Paris, Penguins, Profit and Buffet Car Blow Jobs

A successful trip to Paris - at least, I got done what had to be done and we have an agreed 'road map' even if all I got to see was the inside of the Channel Tunnel (why does the train go so slow?), the inside of the railway station, the outside of a sex shop :) and the inside of a restaurant not 20m from the railway station. Oh well, life will start to be kind to me soon.

Please?

For reasons buried in the mists and fogs of my subconscious, I always pick up New Scientist(UK) and Scientific American(US) when I go on train journeys. I don't know why, perhaps I think it makes me look a little 'intellectual' and will intrigue devastatingly attractive, like-minded females (are there any?), who will then drag me into a dark corner of the buffet bar and give me a blow job. (Hasn't worked so far but we live in hope:) Although perhaps 'What Philosophy Weekly' might be better for that, I guess. "We test drive neo-existentialism! How does it compare with the new offering from the neo-Deconstructionists?" "Does positing the ego make you more attractive to the opposite sex?" "Can Hegelian dialectism really improve the size of your penis? And if so, is it permanent?" "We compare the ten best philosophies. Which is right for you and will it get you more sex?"

It was perhaps not a wise move. Recent research, the penguin has touched upon this before, indicates that by 2050, the emperor penguin population in Antarctica will have plummeted to less than 5% of its present size (they are too specialised and simply will not, cannot, do not have enough time to, adapt) and from there, one must assume, it will be one very short step to extinction. It is sad to think that what is so inspiring and so beautiful will disappear. Forever. Perhaps, in the end, that is our fate as human beings; to watch, helpless, while all that is beautiful and precious dies from this world. I do what I can, you do what you can, our friends do what they can; but, in the end, it just amounts to a mess of beans. That is the truly sad thing. We have lost control of our lives, our loved ones and our planet, our home, and we are all off to hell, shackled to a hand cart!

FUCK POLITICIANS! FUCK BIG BUSINESS! FUCK CAPITAL! FUCK YOU, YOU BASTARDS AND YOUR FUCKING, OBSESSIVE QUEST FOR FUCKING PROFIT! GO ROAST IN HELL! NOW!! FOREVER!!!

Sorry.

As the penguin would say, 'rant over'.

Perhaps it is, as I have always thought, just too bloody complicated for anyone to resolve. No matter how good your intentions are, the world is just too complex for any solutions to work, except at an extremely local level, however well meaning. You try to juggle so many balls that, inevitably, you drop a few; you just can't keep them all in the air at the same time. I'd like to think that getting rid of the money grubbing bastards that over the past 18 months have sent us all down a slippery slide to penury, ruin and misery would make things better, less complicated; allow 'solutions' to have at least a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding, instead of absolutely none at all. However I remain pessimistic.

Capitalism and the pursuit of profit (not to mention the exploitation of the vast majority of us) is just politics in a different coat. Unable, or unwilling, to participate in a democratic process; unable, or unwilling, to submit themselves to peer review, judgement, big business runs the world for its own benefit and may the devil take the hindmost, which unfortunately is us! Get rid of capital and they'd only find another, perhaps less overt, way to usurp power again.

Oh dear, a little depressing today. Ah well, Obama will kiss it all better........... until the next time!

Hope you enjoyed the feeble attempt at alliteration in the title today. Perhaps we'll look at Beowulf tomorrow :)

PS
WeeeHa! White out! Snow everywhere, six inches deep!