ZANY

ABC Wednesday & more prompts below
With Thursday Thirteen items of news and views
Try my Paranormal Flash now!

GURU TONY

Modern society has a problem with eccentricity. It doesn’t seem to
fit any more. Today we have to be ordered, like cogs in a machine.
The problem with this is real genius has always gone hand in hand
with eccentricity.

Maybe that’s why our culture
is so sterile today.

And without the stimulus the genius used to provide, sterile order
leaves us without meaning. Could this be why so many seem to have
problems today, with drugs, crime and depression? It all seems insane
to me. But of course, eccentricity and insanity are closely allied and
have a purpose. Today a schizophrenic is simply mad. Yet just look at
the old style shaman, hearing voices, orchestrating hysterical ritual.
Maybe schizophrenia itself used to have purpose, providing culture
and wellbeing in a tribe. Madness, you see, has always been devised
by the knowledge structure in order to alienate types of behaviour
deemed inappropriate – such as the genius of the eccentric to stir up
culture and stimulate us above normal social control. This gives us a
hint of what may lie behind madness, for while society may like this
form of order, the inner person does not. Hence, in order to survive
the strictures of society we all create a social mask, an outside
persona which people think is the real you. When in reality the real
you is a cauldron of inner turmoil as you fail to feel totally as one with
your society. The social self – the mask – drives us mad, with
psychological problems arising because of its conformity. Maybe we
need to realize this and, for true psychological health, be allowed to
vent our need for deviance now and again – just as the hysterical
shaman allowed.

Eye On the World
Essays on everything from science
to religion, politics to crime

TONY’S DIARY: Getting bored of
my book writing now, so I’ve decided
to go back to some current affairs. Hope
I don’t get bored of this.

WORLD NEWS: Have you noticed interest beginning
in Horn of Africa again? Why do I think it’s a campaign
to justify future intervention?

BRIT NEWS: Ex-Minister says Labour has no vitality. True, &
what is expected with a leader who wasn’t elected and has no
popular mandate.

HEALTH NEWS: Euro health boss says swine flu pandemic was profit
induced. Can believe that. And who will believe the danger next time?

TECH NEWS: Oxford scientist says health stigma stops nuclear
power option being explored. Good. Nothing is safe from
Sod’s Law. Too risky.

EDUCATION: Study suggests modern teens have
vocabulary of only 800 words. Text message
blamed. And many of them still can’t be
understood.

BRIT NEWS: Lib Dem leader says the
politics of plenty is over. Wow!
That is Hot news! Where’s
he been for the last
year, I wonder?

FUTURE ZONE

What’s ahead … and Beyond!!!

One Single Impression
ReadWritePoem – Friday Flash 55
Three Word Wednesday
Sunday Scribblings

CHAOS

I look to the future, cannot see,
Too much chaos, my destiny,
Life goes on, I see the way,
Follow a path, try not to stray,
Things add up, my future clear,
Grasping order, outcome near,
But life’s a fractal, delusional display,
As soon as it’s clear, it goes away

KONG KING

Fiction: It’s like this. The monkeys didn’t realize just what they were
doing when they moved out of their natural area. They should have
realized when they found the giant footprints, but no, they were
curious. Eventually the man appeared, towering above them – and a
giant hand swept down and took up the female. They gave chase,
and when they caught up, there was a mammoth battle, and
eventually, through guile, they brought him down. Tying him up, they
dragged him back to show the rest what they had found. But the man
was not to be subdued for long. He broke free. Another mammoth
struggle followed and the man was eventually driven up a tree. Hurling
stones at him, he finally fell to his death … The writer finished the
synopsis and looked up to the movie producer. The orang utan shook
his head. Said: ‘No, it’s just too silly.’

OH, HERCULES

Hercules, a question: why are you here?
Elite sundered society has nothing to fear,
Myths are dead, fertile froth gone,
Now drawing from science’s enthusiastic song;
Don’t raise that professor quite so high,
His students throwing stones up to your thigh,
Your times are too simple, we’ve shouldered more,
Taken the brunt of society’s flaw;
That’s why we cry all night long,
Inane culture, our soul has gone

FLASH 55 – BREAKOUT

Sci Fi: The guard ship manoeuvred into position, knowing it would
eventually come to this. The galactic criminals had been isolated on
the prison planet a long time ago, but knowing their ingenuity, it was
obvious that, as generation followed generation, they’d work out how
to breakout. And as they passed the Moon, the guard ship fired.

GOING TO ZEAL

I think I’ll go to planet Zeal,
Yes, a holiday does appeal,
Atoms splashed in the particular Jolt,
Reconstructed at the halt,
Instantaneous down the Ribbon Road,
Wormholes connecting from my abode,
No need, now, for boredom or sorrow,
Wonder where I’ll go tomorrow

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Remember a time so long ago,
Before the Sun’s punishing glow,
Before the gas wouldn’t let heat out,
Leaving us in shelters – our last redoubt?
Remember a time so long ago,
When we screamed – politician’s said:’no’,
Once we reverred our ancestors great,
Now we weep, think only of hate

FILM WATCH: Recently
been watching loads of 1950s
Sci Fi. As with most of this genre,
it reflects contemporary mind – paranoia
of invasion.

TIME WATCH: Is it Two Thousand & Ten or Twenty
Ten? The latter, obviously. Why confusion? I blame Kubrick
& Clarke. Media DOES affect us.

TONY’S DIARY: Catch it. Bin it. Kill it. Just had a cold. Impossible.
Typical bureaucrat-think, working only on paper – Until it’s smudged.

THE WEATHER: Is the Big Freeze over for UK? After coldest period for
30 yrs, a thaw is setting in. Or has weather developed sense of humour.

MEDIA VIEW: So Chris Evans has now replaced Sir Terry
Wogan on Radio 2. I’m trying to see any similarity.
How dare Sir Terry get old.

A THOUGHT: There’s two types of dreams
– the big one which keeps you
aspiring & series of small
ones towards it. In
balance life works.

© Anthony North, January 2010

Try my Pictures of Life, a novel