I thinking of? $300 million is still well within the bounds of 'working families'.
PPS Speaking of Therese, does she choose her own clothes? Hmm... there's a line she hasn't crossed yet, ie. looking like a complete idiot, but she certainly skates close. Not quite Li Lin Chin territory yet but not far off. Anyway I'll keep an eye out in the hopes of a guffaw.

Anonymous said...

With some of the expressions Our PM conjures up for the camera I do think he took lessons from Norman Gunston. (One of his best interviews)
Tony
ps and re Therese; you know to copy/mirror your mark (Li Lin Chin) is one of the salespersons most flattering tools in his/her bag of tricks.

nobody said...

Hey Tony,

Sure. I watch SBS but really it's indistinguishable from the other news programmes. It runs the precise pre-packaged news that's on CNN, Fox, the BBC, all of them. The only reason I choose it over 7,9, and 10 is because we're spared the idiot surf/snow/weather reporters.

Spin said...

I've had a very confusing week this week. I'm 21 and a journalism student and have experienced drugs in many different ways. Your blog randomly came up in a search I did and I was shocked to find you asking some of the same questions which have been racking my brain the last few days. It is interesting reading an point of view from a different generation. I know that I have been trying to fight the system for so long and totally disagree with the way we are taught in schools and become statists rather than people. I don't really know where I'm going with this but my brain has been suitably pickled and it was an interesting read.
Thanks

nobody said...

Journalism student, eh? Why don't I throw this at you and you can have a think about it. It's from Gary Webb who was an interesting fellow -

"If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me ... I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could I possibly agree with people like Noam Chomsky and Ben Bagdikian, who were claiming the system didn't work, that it was steered by powerful special interests and corporations, and existed to protect the power elite? And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress..."