Month: December 2015

Genius

~ Donna Emerald ~ 2 Comments

Just in case you’re starting to get into that sloppy, Hallmark Christmas spirit, this should bring you to your senses. Charles Bukowski’s ‘The Genius of The Crowd’ is a bleak and brilliant insight into the darker sides of  human nature.

The Genius Of The Crowd

there is enough treachery, hatred, violence, absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

He was also one of the finest stage performers of his own work out there, and the gravelly rendition of the same piece included below is superbly delivered. His work is very accessible, so give it a listen even if you don’t usually like poetry, and if you’ve been good all year Santa might deliver another poetry gift later. Beats a tangerine in a sock, hands down.

Is his view a little warped, and the view presented by ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ closer to the message we should be clutching close to our warmed hearts at Xmas? I think  Bukowski may be closer to the truth, and the Depressive Realist  Hypothesis seems to have lots of support, even if ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is more in line with the way retailers would like us to see the world at Christmas time, so they can cash in on our happiness. Genius.

Book at Bedtime

~ Donna Emerald ~ Leave a comment

sleep

Heading to bed with your mug of Ovaltine? Finished that novel and looking for something to snuggle up with. You can’t beat a chuckle at bedtime, and David Sedaris tells some of the funniest stories out there. Here are ten of the best.
Listen to David Sedaris’ stories online

Too sleepy even for that? Not ready for bed, but up for something different? Garrison Keiller is one of the funniest guys out there, and his radio show,  ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ is a modern classic, full of nostalgia for a way of life lots of us never knew.

Click this link to listen.

Nite, nite. Sleep tight.

 

Oh No love, You’re Not Alone

~ Donna Emerald ~ Leave a comment
Hot rollers ... the secret to REALLY big hair.
Farrah with her rollers in

The sad truth is, whatever original thought you think you have, have probably been thought of before. I’m not speaking about the really clever, Eureka ideas that you rush out and slap a patent on, so you can make a fortune and step on everyone else’s head, or write a book about, and share your innermost soul with the world. I’ve never experienced either of those. No, I mean the random tumbleweed that blows through your mind from time to time, about everyday flotsam and jetsam on the tide of life. Bear with me, this is going somewhere.
I have an example which I lay before you now. I was researching diligently for one of my insightful and thought-provoking posts, and came across this image of Farrah Fawcett (‘Who’, I hear the under 35s scream, ‘the heck is she?’). She was the Kim Kardashian of her day, the 1970s, only with a normal sized bottom instead of an outsized one. Nevertheless she was a woman before her time, and was possibly the first star to persuade her dentist to get the peroxide out to create her, for the times, unnaturally white teeth.
Ok, here’s the thought. She looks just like David Bowie in this photo I came across online. Immediately after the first thought, there was a second, and that was…I wonder has anyone else noticed this? Well, I’m at the right place to find out, the world wide web has everything you need to know at your fingertips. And I’m not alone, because someone else thinks so too. Take a look at this.

David B and Farrah
Cheezburger.com David Bowie vs Farrah Fawcett

Uncanny. Wonder what my next original thought will be.

What happened to Farrah after her star declined.

Dancing Round the Handbag

~ Donna Emerald ~ Leave a comment

Colourfully dressed women You know when you’re feeling good and dancing in the living room, giving it your best James Brown moves to the blare of Papa’s got a brand new bag‘?

 

 

Never be ashamed of gettin’ your groove on. You’re funky baby, no matter what anyone else thinks. You are a legend in your own living room. Things can be different when other people try to run you down. This poor guy’s groove was nearly lost forever when someone made fun of him on social media.

Twitter fatman
Twitter conversation about fat man shamed

 

The story has a happy ending, ‘cos lots of ladies got together n the internet to find out who he was, then throw a big party for for him in L.A. I bet he danced all night.   

Dancing man poster

I Feel so Used

~ Donna Emerald ~ Leave a comment

 

Man holding baby
This poster was a best-seller in the 80s for Athena Posters, and was the female-targeted equivalent of The Tennis Girl poster of 1977, which hung around on many a bedroom and gym wall for a long time after that. The clothes for The Tennis Girl poster were borrowed for the shoot. I’m guessing the knickers were forgotten on purpose, and I’ve added them here. Not wanting to emulate the Popes of the past, you can click on the picture below to see the original in all its soft-focussed glory. But don’t say I didn’t tell ya it’s not safe for work, OK?

painting detail of the three graces by Ruben
Detail of Rubens’ ‘The Three Graces’

Adam Perry, shown above photographed by Spenser Rowell, probably had at least two good reasons for taking his shirt off for the shoot. One, when you work your torso out to hone it to perfection other people will pay to see you take it off, and two, why get baby sick on your shirt, when you can get baby pee on your chest instead, and not have to put on a wash when you get home? Perry had his problems, though he cheered himself up by sleeping his way through what he claimed to be 3,000 women, and was self-confessed as ‘the world’s most promiscuous man‘. So if a picture paints a thousand words, the story they tell is not always true.

