Including Three Word Wednesday, Matinee Muse and Totally Optional Prompts.
Have you had a go yet?
Welcome to my Wednesday Magazine post.
Radovan Karadzic has been caught. Living a public life as an alternative medicine guru, this has all the hallmarks of deep Balkan intrigue taking us right back to the opening years of the 20th century. Life CAN still be more intriguing than fiction.
So what to do with him now?
Well, first of all we must not forget what he did. This is the man who allegedly oversaw attempted Genocide. From shelling, to the insidious sniper, to wholesale slaughter, we must not forget how easily it arose, again, in Europe.
But is an international court the place to put him on trial? I cannot get it out of my head that this is the west imposing its own values on the rest of the world. Of course, Genocide should be insidious in anyone’s values. But I think it should always be up to those involved to decide this.
Tycoons are becoming doomsayers.
A new kind of statement is starting to come out of the mouths of British CEOs, especially in the power industry. Home heating bills could well rise more than another 60% in the coming year or two.
Now, I want you to think about this. Linked to the price of oil, just what would this mean? It would mean more than a doubling of costs in just a couple of years. Hence, if true, then we can look forward to an economic collapse on a level with the 1930s.
Personally, I think another agenda is going on here. Yes, it is going to get quite a bit worse, but not quite this bad. Rather, I suspect tycoons have realized that if they say it will be very bad, and it turns out not to be, then they can say they saved us from the worse.
Me thinks they’ve watched too much Scotty on Star Trek, saying it’ll take two hours to fix the engine, Cap’n, when he can do it in one.
Next Magazine post, Friday. See you then.
© Anthony North, July 2008
SHADOW LIFE
I want to be here, so let me out,
I want to exist, not as doubt;
I’m real, if not completely defined,
give me life – please be kind;
There’s room in there for me as well,
no need for fear on which to dwell;
Give me space to thrive and grow,
to stop me would be a cruel blow;
I may not be as corporeal as you,
but this is so with all things new;
I’ll grow, I’ll thrive, I’ll adapt in time,
and now I’m complete, I rhyme
(c) Anthony North, July 2008
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HE’S ONE OF THEM – Fiction
Miss Standing, the Headmistress, had admonished the boys the morning she heard them talking about Mr Smith.
The boys had got it into their head that Mr Smith was a vampire. Indeed, it had got so bad that they’d avoid class rather than come face to face with him. And as for extra curricular activities, you’d never find THEM in the school after dark.
It was his rosy cheeks that first drew their attention to the problem – that, and the distinct sharpness of his teeth. And then there was the delight he seemed to have dissecting little animals in the lab. Indeed, that was always a sticky situation. But nothing proved it more than the night they saw him in the darkened staff room, towering over Miss Jenkins, and lowering his mouth to her neck.
The next day, she seemed almost comatose, and more than a little pasty. No, there was no doubt he was one of them. And as the boys had noticed, rumours of all manner of spectral goings on at night had been reported since he arrived.
And when they spied Mr Smith taking Miss Jenkins to a secluded corner of the school, they decided they had to speak out again.
Miss Standing admonished the boys once more as they told her, but realizing a ‘situation’ was developing, she followed the boys to the suspect’s haunt. Going in by herself, a red faced Headmistress finally emerged, and the rumour following said they were two teachers down due to ‘inappropriate behaviour’, with several other women teachers on warnings. But as Miss Standing later pointed out: ‘Don’t worry, boys, it won’t be many years before you’re little vampires, too.’
(c) Anthony North, July 2008
ATLANTIS
A foreign land we’re told it was,
populated by men and gods,
working morally for the greater good,
ethical acts putting off the flood;
Great sages, workers, seamen, too,
they brought their splendour to all they knew,
empires created in their wake,
done not for them, but all our sakes;
Yet they’re wrong to call it a foreign land,
it seems to me a similar strand,
of any society above its station,
reaping their ‘truth’ upon any nation;
But remember the fate of this ‘moral’ good,
passing their message, written in blood,
sunk below depths, without a trace,
good so often becomes disgrace
(c) Anthony North, July 2008
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