Gone

It was with some sadness that I read recently of the "functional" extinction of the Yangtze River Dolphin. I had a look at several news sites on the Internet. One in particular annoyed me. Not so much the editorial as the comments.

Someone had left a comment saying that extinction is happening all the time and that it is a part of natural selection and that the dolphin's extinction was just the result of its inability to adapt and therefore a necessary result of its unsuitability for survival. Survival of the fittest.

I wanted to make a long sarcastic reply, framed in business terms, about market economies and making room at the top for new blood, and how the dolphin had a fair crack of the whip but after twenty million years had failed to achieve results, and that therefore natural selection demanded that it be removed. That there are, as they say, two types of businesses; the quick, and the dead.

I also wanted to make a comment how other species were failing to be seen in China because of pollution and their inability to adapt to it, and the consequent fact that they were unfit and weak: that they were absent because they couldn't compete in the industrial landscape of modern China. I mean of course Olympic athletes.

It doesn't matter how aggressive, get-ahead, and cunning you are, it doesn't lessen the pity of something living that is lost for ever for no good reason, whether it is a natural process or not. What a tosser.

Noah

Today's thoughts have centred around all the unhappy people of Britain who have been flooded out of their homes. Understandably they are angry. They want to kick the government for not preventing the floods.

But some of the problems with flood defences include: a) they make water move faster and give it more energy and therefore destructive force; b) the don't stop floods; just move them somewhere else, downstream.

On the news they lamented the great clean up once the rain subsides. But what if it doesn't? Imagine if we have huge swathes of wetlands again like their used to be; the fens in the East; and somerset was once pretty much under water.

It's ironic that we are told that the current wet weather and floods are not unusual and have happened before. True. But in the old days people were not as useless as we are today. Witness the chaos with electricity, water, and food hoarding that is happening in the south.

Imagine if the rain doesn't stop. Imagine if the rain brings the average local temperature down. Imagine if later in the year as the Earth moves away from the sun that the continuous rain turns to snow. Imagine that the snow never melted. How long would it take for an ice age to start? It would not be unusual and it has happened before.

And then there is all the talk about new housing: build it all on flood plains but put in adequate flood defenses (to move the floods somewhere else). I see new houses everywhere. In every nook and cranny of Britain there is a housing development. There must be millions of the fuckers.

At first I couldn't work out why: where were the houses that were being replaced? But of course it does make sense in the short term: keep a steady supply of properties fed into the market and the bubble burst will be delayed. And of course there are the 9 million immigrants to Britain who've arrived over the last five years.

Sometimes I have thoughts now that would have horrified my younger self. That last sentence in my previous paragraph is a perfect example. It almost smells of something horrid. But, you see, I have no innate dislike of Eastern Europeans. We're all genetic and cultural brethren, so why should I? Even if we weren't, why should I dislike them? I'm not that sort of person.

And besides, those people are prepared to come here, to this grey unpleasant land, and work hard, pay taxes, buy houses, and thus subsidise the digital lifestyles of all the native British who have ideas above their station and wouldn't do those jobs anyway even if they wanted to, and who are otherwise too busy spending the living-that-they-feel-is-owed-them, paid in dole, on drugs and the latest mobile gadget technology or wide-screen TVs.

Do you ever get the feeling that we're being led by the government into a state in which xenophobia is acceptable?

When I got up this morning I looked out of the window and saw the rain. It always makes me laugh how people salve and pamper their consciences with the argument that, actually, global warming is not our fault and that it is somehow a natural process. Well, lack of evidence has never been proof of a contrary in the book of logic. "All swans are white" was ostensibly true, until someone went to Australia where there are black and black-and-white swans as well as white ones. But that's human nature for you.

Personally I'd rather that it was our fault: at least then there is hope that we can do something about it. But people can't bare the thought of having to get rid of those mobiles, wide-screen TVs, and four-by-fours. And saying, "it's not our fault. We can't do anything to stop it." is indeed the perfect excuse to carry on fiddling while Rome burns.

I hear too that the head of ITN has had to resign because of the companies involvement in these phone-in scams. People feign shock that a well known corporation could be dishonest. I have to smile. Business Studies students upwards know that deception and dishonesty are the stock-in-trade of success. They're all doing it darling. And they always have done, right back through history.