I can’t speak as an authority for men, being from Venus myself, but I think its a widely accepted notion that women are charmed as much by personality as by looks. George Clooney’s appeal lies as much in the urbanity and sensitivity women imagine he possesses, as in his good looks. We feel he’d be willing to listen to our problems over a Nespresso, before whisking us off to a fabulous party to cheer us up, where all the other women would gaze at us jealously, wondering what we have that they don’t. George Clooney, beee-atches.

George Clooney Nespresso
George Clooney by Michel Comte for McCann Erikson Paris

 

Gosh, why can’t we women just be nice? Poor old Burt Reynolds, who at 79 has just published his autobiography, claimed to ‘sorely regret’ the nude centrefold he did for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1972. In a recent interview he said he ‘got some of the filthiest letters I’ve ever seen’ from women, and is still embarrassed by it, despite the fact it is claimed as one of the greatest publicity stunts ever. If you can stand the hairiness, let alone the nudity, you can see the original image over here.

Those were the days when hairy men were much admired by women. Hardly a chest hair to be seen these days, as it’s just not in fashion now.

 

Women tend to gawk at other good looking women nearly as much as men do; we’re forever comparing, trying to look as good as the stars, and failing miserably, instead of just trying to get our own thing going.

farrah-fawcett
Farrah Fawcett poster by Bruce McBroom/Everett

 

Our attempt at achieving the same effect.

worst-child-haircuts-ever-11

 

Starbucked

~ Donna Emerald ~ Leave a comment

Embracing couple using mobile phone in cafe

The bank that helped make homelessness in Dublin more fashionable than ever have long since moved on, leaving Starbucks to move in. There’s something in that, you know. You could say they probably have a similar outlook in regards to ripping off their customers, and probably went to the same empathy finishing school. Just look at how they spell your name on their cups and you get the picture fast. It’s like they weren’t even listening.

Thank goodness those darn homeless types can’t afford the coffee. Ruins your hipster vibe when you have to pretend to care about 171px-hipster-358479_640smelly/shabby/depressing people to impress of your cute girlfriend/boyfriend. And it’s not the kind of glamorous hobo vibe that George Orwell had going on in your much-thumbed copy of ‘Down and Out in Paris and London‘ that you’ve to do that modern lit. essay on. You don’t really like to think about the 677 families with 1,425 dependents who are currently either in homeless accomodation (B&Bs), who have to walk the streets all day with no money in their pockets, or living in hotels with no cooking facilities to make a dinner with their kids. You know how lucky you are, but you wish you hadn’t read the headlines, ‘cos it’s putting you off your latte.

images from Wiki commons

***An Ominous Shift*** | Sabrina Boland

~ Donna Emerald

This is a thoughtful post by Sabrina Boland, about the psychology of obedience to authority. Some of the studies she discusses in this post are a shocking reminder of how willing we are to give up independent thinking to go with the mob mentality. Perhaps we need to be more aware of how insidious propaganda is, and be more aware that the primitive beast lies within every breast. Read on to hear Sabrina’s views on the subject.

Source: ***An Ominous Shift*** | Sabrina Boland

Take a Walk on the Wild Side

~ Donna Emerald ~ 2 Comments

Holly Woodlawn died today.
She was the star in arthouse films by Andy Warhol. If you’ve never seen any of his films, or don’t know anything about his work, this is as good a place to start as any, an overview of his work by Alastair Sooke. This documentary explores what some of the art that Warhol became famous for was about. Warhol was the ultimate regurgitator of consumer culture, cleverly commenting on the symbols and codes of consumerism, not just to make us aware of popular culture’s influence on how we see things, but to create beautiful works of art from the mundane and mass-produced low-value objects we see around us every day, like newspapers and soup cans.

If you want to see Holly Woodlawn in one of her most famous roles, follow this link.

It’s not pretty, but it’s art, and it sure beats watching someone sleeping for 14 hours.

Consumerism and Fascism

~ Donna Emerald ~ Leave a comment

I think Scott Erb makes a good point here, that you don’t have to be Adolf Hitler to be a Fascist, you just have to believe that the state always knows best, and that what the state and its media vehicles tell you is always the truth, and you are well on the way to helping bring about a Fascist society. Erb discusses also how the advertising industry uses similar propaganda and manipulation devices to create new desires in people. He puts it so much better than me, so read on……

World in Motion

The term ‘fascism’ is one of those words that isn’t used in polite company. The images of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis mean that the term is rarely taken seriously, often used to just insult someone, like in a recent internet debate when one guy labeled for no apparent reason geologists concerned about peak oil as “fascists.” And, while Marxian theory and socialism remain acceptable despite the horrors done in their name, fascism is seen as the nefarious ideology, defeated and evil.

As someone who is most decidedly anti-fascist, I find that a dangerous state of mind. Fascism is not only real, but has many forms. It is not inherently anti-semitic, and in fact can appear quite benign. I won’t go into the academic debates about the meaning of the term, though wikipedia gives a good summary. They are concerned with political fascism, which is primarily a nationalist ideology which…

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