FLYOLYMPIC

Leisure centre 'too expensive to save '

2011-11-03T04:53:00.000-07:00

Morwe of the same sad news... swimming pools close due to lack of funds. Is this due to the illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan,. the bulging Military Budget, or simple 'evil' and 'dirty tricks' by the council?

SAVE OUR SWIMMING POOLS.

--Steven James Pratt (Fly Agaric 23)

Leisure centre 'too expensive to save '

11:27am Tuesday 1st November 2011

A COUNCIL has defended its decision to close a town's leisure centre and denied claims that it has already agreed to sell the site to developers.
Durham County Council leader Simon Henig and officers attended a meeting in Crook to explain why they decided to close Glenholme Leisure Centre.

The centre, which had a gym and swimming pool, was one of six in the county to be earmarked for closure as the council strove to shave £3.5m from its sport and leisure budget.
Ultimately, only Glenholme and Ferryhill were closed, leaving residents and campaigners furious.
At the meeting organised by the Three Towns Partnership, Coun Henig said he did not enjoy closing public facilities but said it was a necessity.

He said money had to be saved owing to cuts in funding from the Government.
Terry Collins, director of neighbourhood services, said Glenholme was under-used and would cost too much to bring back to a decent state.
He said it was one of the most expensive to run in the county and was making a loss of £259,000 a year.

He said the council wanted to encourage more people to take up sports but claimed outdoor team activities are more effective than leisure centres.

Mr Collins also said the council would seek to address the hole left in leisure in Crook by the closure, and suggested the authority might install a gym in Crook Civic Centre.
The audience also heard about plans to move the library into the civic centre, known locally as the Pagoda, which would then free up the library's site for redevelopment by a supermarket.
The council officials were quick to dismiss claims from campaigners that they had already agreed to sell the Glenholme site for redevelopment, but said any money made from the site would be used for leisure.

However, some residents remained unconvinced by the council's claims.
David English, chairman of Crook Community Partnership, said the council was turning Crook into a condemned town while resident Michael Manual accused the authority of acting like Vikings and pillaging the community.

The council spends £335,000 on running Ferryhill Leisure Centre and said it had not sold the land to any party.
A council spokesman said the authority was still looking into what was to happen to the Ferryhill centre.

Dirty Council tricks close pool in Crewe

2011-11-03T04:46:00.000-07:00

Anger as Sandbach Swimming Pool is closed during school half-term

Oct 26 2011 by Simon Halewood, Crewe Chronicle

FAMILIES have criticised Cheshire East Council’s ‘ill-timed’ decision to close Sandbach Swimming Pool during the school half-term holidays.

The leisure centre pool on Middlewich Road was shut on Monday and will reopen at 4pm on Friday (Oct 28) due to ‘essential maintenance’.

New gas boilers, a pool cover and an air handling unit, to re-circulate air and controls humidity, are being installed.

However the timing of the closure has been described as ridiculous by parents, and comes just months after the council shut the pool for major refurbishment during the summer holidays.

Mother of two, Amanda Roughley, 37, of Middlewich Road said: “I think it’s stupid especially after the children lost out during the summer.

“Me and my girls have always enjoyed going for a swim together during the school holidays as we don’t get time in the school weeks so I’m not happy.”

A council spokesman said: “This work has been prioritised as urgent with winter approaching, and this has unfortunately resulted in the pool being closed during half-term.

“We apologise for any inconvenience but these measures will help to save on CO2 emissions, which is an environmental priority and make savings.”

http://www.crewechronicle.co.uk/crewe-news/local-crewe-news/2011/10/26/anger-as-sandbach-swimming-pool-is-closed-during-school-half-term-96135-29659186/

Halifax Swimming pool closure!

2011-11-03T04:41:00.000-07:00

Pride in Elland: Don’t close our pool, pupils plead

Pupils from Brooksbank School, Elland, have their say on the future of the town

Published on Tuesday 1 November 2011 14:00

We’ve been asking pupils at Brooksbank School in Elland what they like most about the town they go to school in.

This week, pupils in year 10 discuss what they consider to be the best and worst of the town, and the memories they have of growing up in the area.

Rosana Greenwood of Norton Tower said the swimming pool was very important to her.

“I learned to swim at the pool in Elland,” she said.
“I think it will be a shame if it closes.”
“If it did, more clubs and things to do would be nice.”
Alice Smith, who now lives in Halifax, agrees that closure is not the answer.

http://www.halifaxcourier.co.uk/community/pride_in_elland_don_t_close_our_pool_pupils_plead_1_3925145

S.A.S Olympic Terrorist Squad!

2011-11-03T04:35:00.000-07:00

London 2012: SAS build top secret base on Olympics Park to combat potential terrorist attacks

by Laurie Hanna, Daily Mirror 3/11/2011

Decrease font size Increase font size

London 2012 logo

THE SAS have had a top secret base built on the London Olympics Park to combat potential terrorist attacks.

Advertisement >>

The elite troops will be on site as fears increase next year’s Games will be targeted.
There will also be underground bunkers housing troops on full alert 24 hours a day during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Reports claim that the elite corps will have a key role in the massive security operation at the Olympics, using boats to move in from the Thames if terrorists attack.

Sparkhill swimming pool up for grabs?