There have always been people who have taken things unfairly from others to improve their own lot. It's all a part of our simian nature and being competitive. The man at ITN who has had to resign is just unlucky and hapless: wrong place at the wrong time. There are very few businesses that are not acting unfairly: all is fair in love and war. And commerce.

And just when I'd started to sound as though it is all doom and gloom here, I want to point out the Robot Fly. Unfortunately instead of realising what a delightful, exquisite and pointless triumph of humanity this is, they've gone and spoiled it by stating that it can be used to "provide discreet surveillance, detect hazardous materials, and disrupt battlefield communications."

You see, no matter how like angels in apprehension we become, we can still never resist the temptation to mark our territory with steaming ape shit, screech and woop, and wave sticks at the other monkeys across the river. We are still stupid, selfish, and primitive. One day, evolution will bring some sort of nemesis upon us. That's the way of nature.

Twinkle twinkle little star

A couple of nights ago I was staring up into the night sky when I saw a flash of light. It was in, or around, the position of the star Theta Aquilae. At first I guessed it must have been a spinning satellite that flickered, but it wasn't; it was a singular event. Very bright too.

So was it an iridium flare or not? It didn't appear to move; that's the trouble. Most satellites I see are sustained across some portion of the sky, or at least a flashing trail a little bit like a slow high white aeroplane.

I had seen an extremely fast meteor shortly before, heading in a Southerly direction. Obviously the radiant would be different but it did occur to me that this might also have been a meteor that just happened to be aimed directly at me.

Or maybe it was something altogether stranger.

Modern

When I open my electronic mailbox I am usually greeted with the usual signs of the pointlessness and emptiness of typical modern existence: offers, in poor English, of cheaper drugs that might help me to remain aroused when I am otherwise lacking arousal or too unfit to get it up; shares in some far eastern business that are about to go "big"; quality fake watches at a good price. It's very underwhelming.

You know my take on virtual things (making a clear distinction between flights of the imagination and sheer pay-as-you-go preconceived-by-someone-else virtual reality).

This morning I've started to read a new book. It's philosophy from the thirteenth century. The prefatory note comes by way of an apology by the editor in which he attempts to say that there is something worthwhile in investigating a set of works that are based upon thought that is acknowledged by everyone who does not wonder at the shape of the clouds (my italics and quote) as being substantially wrong.

I speak of the dichotomy between metaphysics and empiricism; religion and science; feelings and facts; emotion and reason; care and competition. You dig my drift, I hope.

I have never had a problem squaring the circle and accommodating both belief sets into my world picture. I like to think that perhaps I am a bit of a freak in that way, but probably it is just vanity on my part.

But the thought is that perhaps I am going to find something rather lovely in the cobwebby outmoded thoughts of this man who lived in the middle-ages.

In the meantime, on my way to work, I derived great pleasure from imagining my hands around the neck of the driver who behaved so aggressively and unreasonably in trying to get one car space in front of me. Hands around neck, until their face turns blue, and all the naughtiness pops out of their skull along with their phallus-pumped popping eye-balls.

Like an angel in apprehension

In a freakish accident involving seafood they received a technological complexity that allowed them to metamorphose their habitat into a strange buffered half-reality, a layer removed from danger and want, a layer of superficial sophistication.

However their true imperative was to spray the graffiti of their individual genetic logos all over the innards of their own kind at every opportunity.

This was the uncomfortable basis of their species' paradox and the unanswerable Sphinxian riddle of their own existence.

Manufactured

Suddenly it became impossible to be informal.

There were no jokes anymore. No space for laughing or irony.

There was no slack in the schedule to ensure there was enough scope to complete the necessary tasks.

There was not enough time to complete the work and it had to be left with loose ends.

Those who took pride in their work; those who tried to plan ahead and pre-empt problems, were seen to be dragging their heels, seen to be slow, lazy and awkward, and were stigmatised as trouble makers.

A matrix of monitoring was imposed to prove that there were no serious problems.

Success was then dependant upon smooth completion of monitoring. Statistics became their primary responsibility.

The paperwork had boxes for ticks where customers could express their delight. Those who couldn't obtain the relevant ticks were re-deployed out-of-the-way where they might become disgruntled and depart of their own accord.

It became essential to cover up problems as far as possible.

It wasn't exactly a blame culture. More a case of being seen to be competent; being someone who could smile and assure others that there were no problems; getting the right ticks.

