TONY ON CREATIVITY, TT #25 & MORE

Including Thursday Thirteen and Heads or Tails.
Have you had a go yet.

Robbie Williams and Radiohead have joined a coalition to gain ownership and control of their music from record companies. I wholeheartedly support this move. Companies can have their profit, but it’s about time they got out of the ‘creative’ process. And I’m not just talking about the music industry.

From music to books, they seek to control.

Once upon a time, they looked for talent, nurtured it and allowed it to express itself as it wished, leaving it up to the creator to decide. But no more.
Now the corporate world seeks to control culture itself, with grey accountants deciding what will be and what will not. They are presiding over the death of culture. Indeed, have you noticed how, often, the most creative things around today are commercials?
Give culture back to the artistes. And let the public be once more amazed.

The FTSE fell 5% first thing Monday morning.

It ended the day 8% down. Was the London Stock Exchange in panic again? I’m not so sure. Now, I’m no economist, but am I alone in thinking there may be something strange going on here? You see, there seems to be a pattern starting to develop.
Over here in Europe, Ireland started it by the government guaranteeing a 100% savings guarantee – something that their economy couldn’t afford. Pressure was then piled on the British government to do the same, which so far it has refused.
Over the weekend, other countries provided a 100% savings guarantee – and as soon as London opened, it reeled, as did other exchanges in Europe, as any idea of co-ordinated policy disappeared. Do I sense an element of bullying here – a shot across the politician’s bows? Fall in line, or else!
Which is all very well, but if all savings become guaranteed 100%, and it still doesn’t stop the Crash, those savers will need those savings to pay to survive. Shame about the rest.
Next post, Thursday. See you then.

© Anthony North, October 2008

TT #25 – TO TELL A LIE

We’ve all done it, I’m sure it’s so,
told a lie to save a blow,
or maybe just a little fib,
so someone can feel oh so glib;
But once it’s done you’ll do it more,
whenever trouble comes to the fore;
It becomes the natural way,
as if encoded in DNA;
Of course we’ll say we certainly don’t,
but who believes you shan’t or won’t?
Maybe you, ‘cos here’s a fact,
perhaps for bad or just for tact,
but lying to yourself becomes a pact

(c) Anthony North, October 2008

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WAXY AND WANE’S BLACK MOOD – Fiction

Waxy and Wane, the Sisters of the Moon, were having an argument. Their pseudoscholastic friend, Hyram T Zimmerman, had caused it. He had said there was no such thing as a black or white witch. Witches were witches, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and that’s it.
As a witch, Waxy had re-adjusted her pointy hat, adopted a manic expression, and proclaimed: ‘Well I’m a black witch, so there!!!’
This had sent Wane into a cacophony of cackle as she fell backwards.
‘And what’s so funny?’ asked Waxy.
‘You? A black witch? You’re far too incompetent for that.’
Their familiar, the black cat, put its paws over its eyes. It knew very well how this would turn out.
‘And I suppose you think you’re a goody-two-shoes white witch,’ Waxy retorted.
‘I am.’
‘Well I think you’re too thick to know the difference.’
This annoyed Wane. She’d been called this before, and when she’d looked it up, she tried to put a spell on Waxy. ‘I AM!!!’
‘Which proves my point,’ said Waxy, with a snigger.
Wane had had enough. Muttering an incantation, she suddenly pointed at Waxy, but the hoped for lightning bolt simply dripped to the floor.’
‘You call that a spell?’ said Waxy, sending Wane to the floor through pure witchey thought.
Getting up, Wane grabbed her wand, waved it about, and this time managing to produce a wind that sent Waxy scuttling to the wall. And so it went on for some time until Wane finally produced a spell of such force that Waxy was pinned to the floor and psychic hands went around her throat.
Luckily, at the last moment she grabbed the cat and extracted yet another life to save her. But as she recalled Wane’s blazing red eyes, fevered jowls and steamy ears, manically repeating again and again ‘I AM A WHITE WITCH’, Waxy thought that maybe she’d missed the point.

© Anthony North, October 2008

For more madness with the witches, click my Waxy Witch category on right sidebar.

TO THE STARS

This is a website as well as a blog. The pages (top) link
to lots of essays in my research archive, written and
re-written over 25 years (many are excerpts from as yet
unpublished books). You’ll find a sample below. Why not
come back when it’s quiet? Or even check out the pages.

Astronomy is the science of celestial bodies, including the Sun, moon, planets, stars, galaxies, comets, asteroids and other wandering elements of the universe.
Concerning itself with positions, motions, distances, origins and evolution of the cosmos and everything in it, astronomy has many sister disciplines, including astrophysics and cosmology. But could it be that these sciences do not offer facts of the universe, but delusions?
… read more …