2011-09-02T11:18:00.000-07:00

Let's buy a swimming pool and decorate it unlike any other pool in the world!--steve

Construction firms are to be invited to bid for the right to carry out a multi-million pound makeover of Birmingham’s community swimming pools and leisure centres.The city council wants to draw up a preferred list of companies to deliver a major overhaul of the city’s sporting facilities.The first scheme involves a competitive tender process to build a new community swimming pool and leisure centre in Sparkhill, where the baths have been closed since the summer of 2008 after asbestos was discovered in the roof.Read More http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/birmingham-business-news/other-uk-business/2011/09/01/birmingham-swimming-pools-contract-up-for-grabs-65233-29346497/#ixzz1WovQAF7C

River Stour and River Stour B?

2011-09-02T11:11:00.000-07:00

Astonishingly to me, on August 30th two news items about THE RIVER STOUR appeared at the BBC website, due to the fact that both of them are in the new ENVIRONMENT AGENCY list of the top 10 cleanest rivers in the UK.

What astonishes me is the fact that the two rivers named STOUR (one in Dorset, one in the Black Country) both make the list, as if some kind of disinformation campaign were afoot to confuse the two Rivers of the same name. Why not change one of them, river STEER perhaps? You can be sure that the River Stour I know in B.C has no Salmon jumping in it.

"Others include the River Stour in Worcestershire - previously famed for the rainbow-coloured dyes that flowed into it from carpet manufacturers -"--http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14710478

Doctor Marshmallow Cubicle Feb 5th 2011 pt 1

2011-02-06T23:57:00.000-08:00

Cinematic Orchestra - The Man With The Movie Camera

2011-01-23T04:09:00.000-08:00

Baby Huey - A Change is Going to Come

2010-12-27T12:03:00.000-08:00

Knocking Down swimming pools to pay for Drone bombers

2010-12-04T01:50:00.000-08:00

WikiLeaks cables: Conservatives promised to run 'pro-American regime'

Leaked dispatch reveals how US diplomats are amused by Britain's 'paranoid' fears about so-called special relationship

David Leigh
guardian.co.uk, Friday 3 December 2010 23.00 GMT
Article history

David Cameron with Barack Obama at a press conference at the White House earlier this year. The incoming Conservatives appear to have made some wide-ranging offers of political co-operation with the US. Photograph: Rod Lamkey Jr/AFP/Getty Images Conservative party politicians lined up before the general election to promise that they would run a "pro-American regime" and buy more arms from the US if they came to power this year, the leaked American embassy cables show.Despite British leaders' supportive stance, the dispatches also reveal – in what some will see as humiliating detail – how US diplomats in London are amused by what they call Britain's "paranoid" fears about the so-called special relationship.One said the anxious British attitude "would often be humorous if it were not so corrosive" and that it was tempting to take advantage of this neurosis to "make London more willing to respond favourably when pressed for assistance". The UK was said to offer "unparalleled" help in promoting America's aims.The incoming Conservatives appear to have made some wide-ranging offers of political co-operation with the US. The cables detail a series of private meetings with Tory frontbenchers, many of whom are now in the cabinet.Liam Fox, now the defence secretary, promised to buy American military equipment, while the current foreign secretary, William Hague, offered the ambassador a "pro-American" government. Hague also said the entire Conservative leadership were, like him, "staunchly Atlanticist" and "children of Thatcher".Fox met the US ambassador, Louis Susman, a year ago. In a 10 December 2009 cable marked "confidential", Susman recorded: "Liam Fox affirmed his desire to work closely with the US if the Conservative party wins power … adding that 'we (Conservatives) intend to follow a much more pro-American profile in procurement'." He reportedly went on: "Increasing US-UK 'interoperability is the key' since the US and UK will continue to fight together in the future" and "expressed confidence regarding US leadership in Afghanistan and optimism about the way forward".The frontbencher admitted that there was an opposed faction within Tory ranks. "Fox asserted that some within the Conservative party are less enthusiastic, asserting that 'we're supposed to be partners with, not supplicants to, the United States'. Fox said he rebuffed these assertions, and he welcomed the ambassador's reassurance that senior US leaders value the UK as an equal partner."Hague pledged his own loyalty in an earlier meeting with the US deputy chief of mission, Richard LeBaron. A confidential cable marked "no foreigners" from 1 April 2008 records: "The deputy chief of mission asked Hague whether the relationship between the UK and the US was 'still special'. Hague said he, David Cameron and George Osborne were 'children of Thatcher' and staunch Atlanticists … For his part, said Hague, he has a sister who is American, spends his own vacations in America and, like many similar to him, considers America the 'other country to turn to'."Asking his senior adviser her views, [Arminka] Helic (who is Bosnian), said: 'America is the essential country.'"Hague said whoever enters 10 Downing Street as prime minister soon learns of the essential nature of the relationship with America. He went on: 'We want a pro-American regime. We need it. The world needs it.' "These enthusiastic approaches came against a backdrop of what American officials termed British "paranoia" following the arrival of Barack Obama as an unknown presidential quantity.In a lengthy classified dispatch in February 2009 headed "The British ask, is our special relationship still special in Washington?" LeBaron wrote: "More than one HMG senior official asked embassy officers whether President Obama meant to send a signal in his inaugural address about US-UK relations by quoting Washington during the revolutionary war [against Britain], while the removal of the Churchill bust from the Oval office consumed much UK newsprint."The Times had written, allegedly quoting British embassy sources in Washington, about the distress caused by the removal of the bust, lent to George Bush by Tony Blair from the UK government art collection, in happier times. It was headlined: "Churchill bust casts shadow over special relationship".LeBaron noted dryly: "This period of excessive UK speculation about the relationship is more paranoid than usual … This over-reading would often be humorous, if it were not so corrosive."He advised against taking advantage of British neuroses and said the UK remained highly useful to the US because of its "unparalleled" help in promoting America's aims. "Though tempting to argue that keeping HMG off balance about its current standing with us might make London more willing to respond favourably when pressed for assistance, in the long run it is not in US interests to have the UK public concluding the relationship is weakening, on either side."The UK's commitment of resources – financial, military, diplomatic – in support of US global priorities remains unparalleled; a UK public confident that the USG values those contributions and our relationship, matters to US national security."Britain's willingness to invest in expensive weaponry is a key part of the so-called special relationship. The UK's annual military budget is running at £37bn a year.Fox's reference to more procurement from the US shows his zest for heavy spending on two future big-ticket items – the joint strike fighter [JSF], and the £20bn replacement for the Trident nuclear weapons system. The largely US-built JSF will be formidably expensive, and the original scheme was for Britain to buy up to 138 of them at £150m each, to go on giant aircraft carriers.Fox is having an uphill fight: the recent defence review promised only to buy a cheaper version, and to cut the numbers of planes. Some are urging the purchase of US-made drones instead: the Ministry of Defence recently announced the purchase of 100 small Desert Hawk III drones and five extra Reaper killer drones. Other US purchases may be in the pipeline. Frustratingly perhaps for Fox, decisions on the Trident replacement scheme, which will rely on submarine-launched ballistic missiles leased from the US, have been delayed until after the next election.http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-cables-us-special-relationship

