Metaphysical Karate
Went to a martial arts class tonight. It's based on Ancient Greek philosophical theories. If you stick with it and make it to a middling blue-belt, you learn how to roundhouse-kick a man in the soul. Black-belts get to drop-kick the 'id'. I made the mistake of telling a brown belt that the 'id' was Freudian, not Greek; the bastard punched me in the 'anima'. For 3 minutes i was the archetypal unconscious mind. Guess I'm not that Jung anymore.

If Only He Were Tim
Been following tennis since I was 4 yrs old and first heard about Murray when he was 14 and the opinions of him were positively cautious. His 1st televised, competitive match as a professional was a bizarre affair in which the young player, dressed up like he'd just been down to JD Sports and outfitted himself from their Affordable Clothing range on the last day of a sale, played well but also ended up collapsing with a cramp that crippled his entire body and required medical attention more familiar at the scene of a motorway pile-up. The Wimbledon Centre Court crowd, made up of middle-aged, Anglican wives who hail from the stockkbroker belt, are politically enlightened by Peter Hitchens and whose weekends consist of mild racism and tuperware parties, have only taken to a Scottish Catholic in the desperation that led soldiers in the ttrenches of the French Front Line to start making love to eachother by mid 1916 after their memories of women had faded beyond a level where guilt might be the emotional consequence of sodomy. Once a nice, polite, middle-class, Anglican boy from Surrey whose parents haven't seprated and live in a thatched cottage in a village free from any ethnic impurities apart from the family who live in a flat above the local Indian takeaway, they'll dismiss the memory of Andy Murray and denigrate his achievement so as to celebrate one of their own reasserting the cultural and politcal dominance of the pure-bred Englishman who proves that with wealth, priviledge, ignorance, and a chin as weak as bottle of Asti Spumanti, a man can achieve anything.

My Two Cents

If Julian Assange intends to fulfill the role of resistance leader in the information age and/or speaker of truth in the evening of dangerous lies then he should be prepared to face the consequences like those who went before him. Martin Luther King was jailed, abused and killed; Muhammed Ali was jailed, abused and rejected; Robert Kennedy was rejected, ridiculed, momentarily worshiped and then killed. Go to Sweden, face the accusations and demonstrate the power of truth. And if you end up in Guantanamo you could make the American Empire seem as morally bankrupt as you claim it to be. Do you have conviction or are you just in it for the kudos? The desolations of Purgatory hold no fear for the one who sees Paradise where others see perdition.

Give Me Burning Bushes
Wireless networks keep failing cos they try exist in The Ether; a notoriously unreliable environment filled with everything and nothing from magnetic fields, radio waves, the possibility of endless possibility and all of man's deepest, unresolved fears. Anyhoo, if it's electronic equipment it should have wires all over the shop, if not it just breaks down. I can rewire plugs cos they have wires, how does one rewire something wireless? It's born again electronics when what we need is some Old Testament style hammering shit into walls and knowing where the sockets all are.

Even My Dreams Are Full of Shit
Just before waking-up this afternnon a line popped into my head and will not stop its incessant echoing in my psyche. 'my abiding struggle each day is to uncover some truth beneath the stars'  

This is Unbeliebable (forgive me, I couldn't help the pun, but I feel bad about it)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/apr/14/justin-bieber-anne-frank-belieber

 If ever a lost young man needed a stern talking to, this budding megalomaniac and potential vainglorious arsewipe certainly fits the M.O. 

Most Profound Exchange in movie history

The Last Temptation of Christ

 

As Jesus tries to persuade Judas that he must hand him over to be crucified, Judas asks 'If you were me, could you betray your master'?

'No', Replies Jesus, before offering both consollation and devastation by delivering what could even be characterised as a quip. 'That's why God gave me the easier job; to be crucified'.

 Below are links to the two reviews of this film by the late - and unnerringly grea - Roger Ebert who reviwed the film just prior to its original release in 1988 and again twenty years later. And if you haven't seen the film, you should. And if you refuse to watch it because The Vatican told you not to, fuck off out of my blog and don't come back.

 

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-last-temptation-of-christ-1998

 

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-last-temptation-of-christ-1988 

The Battle Yet Begun
Single people, be warned. Secret Tory memos leaked today reveal the next Government tactic in the fight against poor people being happy. They expect to take away all your friends' benefits by 2018 and will then proceed to take away all your friends with benefits. One junior Cabinet member told me earlier that he expects this whole thing to be a 'right fucking mess that is more smoke and mirrors than actual action'. Such a pinpoint accurate description of my sex life has led me to make a Freedom of Information request to ensure my bedroom hasn't been bugged.

Love is....

I am writing a novel about a doomed romance between a street performer who specialises in making balloon animals for children and an acupuncturist.

 She heals his chakras, he makes squeaking noises even when she has a migraine.

 I see it as a tragedy, ultimately. 

And Another Thing....

- the only good thing to come out of Brit-pop was Jarvis Cocker. The rest was mealy-mouthed, middle-class, only educated at university cos they closed all the polytechnics, bollocks.
- Jarvis Cocker is good, even when he's bad
- skinny jeans look stupid
- wearing jeans halfway down your arse as some kind of 'i'm an individual' tag is to cool what a Rolf Harris Original is to the Medici Collection.
- U2 were good up until 1993
- U2 are shit
- Bono is a neo-liberal charity-meddler and cunt
- in a fight Jarvis Cocker would batter Damon Albarn
- the funniest thing ever was that Mars mission that failed miserably after it turned out they'd spent as much time getting that guy from Blur who now makes cheese to write a 'mission theme tune' as they did on the fucking rocket launchers
- Martians don't like Blur either
- Gary Barlow is a good songwriter and exceptional singer and his return to prominence has proved once and for all that Robbie Williams was a post all seater stadium, microwave meal icon of magnificent inconsequence
- the Visigoths didn't 'sack' Rome, they 'taxed' it
- Co-Op pizzas are rubbish
- people who express negative opinions about others to others are like irresponsible dog owners; they drop a big shit on someone else's lawn and leave it to others to clean up
- the growing tendency of stand-up comedians to express mildly racist and wholly misogynistic attitudes is not 'pushing the envelope', it's racist and misogynistic
- teachers, fireman, nurses, ambulance drivers, civil-servants and anyone working in the public-sector should be paid more and given more respect
- the vast majority of people are not stupid, just ill-informed
- magazines like Zoo and Nuts are an abuse of free-speech
- the McCann's didn't kill their daughter just because The Sun reckons they're dodgy and your parents probably left you alone when you were a kid as well
- Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer are the funniest double-act this country has ever produced
- Jon Bon Jovi's biggest fan is Jon Bon Jovi
- Micheal Hutchence was so much cooler than Noel Gallagher (Gallagher once called the INXS frontman a 'has-been') that had he not died having a wank, he would today be considered as a genuine contributor to modern music, as opposed to a mediocre guitarist who used to play in a Beatles tribute band