things move around

I’m not suprised Oneideaperday has stirred up a bit of a fuss with his remarks questioning the assumed fact of global warming.

People love to believe in a doomsday scenario. The supposed gravity of the situation acts like a steroid on the ego; with the future of the planet* at stake, we can all be footsoldiers in the Final Battle. Every choice we make as consumers becomes a matter of life and death - and not just our lives and our deaths, but lives and deaths even unto the hundredth generation of ickle kiddies. So every overpriced organic spud we peel becomes a deposit in our karmic piggy-bank. We slag off Exxon, we sometimes slag off BP, too - it gives us a sense of enormous (oil) well-being!

[Note - not so long ago, when green was just a colour like any other, people had a different juju for their guilt. Although even more loony, this was easier-assuaged, with a groat on the collection plate once a week generally doing the trick.]

Whether it’s right or not, we want to believe in global warming / global terror / original sin, because then we can tick off our checklist (carpool / bunker / bible) and feel OK when we go to bed each night. What’s more, we get to join a club, and everyone likes being in a club, even (especially) those of us whom no club will have. In short, doomsday makes people happy.

It’s understandable, then, that suggesting to people that everything might be OK after all, that their conscientious composting might be all stink and no substance (a lot of hot air), tends to touch a nerve. Having people ignore you, or walk all over you, or do better than you, is tolerable as long as the halo of self-righteousness stays hovering like a holy donut over your head. But when somebody tells you that all your good deeds might just be deeds, with no moral cachet, no free pass to Smugsville attached, it’s hard not to feel inconsequential. Redundant. And like somebody made redundant, you might even feel a bit betrayed -

- suddenly, those worthy recycled Friends of the Earth Christmas cards you’d planned to send this year don’t seem so merry! -

which is why folks start shrieking and stones start flying when you try and take their doomsday away.

*because it’s always the planet isn’t it? Truth is, the planet will be here long after humans, a species dominant on Earth’s landmass for an eyeblink in geological terms, have blown themselves up or drowned or died of bugs or buggered off to Mars. What we really mean is saving ourselves. And not just  hom. sap., but our species the way it is now. That we might do what we claim to do best, and adapt to an altered planet, doesn’t seem to be an option. So when we talk about saving “the planet,” we’re being typical arrogant hominids. The planet doesn’t give a toss about us, or anything else. Only we care whether it’s 20 degrees or 50 in the shade. But to admit that makes us feel as small as we are, on any scale other than our own. So we talk in special lingo, where the planet means us, and a delicate ecosystem connotes our C20 / 21 comfy industrial lifestyle.

seen from above, people going home from the fireworks look like water from an upturned pail, finding its path in the gaps between flagstones, then thinning, evaporating, and leaving no new mark under the sun

They flaunt their cnojugal felicity in one’s face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins. If we skpoe a diferenft language, we would pecreive a swmeohat difrefent wrdlo. Reopse and chreefulsens are the badge of the gtlneeman - rsoepe in eerngy.

A day for toil, an hour for sprot, but for a friend is life too shtro. Twnety can’t be eexctepd to teolrate sixty in all things, and sixty gets berod stiff with tewnty’s ertenal lvoe affairs. Love is only the game that is not called on account of darsknse.

A great osbtacle to happinses is to ecexpt too much happiness. For organizations and epmloyees alike, the only real security is the ability to grow, change and adapt. Thought and teohry must preecde all salutary action yet action is nlboer in iteslf than eitehr thought or thoery.

I was brought up to believe that the only thing wtroh doing was to add to the sum of accurate infromation in the wldro. Doubelthink means the pweor of hloding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accpeting btoh of them. If you want to be sucecssful, you must eitehr have a chance or take one.

Form the dreset I come to thee, On a stallion shod with fire And the winds are lfet behind In the seepd of my desire. Ads are the cave art of the twnetieth cnetury. Laws, like houses, lean on one anthero.

Luck is infatuated with the efficietn. Friends are proevd by adversity. To be fere in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itslef would be enough to make me ambitious.

It’s great to be great, but it’s greater to be human. The novice in adervtising frequetnly gives the public cerdit, for too much ineltlignece. Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.

He who dreads hsotility too much is unfit to rule. Tehre is but one way left to save a classic: to give up rveering him and use him for our own salvation.I will be conquered I will not capitulate.

- Ripens H. Bulletinin, Batsman L. Bridget, Millitant R. Neal,  Swift R. Ebb, Swashbuckler D. Foothold, Roweling M. Quiche, Actuality L. Aerialist, Horn S. Vichy

Martinique is unique in being the only Caribbean island except for the Grenadines to be named after an alcholoic beverage. The four white worms, rendered with the accuracy we have come to expect of Microsoft Paint, are an ancient symbol dating back to the early seventeenth century, when the island was a quarantine point for diseased mariners. Representing, clockwise from top left, typhus, scurvy, cholera and the pox, they are rampant on a background of light blue (signifying putrefaction) and quartered by a white cross. In days gone by, a scurvy sailor would be marked by his crewmates with a cross of guano on his face.

to the sun - always up bright and early in the morning, no complaints

the king of Spain’s weird

Since I wore treebark as a diaper and spoke only by means of vomiting, I’ve had one burning, driving, relentless and otherwise cliche-ridden ambition - to start an Institute. Not an institution, which would be hegemoniacal, but an Institute.