Ratlines Catholics and the Red Cross?

2010-11-28T17:14:00.000-08:00

These Vatican papers were not full passports, and not in themselves enough to gain passage overseas. They were, rather, the first stop in a paper trail—they could be used to obtain a displaced person passport from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which in turn could be used to apply for visas. In theory the ICRC would perform background checks on passport applicants, but in practice the word of a priest or particularly a bishop would be good enough. According to statements collected by Gitta Sereny from a senior official of the Rome branch of the ICRC ^[14], Hudal could also use his position as a bishop to request papers from the ICRC "made out according to his specifications". Sereny's sources also revealed an active illicit trade in stolen and forged ICRC papers in Rome at this time.

According to declassified US intelligence reports, Hudal was not the only priest helping Nazi escapees at this time. In the "La Vista report" declassified in 1984, Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) operative Vincent La Vista told how he had easily arranged for two bogus Hungarian refugees to get false ICRC documents with the help of a letter from a Father Joseph Gallov. Gallov, who ran a Vatican-sponsored charity for Hungarian refugees, asked no questions and wrote a letter to his "personal contact in the International Red Cross, who then issued the passports".^{[15]--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_%28history%29}

shopping trolley over the river Stour

2010-11-28T08:54:00.000-08:00

Stour Trolley over the River Stour 360

2010-11-28T08:52:00.000-08:00

Doctor Marshmallow Cubicle Syblings at the Pick Up Club

2010-11-28T07:19:00.000-08:00

Save Pick Up Rockers by STEVEFLY

The Death of Crippled Super-Market.

2010-11-28T07:16:00.000-08:00

The Death of Crippled Super-Market.

When I was only six years old I remember Superman as being the most inspiring charcter to me then, a super hero, with super powers to save people, to help them in times of distress and disaster, to fight injustice wherever it may be, and best of all superman went after the super-villains causing most of the problems in city areas and population centers, superman loved the people, and even animals, I wanted to be like superman and I dressed like him a few times when I visited Stourbridge in the early 1980's, before the age of the giant supermarket chains, before the age of the super-American 'style' shopping mall, and before the shopping mall culture came into my life like an all pervasive new religion: shopping.

The punchline here is supposed to spell out to you my horror and general outrage toward any decision to invite TESCO into Stourbridge Town Center. I have always opposed the superstore, and have spent many years watching their strategy both locally, nationally and internationally; to many this is a story of super-success, Billions in Profits, millions of new jobs and countless 'services' all from one single pivot, surely any critic of such a great money making and employment machine would be hard pressed to provide any meaningful criticism?

To begin with the relationships between Tesco executives and senior members of the British Cabinet raise concerns to my mind, especially in relationship to Tony Blair, and generally the ease by which TESCO in particular are allowed to buy land, build super-stores and expand into thousands of supermarket services, in fact becoming a mini-government all by itself, a Big Brother store for all your needs. That's what I see, and I see the Government and the private enterprise plotting to exploit the poor and vulnerable generally, in every and any way possible when I look at the last decade and the sordid business warfare operations. Others view this warfare as a successful campaign, defined by the it's profits, the numbers, and the employment figures all evidence that in fact, the supermarkets are enhancing our lives, giving us time and gifting us with convieniance, who can argue with that Mr. Pratt? "It's just a damned shop, and if its cheaper than anywhere else I'll shop there god damn it"--Homeless man in Dudley.

