Including Thursday Thirteen, Three Word Wednesday and Totally Optional Prompts.
Have you had a go yet?
Welcome to my Wednesday Magazine post.
So the Olympics are over, and Team GB arrived back in a gold-tipped plane. With 19 Golds, it was their best performance in a hundred years, ranked fourth, behind the big players.
Of course, we always had the ability.
What we didn’t have was the money for the proper training facilities. And this is what has changed. Through the UK National lottery, our athletes have finally received the funding they deserved.
Mindst you, as Britain takes the Olympic flag, the IOC president has challenged London to match the technical elements of the Beijing games. No chance! We just managed to stop the esteemed major, Boris Johnson, from dropping the flag!
I’m worried about policing again.
When you’re convicted of a crime, your fingerprints go onto police records. This is fair enough. But what about DNA details? Yes, okay. No problem with that, either. But figures released last week showed that 600,000 people are now on the UK DNA database who have never committed a crime – and it’s growing fast.
The Labour government loves this. They openly admit they want everyone on the database, and if a forced ID card gets through, it will become a reality. And if it does so, another big element of freedom will have been taken away.
There is a dual process going on nowadays – western governments who have an almost pathological need to control us, and technology that is allowing it to happen. We think of totalitarianism in terms of the jackboot and the dictator. Today, this is an error. I’ve used the term, ‘jack slipper’, before. It denotes a new form of subtle totalitarianism. And it isn’t something to worry about in the future. It’s here!
Mext Magazine post, Friday. See you then.
© Anthony North, August 2008
TT #19 – WISDOM
For a change I thought I’d try the idea of the thirteen line poem.
Should be fun.
Wisdom is a crafty thing, it cons you that it’s there,
when really those who think they’re wise, you should always beware,
Wisdom isn’t facts or knowledge, like many people think,
it’s placing them in a system of thought every time you blink;
Wisdom isn’t knowing this and that, or winning in a quiz,
it’s knowing what you don’t, not getting in a tiz,
the wisest in the land take knowledge as a plea,
to admit it when they don’t know – look it up in a dictionary;
But wisdom has another life, the route where it comes along,
and it isn’t something learnt in books, or art, or song;
It’s understanding life is full of experience, taboo and rule,
and the wisest person that you know broke them all!
‘Cos he began as a damned fool!
(c) Anthony North, August 2008
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SECRET OF THE TOMBS – Horror Fiction
Professor Arnold sat back in his chair, satisfied. He looked about him – took in the full scope of so many years of research. But now, following a last desperate rush, he had completed it.
‘A shame it will never be published,’ said Carthew, his assistant.
‘We’ll see,’ Arnold replied, knowing he was possibly right.
It had been many decades since the problem came to light. It had begun soon after the Tutenkhamun find. The authorities rubbished the curse, blaming it on a lapse of sanity. But the simple fact was, something had happened when the seal to the tomb was broken.
Some in the know believed it really was the soul of some ancient Egyptian, who had traveled through the millennia in wait, like some avenging angel. But when another untampered tomb was discovered, secrecy of the modern kind descended upon the operation.
Cameras filmed the breaking of the seal, caught the archaeologists mouthing the curse, and then there was the strange aroma, a myriad of flashing lights, the touch of the strange plaster work – the texture. And soon after, one of the archaeologists began to be taken over by some force …
Well, what were thought to be the victim’s of a curse were victims of murder. This became clear – if something from antiquity taking over the mind like that can be thought of as murder ….
Arnold remembered seeing the reports of the change in demeanour of this millennia-old assassin, taking over the mind of an old friend of his, and those eyes …
Of course, he’d have nothing to do with the supernatural theory. Immersing himself in the supernatural Egyptian culture, he began to realize what may be going on. Word magic was the beginning of the solution, for as people mouthed the curse, they created the sound of the words. Then the aroma (smell), flashing lights (sight) and texture of masonry (touch).
It was a sudden disorientating assault on all the senses, as he managed to recreate with Carthew. And that, he realized, was a form of hypnosis. And eventually he even worked out the message delivered subliminally by the act of breaking the seal.
‘We know what happens, now,’ he said to Carthew. ‘We can protect ourselves. We can now go into the dozens of tombs secretly found since then.’
But no protection for Carthew on that first successful experiment.
‘A shame it will never be published,’ he had said. If only Arnold had looked up. Seen the eyes. He might have stood a chance …
© Anthony North, August 2008
ONE WAY
One Way!! One way? You must be mad,
I can think of nothing so sad,
only one way to do a thing,
just one song for all to sing,
just one picture to behold,
just one way to be so bold,
just one story to relate,
that’s a life I’d really hate;
One way is a one way street,
straight to a mirror image to greet,
for it holds a message very plain,
there’s nothing more boring than being the same
(c) Anthony North, August 2008
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