TONY ON BIG BIZ, TERROR, STORM & SMILE

Including Three Word Wednesday and Totally Optional Prompts. Have you had a go yet?

Welcome to my new Wednesday Magazine post.
I watched one of the many insurance ads on TV yesterday, and it said the words I hate: cut out the middle man. What a great idea – we think. A slice of profit taken off, making it cheaper. Less complication …

I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.

What really happens is the system is simplified so that companies can get bigger and bigger. Less and bigger means you have less say in what goes on, ‘cos they’re big enough to ignore you. Why, they even go computerized so you don’t actually see a human being to complain to.
This is how freedom is lost – and symptomatic of modern, globalised Big Biz. They offer you something that seems to offer advantage to you, when really the only advantage is to them. Whenever we’re offered something like this in future, let’s stop and think it through.

The British government is tackling radicalism again.

It is to draft in mentors to Mosques in an attempt to fight the continuing radicalization of Muslim youth. Predictably, many Mosques are rightly refusing to allow such a thing.
Of course, it is yet another ridiculous idea. Indeed, this government has no idea what it is facing. Islam is not about terrorism. From the 1970s onwards, their terrorism was about disputed land and interference – in other words, politics. But now it is something completely different.
Terrorism of the Al Qaeda variety is a movement best identified as a cult. Beyond religion, beyond politics, it is adherence to the guru who is Osama Bin Laden. Only when governments understand this will they be able to take measures to correct it.
There’ll be no post tomorrow, but call again Friday.

Anthony North, June 2008

SMILE AT THE WORLD

We love a smile, we can’t deny,
feelings of mirth, it does imply;
But smiles have a place, this is true,
in the wrong one, they can certainly spook you;
Smile all the time, and your motives are in doubt,
as people feel uncomfortable, within and without;
Smile when you shouldn’t, show too much teeth,
watch out! Those people are in terror, or grief!
Go with a smile permanently there,
watch out for the questioning, quizzical stare,
for they can think you are so inane,
either that, or totally
absolutely,
undoubtedly insane

(c) Anthony North, June 2008

******************************

SMILER – Fiction?

He sat, remembering the past. So many events, so many relationships, so many intrigues. Yet, despite it all, he couldn’t help but smile.
So much that he couldn’t deny …
He smiled as he thought of the women – of the brunettes, the redheads, the blondes. He’d had relations with them all. And he remembered them all with equal gratitude.
His mind turned to his adventures, then. Some of them were uncomfortable – most of them, infact – but his smile remained as he remembered the locations – so far and wide he had traveled.
His smile became grim as he thought of the murders. Again, so many, in so many ways. He remembered intimately the stabbings, the strangulations, the shootings … and all without regret.
And then he remembered the things he didn’t want to remember so easily. The hauntings, the ghosts, and terrors beyond imaginings. And his smile bordered on insanity. Yet, he could not resist. YOU could not resist – the writer of short stories with a twist.

© Anthony North, June 2008

STORM FORCE

It cracked, it flashed,
it infused, it trashed,
any hope of a gathering calm;
Nothing left to keep me from harm,
no succour, no hope, no balm;
Cloudy times, ferocious chimes,
weather beaten thoughts, such crimes;
The storm ripped and jarred,
everything marred,
nothing untarred;
nothing kind,
all entwined,
this terrible storm
in my mind

(c) Anthony North, June 2008

******************************

STORM MOTHER – Fiction

Perhaps it would have whisked me away if I was not hard fast under the debris. The wind howled around me, a terrific noise, filling my mind. The odd piece of wood, a toy, a kitchen knife, whizzed past, nearly deciding my fate there and then. But maybe it was decided anyway.
The house, when it fell, had captured my leg. Just another foot or so and I would have got away, but that’s the story of my life. And the blood, the pain, it was unimaginable.
Maybe, I thought, I should just raise myself as much as I could, and let the next passing object take me to another place.
Lightning cracked once more, bringing me out of my reverie, and for some reason I thought of my mother. Yea! Maybe she’s going to come and rescue me!
Tears came to my eyes then, and I think I howled out loud. And then a voice …
I couldn’t believe it when I focused my eyes. There in front of me was my mother, just as I had imagined. She stood there a moment, crouched down. And then she seemed to beckon me.
Did this give me the courage I needed? Raise the strength to conquer this thing? Well, I was suddenly filled with renewed energy, and with mighty pull after pull, I tried to release my leg. And bit by bit, it came …
Well, I got out alive thanks to Mother. And the very next day I went to see her, to thank her. And I was so pleased the storm had not damaged her gravestone.

© Anthony North, June 2008

Have you tried my Pictures of Life, a novel?

🙂

HOW TO DO CONSPIRACY – HISTORY

To what extent can we know the world? We exist in the world, we sense the world, but is what we experience how the world really should be? Or is it more likely that ‘reality’ is fine tuned by a wider force?
The world we experience is the result of its past. We know this as history, and we take for granted that historians have a reasonably accurate account of that past. But if a wider force IS at work, maybe we should treat the subject with suspicion.

We are certainly suspicious of the contemporary world.

This is evident by the proliferation of conspiracy theories. Everything, it seems, is NOT how others say it is. A mentality is arising that nothing can be trusted.
Think JFK. Think Diana, Princess of Wales. These are just two iconic figures who met violent death. But it is just too unimaginable for most to accept that one was murdered by an inadequate loner, and the other a statistic from a drunk driver.

How did the more fantastic conspiracy theories arise?

Well, fundamental to the process were irregularities in the official view of what happened. This is inevitable, for official versions have to be built slowly out of the chaos of events.
The result of this is that conspiracy theorists fill the gaps quicker than the authorities. And the inevitable urge arises in those authorities to counter the theories to make the event even more mundane than it may have been.

The result of this process is that neither version is correct.

Hence, if the initial appreciation is wrong, how can we possibly be dealing with a ‘reality’ concerning what actually happened?
Such an inability to correctly record a definite ‘reality’ has led me to conclude that an event is more than the ‘event’ itself. Rather, ‘reality’ is an event, plus the appreciation of the event after it has occurred.

Now, this is obviously not a real ‘reality’.

Rather, ‘reality’ is relative to a consensus that later grows. The sociologist, Baudrillard, understood this with his idea of ‘infotainment’. Stated simply, media is such, today, that fact and fiction merge into a ‘reality’ that is not a true reflection of what ‘is’.
If this is so with the contemporary, so, too, with history. Nothing ever has been correctly documented, as always there is the parallel views of the mundane and fantastic battling it out for supremacy, and manipulating the ‘facts’ along the way.
This is further compounded by the on-going processes of historical writing. Whenever a historian writes about an event of the past, it is inevitable he will weigh it against the consensus of his day.
Thus, history is not only wrongly recorded at the beginning, but is constantly twisted by contemporary manipulations time and time again, as history moves on. Thus, nothing can ever be what it seems. And the wider force I speak of becomes the very recording of history itself.
For a long time, this didn’t really matter, as only high intellectuals were interested in knowledge. Now, in a mass information world, we all seem to want to know more. So maybe it is time to understand this process of history before conspiracy theorists begin writing history themselves.

© Anthony North, June 2008