Here's some advice if your on the fence about Tesco. Simply look at their wikipedia entry on the internet, and then search for 'Tescopoly' and 'every liitle bit hurts' at your search engine of choice. Ask yourself, will you be the change you wish to see in the world, or do you just want other people to keep doing 'change' for you on T.V.
I am not such a negative and critical person as to be stupid enough to simply denounce the building of a new supermarket, without providing an alternative for new 'areas' in which my vision of what we could achieve together can be realized. How about TESCO invite me and bunch of local friends to help both design the store and attenuate the local production and distribution lines? to work out how to include all the local producers of goods and services that they might also provide.

Lets create a local supermarket partnership where we share our vision for a really supermarket, a supermarket with a cape and funny shoes, lets build a supermarket vision that sweeps all the others out into the car-park area and into the plastic bins where they belong with the plastic trash.

A Supermarket partnership vision that includes every voice, especially the voice of creative criticism and alternative models, superior in vision to those it opposes and therefore obsoleting the opposition with superior methodology. Here's goes.

TESCO stourbridge, when built shall be designed along the lines of two major principles, for starters, laid out by the greatest design scientist I have ever encountered: R. Buckminster Fuller; these primary two principles are.
a) Tensigrity
b) Synergetics

In short every possible way to use less energy in the design process, the construction, and the maintainance of this super-store should be implemented, to strive to create a super-store, where the word 'super' can be seen as synonomous with 'green' and 'effecient' or 'synergetic' to use Bucky's own terms. Why not? why wouldn't the richest and biggest of the UK Supermarket build us a really super market built upon the the most 'super' archetectual and design principles as laid out by the great Buckminster Fuller?

Also in tune with some other ideas I got from Bucky why not have each product have a signiture that can tell you how far it travelled, from where, when, and details about the growing conditions, and the payment and payment schemes of those who grew, packed, sliced, diced or dialled up whatever goods or services you receive. This is not TOO MUCH INFORMATION, but vital information to keep track of 'values', and a fair request in the face of supermarkets tracking the buying habits and details of their customers, the customers should ask their PRODUCTS and their manufacturers for equal information, or, as I propose, a program could simply display the best performers, or the products that produced the smallest carbon footprint, maybe by travelling the least amount of distance to the store? Therefore, we can begin to provide evidence for the whole principle of synergy from root to the fruit to the ceiling.

I would utilize the International reach of TESCO to provide a new interactive multicultural shared information and comparative 'values' resource, where different cultures and peoples can interact and share their local successes, both on-line and in groups, discussing their own day to day uses of all the goods and services they use, being encourgaed once again, for creative criticism and alternative ideas and design solutions opposed to rude, meaningless angry grunts, like '*%^k Tesco, the *;&'£*ing Robbing @0&Ts" These remarks get us nowhere fast, Tescno' however, and 'Tescopoly' seem more like it. 'Tescoticular Cancer' seems boarderline insulting and 'Tesco: A crippled Supermarket' once again, does not help us in a partnership. Name calling and insults are simply way below the belt, and I for one am not messing with no Tesco junk, no sir.

Every piece of packaging would be bio-degradable in no less than the time it takes to come back and buy another of whatever was once inside. Every piece of fruit and every vegetable grown as close to the store as possible, and wherever possible actually outside of the store itself.

The New Tesco should employ the goods and services providers and pay them well to continue doing what they are doing, and have people visit them or contact them for goods and/or services.

TESCO Music could help build a new wave of creativity throughout the land, providing free space, recording facility and International 'in store audiences' to local artists.

TESCO sports could provide free space for healthy fitness activities and support entire communities in their health and nutrition plan, all in harmony with the foods available at the store, and wherever and whenever possible in the local area.

TESCO film could trigger a new local journalistic and creative film revolution by simply buying 200 or so hand held cameras per-store and giving them away 'free' to local creatives to record their local environment and feeback on any concerns they have, especially regarding environmental concerns and how 'tensigrity' and 'synergetics' design science principles may assist and solve.

TESCO god might just be the thing that we have all been waiting for, now, just consider for a moment the greatest strategy I have yet to propose, TESCO GOD, a special god department in the store where you can commune with god and pray for forgiveness, redemption, rapture or some cranberry sauce.

TESCO time-bank could help revolutionize how we view work, shopping and trade by introducing 'time' as a valuable 'currency' and allowing volunteers to work for themselves and invent their own responsibilities in the local community and have a mean to evaluate and share the fruits of any such work.

TESCONO would be my idea of a library and global village space, where anybody can ask a question and is encouraged to say 'no, I'm not satisfied with that answer' whenever possible. As with the usual cheesy sauce advertisement I would go with 'Say Tesknow' marketing strategy.

TESCO nspiracy is an alterantive counter-intelligence operation that creates conspiracy and a small but significant amount of bad press for TESCO. Nspiracy moves the news headlines into crooked and extremely shallow waters, builds a Straw man, burns it and pretends to own all. Every supermarket needs a good local fable and nspiracy operation to help tap into the local community spirit.

Smoking a fat Stourbridge cone

2010-11-07T13:40:00.000-08:00

Up the Stourbridge Glass cone went our lonely hero.  Up and out the top of great Glass factory where  Stourbridge Clay lead to a Crystal meme sale.  Royal Clay from the earth, Mud and clay people, clay artists And what is Industry? Who owns it and how?

