Liberated like My Lai?



(From http://www.queensu.ca/surp/surp817/bib8.htm)

I am sure I was followed to work today by Ernest Hemingway but bearing in mind he would be over 100 years old AND that he blew his brains out in 1961, the man in the car behind me was looking very good. Also, I am not really sure that driving a Honda Civic around Liverpool would be Ernest Hemingway's idea of adventure and I didn't notice any Game Rifles or fishing rods in the car with him. I will keep my eye out for Michael Palin though. I should be looking out for people who are more likely to turn up like Richey Manic. Looking for Richey Edwards on the web also brings up the Aphex Twin because he is Richard James and Richey Manic is Richard James Edwards. The Aphex Twin search brought back this page of photos from the Glass Pages. Be warned! They take ages to load. There is one photo in there of a woman playing the violin using music from a Philip Glass score which is taped to the walls of a room. The piece is called 'Strung Out', naturally.

I dreamed of the B52s last night, still pouring their bombs into Vietnam and Cambodia. Kissinger stole my childhood. He made me think how wonderful air power was without reference to the end result. It was all illegal. Where was the resolution number-whatever on that? My feelings are so fragmented at the moment. I am having trouble making up my mind how I feel on any one thing. The world is just too complex to understand but I do understand that many, many things done in the name of freedom are really done in the name of self-interest. The 'managers' of the world at every level are incompetent and it is only because the people want a quiet life that they accept the results of this incompetence - for good men to indeed, do nothing -- and say nothing. Pruit Igoe, Pollution, Hunger are all part of the same problem. We don't need huge buildings to house all the people of the world - We don't need genetically modified food to feed all the people of the world - We don't need oil to provide energy for all the people of the world - and we certainly don't need politicians with brains the size of walnuts to tell us what Freedom is and who is right and who is wrong. We need good people. We deserve them and we do not get them. I am with Elvis Costello AND Douglas Adams.

Talk of Douglas Adams reminds me of the current book. It is Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins and I have to say he is unstinting in his defence of science though from what I have read his moral stance is as strong as ever. He introduces ideas frequently without the thread becoming fragmented. The link with Douglas Adams? Dawkins wrote his obituary in the Guardian and gave the Eulogy at his memorial service (in Church! Without being struck by lightning).

I don't think I should have listened to Koyaanisqatsi while writing that.

Remember My Lai. It is pronounced Me Lie which is apt.