And it wasn't about dishonesty. It was more about managing expectations and shielding customers from inappropriate and irrelevant interruptions to their delight with the service they had received.

Eventually it reached the point where the actual work was irrelevant. The business consisted entirely of maintaining relationships with smiles and assurances; papering over cracks and keeping the paintwork fresh, even if the underlying framework was rather shaky.

Ultimately a team of legislative marketing consultants was groomed and applied to the task of stripping everything back so that no time or money was wasted on non-core activities. Efficiency demanded only those features that were not irredeemably criminal and which did not spoil the tick system.

(illegal activities were acceptable so long as they could be remedied when detected. Activities that generated dissatisfaction were also encouraged provided they increased revenue and didn't adversely affect the monitoring of customer satisfaction via ticking.)

Everything had transformed. There were no colleagues or partners anymore. We were all customers of everybody else. Consumers of immaculate service. Unshakable and sturdy as any great dogma in history.

A day in the life

The day started off with a wish for violence. It was the overtakers, who insisted on conning me by driving illegally, in order to get-in-front-of me.

I forced them out of the way, but really I wanted to create a RTA pile-up to show them. My fist of right. Mangled aluminum and steel and spindles of rubber. Snowburst of scattered shattered glass cubes and thick gravy red blood.

However. I endured and arrived at the labour receptacle in goodtime. On my table was a newly arrived copy of a Biffy Clyro long-player. This cheered me, until I listened at it.

It was like a tin of artificially sweetened and coloured strawberries. All shiny and tasting of sugar and tart, in an American emo (sic) pitch-corrected style. I had to spit it out and cast the silver disk to the teenage urchins who like that sort of thing. It was too ordinary and filtered for impurities. Someone drowning in golden syrup. Modern Amber Nectar. Preservative. Sticky as flypaper. Spit it out I recommend you.

Everyone concluded that it sucked.

Then I was reading dental magazines for research purposes. And then ones about managing veterinary practises. Mind somebody else's business. You see. I can read between the lines and smell the marketing that is embedded in every human statement. Making you want. Making you feel lacking. Making you need the product behind the curtain, revealed only once you are gagging for it, fearing to live without it. Advertising is our life breath. Your consumer groove. Mine. Chomsky-hardwired into every sapient simian processing-unit, the real categorical imperative, THOU SHALT GET.

I swam in Greek tragedy. I laughed, incredulously to my watchers, to read how Agave mistakenly ripped her own son to pieces in Euripides' "Bacchae". Such stories. Such fun. Such coincidence of fate. I stood up and shouted "ha!" Nobody was impressed.

And then I obtained a copy of Plato's "Symposium" for entertainment. I would like to read it self-indulgently with too much wine, in the same way as you have to pour Malcolm Lowry's "Under the volcano" and Thomas De Quincy's "confessions of an opium eater" down your gullet at a choking dipso rate. We are all in love with our own ruin, as William Somerset-Maugham wrote.

I read the news today. One of my friends was burgled last night. He awoke to find the naughty burglar in the room where he-himself, or rather his body-vat, and his wife slept. Dressed in black, wearing a balaclava face, and hunched on tippytoes was the creeping one. The shadowy sneaker got away from the Sweeney, running, with a laptop and a handbag as his reward, stashed in his rectum.

You see, in this lovely nation of England there is enough street coke available to ensure that you needn't have to worry about your victim being present when you are on the rob. It's that good.

Have no fear. And if they do anything to spoil it for you, there is always litigation as a seaside resort of an option. Where there is blame there's a claim. Sue the fuckers. These people who think they can hinder a chap going about his chosen vocation, minding his own business, need showing a thing or two.

For lunch I consumed one single tin of Tesco's "Cream of Mushroom Soup". I was careful to ensure I only consumed the contents of the tin by regurgitating the metal container in the fashion of an owl voiding mouse bones and fur in a pellet. The cream contained in the tin tasted like salty christmas pudding. I burnt myself on the bowl during the preparation of the serving suggestion as illustrated and wished I'd been out to get an expensive salad roll from a local supplier instead.

But as the anger left me for sarcasm, which in turn bored itself away into diminishing sherbet bubbles, I felt alright. Time, like wine, heals all pain.

Arms golden brown, hair in Byronic ringlets of mouseyness, eyes plop-circles of glaucous green as if making a petition to you, a plea, and eye-lashes like spiders dunked in mascara.

Yeah. I was alright.