Sandstone and Rocks of earth,  Geological formations, coal, bones, calcium  Oil are from the earth, how
can we own them?

Who’s industry and patent, who’s business? Earth business and man business.  Trees and paper.  Rivers and River banks.  What is money and how did it get that way In Stourbridge  Who set the gold standard?  How are Royals majestic?  Why no Glass pipes in Stourbridge?

Who’s pencil that draws the boundary Who’s eye’s to perceive the line, the divisions And divisions.  Who’s visions and translations of God. Who’s Christ Jesus story, Who’s pen, who’s now Who’s when?
What Gods give the all seeing eye? Who’s shepherd and who’s sheep? Where in the small print? What authority do you claim on this earth here?

Who’s feet and hands walked and dug, Work for who and for what? God and Earth, God or Earth. Who measures the weight,  How did the instruments get that way? What is your margin of error tolerance?
What about humans who did not vote How can you represent us, Oh Politician? How can you represent Earth or God Truth and sanity?

How do you represent? What media do you share, what is private And what is public representation.  All property maybe theft, All things may lead back to earth Why laws prohibiting Marijuana and LSD And tax breaks for Monsanto, Glaxosmith? 

Open source education, on-line schooling Open Source Omniversity is underway I am a proponent of the shared arts of Education. We are the Maybe Logic Academy See Magick, NLP, and Non-Euclidean politics.  We are the representatives of the Black Country We draw the lines and erase the boundaries We are the creative heart of the Blackcountry Writers, poets, painters, sculptors, dancers.  Art is our shared language of resistance To reshape and edit our worlds, shared worlds Shared Inhabited realities, built by urban Shaman Shared through voluntary risk and struggle.  

Artists and the equivalence theory? 10’000 hours of hard crafting and grafting  vs. 5 seconds it takes sign a contract? And forward along the credit,  Borrowed from the Royal chest, Bottomless, Jewel encrusted and in league With the printers of the majestic paper?  Who makes the paper Majestic and how?  What economic knowledge? Excuse me, usury?

Basic truth of fairness and equality Humanity. To have equal share of the profits  Divided honestly and equally, Economics without distortion and the  Genghis Kahn virus: The biggest and most powerful, The richest and most brutal Rule.   I present Open Source Economies Transparency and new Social Credit systems Employment seems a kind of disease, Spreading bad business practice, bully boy tactics Lawyer Run Capitalism. 

The core of Conservative Rule. The core of Deaf Labour,   And even the liberals hate the poor What of sub minorities?  Why highlight something as flimsy as race?  To base wrongheaded policy and funding scheme? What do you mean? 

You do not represent me, my friends and my experiences  Within the territory you claim to represent.  In fact everything you say it is, it isn’t.   British Labour danced in a conservative agenda dressed in Blood Red bondage gear.  Another Christian evangelical called Blair, In league with Bush and Cheney. 

Hello...corporal Malvern. We have seen your continued conservative trickery Over 34 years.  Every day in Britain, under the boot of the Big London Banks, the Christian American Business Partnership. The discrimination against minorities, Against self owning ones, against social co-operatives 
From Thatcher to Major, to Blair, to Brown and Cameron. 

No change in the crying game, the lies, the support Of military intervention for private interest Continued useless and failed Multi Billion Pound War on some drugs, and the Irony of British Opium history Poppy fields and Government Heroin cartels.  

Oh, don’t start me to talking, And backing up my lines with historical evidence. Labour/Conservative, what is the difference?  Politics has become a business game show, Played by some families with large fortunes.  Why do we love our Royalty so much? And so our political leaders and goons that beg pardons Beg spies and join the privileged classes. 

The language of Army Majors, the  Mind of a serial killer and temper of a psychopath. The role of a modern representative is best described as Henchmen of the Devil and his Lawyer Run Apocalypse  Lo! The gravity of the situation  The measure of damage and death, destruction  Globally based on British rule  Balanced with the great help we give foreign nations? Our Industry and Heritage is the double cross system.

Getting the otherside to work for us,  Laywer Run Capitalism and Banking Monopoly  American, Dutch and Swiss Banks.   American, Dutch and English slavery history?  Why make a man work for what is inherently his? The Earth and God within, without and throughout all men All space and time? What of light? Who owns light?  Can you really buy a star and name it? What if the stars named you? What is a Stourbridge Clay Kitchenette?

Stourbridge Tesco's and the 2012 Olympics

2010-10-24T03:56:00.000-07:00

Oh Tesco's, you old juggernaut of sadness. You bully, you, your just a brand name, behind which who knows how many sit? Yet, I will address 'Tesco's' as if you were an entity, with some of the emotional and physical 'feelings' human beings have. But, I do recognize that your really a ficticious 'business entity' a bank account and a business enterprise company, a tool, an 'operating system'. And a really really really big one at that.

The impersonal nature of 'companies' and the tendency for NEWS groups to write about them like they were people, often without actually writing the names of those 'behind' the company, but making out that they do wonderful 'things' for the society, like a Samaritaine or a even a new god, such is the fever-pitch of those in favor of a TESCO superstore, based on the 'modern' architecture, the new 'job' opportunities, and the redevelopment of the 'eye-sore' that is the Crown Center and Multi-story car park. I can understand these arguments for inviting TESCO into town, but I have something to say about that, something to say about supermarkets in general, urban renewal in general and 'shopping' as a means to attain emotional 'drug induced' neurological states. Shopping releases endorphins 'drugs' into the brain. Shopping malls and supermarkets release endorphins into the brain, and media signals, and smells, tastes, texture and light, lots of lights burning bright, as our fossil fuels cough a last dying breath, every 'lamp' that burns, so to speak, makes me wonder. Are the supermarkets worth it?

Pros and cons, cons and pros?
Somebody, please!

“If it gets the go-ahead we’d be looking to start on site this time next year, and ready to open prior to the 2012 Olympics.”http://www.stourbridgenews.co.uk/news/8195115.Praise_for_new_stourbridge_Tesco_plans/

TTOTT 150 v1.0

2010-09-07T05:49:00.000-07:00

30 x TAILORS/TEACHINGS/TOTEMS/THEO-DEITIES/TEXTS
...of the tribe. To be arranged in concentric rings on a wheel.
A-Z plus four arbitrary choices to make 30.
x 2 = 60
x 3 = 90
x4 = 120
x5 = 150

To be memorized and studied as a guide map to 'the tale of the tribe' inspired by the life and works of Dr. Robert Anton Wilson.

Unevenly Distributed: The Wheels Fall Off the Cart -- Mark Pesce CHU Fly

2010-08-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

A selection from the brilliant new work by Mark Pesce, (Future Present) embellished with the Genius of CHU. Enjoy, love, steve fly.

Mark Pesce - Words.
CHU - Images.
Steve 'Fly Agaric'' - Mixing

Unevenly Distributed: Table of Contents
Unevenly Distributed:
I. The Wheels Fall Off the Cart
II. The Barbarian Hordes Storm the Walls
III. And The Penny Drops

Production Models for the 21st Century

I. The Wheels Fall Off the Cart

In mid-1994, sometime shortly after Tony Parisi and I had
fused the new technology of the World Wide Web to a 3D
visualization engine, to create VRML, we paid a visit to the
University of Santa Cruz, about 120 kilometers south of San
Francisco. Two UCSC students wanted to pitch us on their
own web media project. The Internet Underground Music
Archive, or IUMA, featured a simple directory of artists,
complete with links to MP3 files of these artists’ recordings.
(Before I go any further, I should state that they had all the
necessary clearances to put musical works up onto the Web –
IUMA was not violating anyone’s copyrights.) The idea
behind IUMA was simple enough, the technology absolutely
straightforward – and yet, for all that, it was utterly
revolutionary. Anyone, anywhere could surf over to the
IUMA site, pick an artist, then download a track and play it.

This was in the days before broadband, so downloading a
multi-megabyte MP3 recording could take upwards of an
hour per track – something that seems ridiculous today, but
was still so potent back in 1994 that IUMA immediately
became one of the most popular sites on the still-quite-tiny
Web. The founders of IUMA – Rob Lord and Jon Luini –
wanted to create a place where unsigned or non-commercial
musicians could share their music with the public in order to
reach a larger audience, gain recognition, and perhaps even
end up with a recording deal. IUMA was always better as a
proof-of-concept than as a business opportunity, but the
founders did get venture capital, and tried to make a go of
selling music online. However, given the relative obscurity of
the musicians on IUMA, and the pre-iPod lack of pervasive
MP3 players, IUMA ran through its money by 2001,
shuttering during the dot-com implosion of the same year.
Despite that, every music site which followed IUMA, legal and
otherwise, from Napster to Rhapsody to iTunes, has walked in
its footsteps. Now, nearing the end of the first decade of the
21st century, we have a broadband infrastructure capable of
delivery MP3s, and several hundred million devices which can
play them. IUMA was a good idea, but five years too early.

Just forty-eight hours ago, a new music service, calling itself
Qtrax, aborted its international launch – though it promises
to be up “real soon now.” Qtrax also promises that anyone,
anywhere will be able to download any of its twenty-five
million songs perfectly legally, and listen to them practically
anywhere they like – along with an inserted advertisement.
Using peer-to-peer networking to relieve the burden on its
own servers, and Digital Rights Management, or DRM, Qtrax
ensures that there are no abuses of these pseudo-free
recordings.

Most of the words that I used to describe Qtrax in the
preceding paragraph didn’t exist in common usage when
IUMA disappeared from the scene in the first year of this
millennium. The years between IUMA and Qtrax are a
geological age in Internet time, so it’s a good idea to walk back
through that era and have a good look at the fossils which
speak to how we evolved to where we are today.

In 1999, a curly-haired undergraduate at Boston’s
Northeastern University built a piece of software that allowed
him to share his MP3 collection with a few of his friends on
campus, and allowed him access to their MP3s. This scanned
the MP3s on each hard drive, publishing the list to a shared
database, allowing each person using the software to
download the MP3 from someone else’s hard drive to his own.
This is simple enough, technically, but Shawn Fanning’s
Napster created a dual-headed revolution. First, it was the
killer app for broadband: using Napster on a dial-up
connection was essentially impossible. Second, it completely
ignored the established systems of distribution used for
recorded music.

This second point is the one which has the most relevance to
my talk this morning; Napster had an entirely unpredicted
effect on the distribution methodologies which had been the
bedrock of the recording industry for the past hundred years.

The music industry grew up around the licensing, distribution
and sale of a physical medium – a piano roll, a wax recording,
a vinyl disk, a digital compact disc. However, when the
recording industry made the transition to CDs in the 1980s
(and reaped windfall profits as the public purchased new
copies of older recordings) they also signed their own death
warrants. Digital recordings are entirely ephemeral,
composed only of mathematics, not of matter. Any system
which transmitted the mathematics would suffice for the
distribution of music, and the compact disc met this need
only until computers were powerful enough to play the more
compact MP3 format, and broadband connections were fast
enough to allow these smaller files to be transmitted quickly.
Napster leveraged both of these criteria – the mathematical
nature of digitally-encoded music and the prevalence of
broadband connections on America’s college campuses – to
produce a sensation.

In its earliest days, Napster reflected the tastes of its collegeage
users, but, as word got out, the collection of tracks
available through Napster grew more varied and more
interesting. Many individuals took recordings that were only
available on vinyl, and digitally recorded them specifically to
post them on Napster. Napster quickly had a more complete
selection of recordings than all but the most comprehensive
music stores. This only attracted more users to Napster, who
added more oddities from their on collections, which
attracted more users, and so on, until Napster became seen as
the authoritative source for recorded music.

Given that all of this “file-sharing”, as it was termed,
happened outside of the economic systems of distribution
established by the recording industry, it was taking money out
of their pockets – probably something greater than billions of
dollars a year was lost, if all of these downloads had been
converted into sales. (Studies indicate this was unlikely –
college students have ever been poor.) The recording industry
launched a massive lawsuit against Napster in 2000, forcing
the service to shutter in 2001, just as it reached an incredible
peak of 14 million simultaneous users, out of a worldwide
broadband population of probably only 100 million. This
means that one in seven computers connected to the
broadband internet were using Napster just as it was being
shut down.

Here’s where it gets more interesting: the recording industry
thought they’d brought the horse back into the barn. What
they hadn’t realized was that the gate had burnt down. The
millions of Napster users had their appetites whet by a world
where an incredible variety of music was instantaneously
available with few clicks of the mouse. In the absence of
Napster, that pressure remained, and it only took a few weeks
for a few enterprising engineers to create a successor to
Napster, known as Gnutella, which provided the same service
as Napster, but used a profoundly different technology for its
filesharing. Where Napster had all of its users register their
tracks within a centralized database (which disappeared when
Napster was shut down) Gnutella created a vast, amorphous,
distributed database, spread out across all of the computers
running Guntella. Gnutella had no center to strike at, and
therefore could not be shut down.

It is because of the actions of the recording industry that
Gnutella was developed. If legal pressure hadn’t driven
Napster out of business, Gnutella would not have been
necessary. The recording industry turned out to be its own
worst enemy, because it turned a potentially profitable
relationship with its customers into an ever-escalating arms
race of file-sharing tools, lawsuits, and public relations
nightmares.

Once Gnutella and its descendants – Kazaa, Limewire, and
Acquisition – arrived on the scene, the listening public had
wholly taken control of the distribution of recorded music.
Every attempt to shut down these ever-more-invisible
“darknets” has ended in failure and only spurred the
continued growth of these networks. Now, with Qtrax, the
recording industry is seeking to make an accommodation with
an audience which expects music to be both free and freely
available, falling back on advertising revenue source to
recover some of their production costs.

At first, it seemed that filmic media would be immune from
the disruptions that have plagued the recording industry –
films and TV shows, even when heavily compressed, are very
large files, on the order of hundreds of millions of bytes of
data. Systems like Gnutella, which allow you to transfer a file
directly from one computer to another are not particularly
well-suited to such large file transfers. In 2002, an
unemployed programmer named Bram Cohen solved that
problem definitively with the introduction of a new filesharing
system known as BitTorrent.

BitTorrent is a bit mysterious to most everyone not deeply
involved in technology, so a brief of explanation will help to
explain its inner workings. Suppose, for a moment, that I
have a short film, just 1000 frames in length, digitally
encoded on my hard drive. If I wanted to share this film with
each of you via Gnutella, you’d have to wait in a queue as I
served up the film, time and time again, to each of you. The
last person in the queue would wait quite a long time. But if,
instead, I gave the first ten frames of the film to the first
person in the queue, and the second ten frames to the second
person in the queue, and the third ten frames to the third
person in the queue, and so on, until I’d handed out all
thousand frames, all I need do at that point is tell each of you
that each of your “peers” has the missing frames, and that you
needed to get them from those peers. A flurry of transfers
would result, as each peer picked up the pieces it needed to
make a complete whole from other peers. From my point of
view, I only had to transmit the film once – something I can
do relatively quickly. From your point of view, none of you
had to queue to get the film – because the pieces were
scattered widely around, in little puzzle pieces, that you could
gather together on your own.

That’s how BitTorrent works. It is both incredibly efficient
and incredibly resilient – peers can come and go as they
please, yet the total number of peers guaratees that
somewhere out there is an entire copy of the film available at
all times. And, even more perversely, the more people who
want copies of my film, the easier it is for each successive
person to get a copy of the film – because there are more
peers to grab pieces from. This group of peers, known as a
“swarm”, is the most efficient system yet developed for the
distribution of digital media. In fact, a single, underpowered
computer, on a single, underpowered broadband link can, via
BitTorrent, create a swarm of peers. BitTorrent allows
anyone, anywhere, distribute any large media file at
essentially no cost.

It is estimated that upwards of 60% of all traffic on the
Internet is composed of BitTorrent transfers. Much of this
traffic is perfectly legitimate – software, such as the free
Linux operating system, is distributed using BitTorrent. Still,
it is well known that movies and television programmes are
also distributed using BitTorrent, in violation of copyright.
This became absolutely clear on the 14th of October 2003,
when Sky Broadcasting in the UK premiered the first episode
of Battlestar Galactica, Ron Moore’s dark re-imagining of the
famous shlocky 1970s TV series. Because the American
distributor, SciFi Channel, had chosen to hold off until
January to broadcast the series, fans in the UK recorded the
programmes and posted them to BitTorrent for American
fans to download. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the
episodes circulated in the United States – and conventional
thinking would reckon that this would seriously impact the
ratings of the show upon its US premiere. In fact, precisely
the opposite happened: the show was so well written and
produced that the word-of-mouth engendered by all this mass
piracy created an enormous broadcast audience for the series,
making it the most successful in SciFi Channel history.
In the age of BitTorrent, piracy is not necessarily a menace.

The ability to “hyperdistribute” a programme – using
BitTorrent to send a single copy of a programme to millions of
people around the world efficiently and instantaneously –
creates an environment where the more something is shared,
the more valuable it becomes. This seems counterintuitive,
but only in the context of systems of distribution which were
part-and-parcel of the scarce exhibition outlets of theaters
and broadcasters. Once everyone, everywhere had the
capability to “tuning into” a BitTorrent broadcast, the
economics of distribution were turned on their heads. The
distributioin gatekeepers, stripped of their power, whinge
about piracy. But, as was the case with recorded music, the
audience has simply asserted its control over distribution.
This is not about piracy. This is about the audience getting
whatever it wants, by any means necessary. They have the
tools, they have the intent, and they have the power of
numbers. It is foolishness to insist that the future will be
substantially different from the world we see today. We can
not change the behavior of the audience. Instead, we must all
adapt to things as they are.

But things as the are have changed more than you might
know. This is not the story of how piracy destroyed the film
industry. This is the story how the audience became not just
the distributors but the producers of their own content, and,
in so doing, brought down the high walls which separate
professionals from amateurs.

Lies Lies Lies by CHU

II. The Barbarian Hordes Storm the Walls

Without any doubt the most outstanding success of the
second phase of the Web (known colloquially as “Web 2.0”) is
the video-sharing site YouTube. Founded in early 2005, as of
yesterday YouTube was the third most visited site on the
entire Web, led only by Yahoo! and YouTube’s parent, Google.
There are a lot of videos on YouTube. I’m not sure if anyone
knows quite how many, but they easily number in the tens of
millions, quite likely approaching a hundred million. Another
hundred thousand videos are uploaded each day; YouTube
grows by three million videos a month. That’s a lot of video,
difficult even to contemplate. But an understanding of
YouTube is essential for anyone in the film and television
industries in the 21st century, because, in the most pure,
absolute sense, YouTube is your competitor.

Let me unroll that statement a bit, because I don’t wish it to
be taken as simply as it sounds. It’s not that YouTube is
competing with you for dollars – it isn’t, at least not yet – but
rather, it is competing for attention. Attention is the limiting
factor for the audience; we are cashed up but time-poor. Yet,
even as we’ve become so time-poor, the number of options for
how we can spend that time entertaining ourselves has grown
so grotesquely large as to be almost unfathomable. This is the
real lesson of YouTube, the one I want you to consider in your
deliberations today. In just the past three years we have gone
from an essential scarcity of filmic media – presented through
limited and highly regulated distribution channels – to a
hyperabundance of viewing options.

This hyperabundance of choices, it was supposed until
recently, would lead to a sort of “decision paralysis,” whereby
the viewer would be so overwhelmed by the number of
choices on offer that they would simply run back, terrified, to
the highly regularized offerings of the old-school distribution
channels. This has not happened; in fact, the opposite has
occured: the audience is fragmenting, breaking up into eversmaller
“microaudiences”. It is these microaudiences that
YouTube speaks directly to. The language of microaudiences
is YouTube’s native tongue.

In order to illustrate the transformation that has completely
overtaken us, let’s consider a hypothetical fifteen year-old
boy, home after a day at school. He is multi-tasking: texting
his friends, posting messages on Bebo, chatting away on IM,
surfing the web, doing a bit of homework, and probably
taking in some entertainment. That might be coming from a
television, somewhere in the background, or it might be
coming from the Web browser right in front of him.
(Actually, it’s probably both simultaneously.) This teenager
has a limited suite of selections available on the telly – even
with satellite or cable, there won’t be more than a few
hundred choices on offer, and he’s probably settled for
something that, while not incredibly satisfying, is good
enough to play in the background.

Meanwhile, on his laptop, he’s viewing a whole series of
YouTube videos that he’s received from his friends; they’ve
found these videos in their own wanderings, and immediately
forwarded them along, knowing that he’ll enjoy them. He
views them, and laughs, he forwards them along to other
friends, who will laugh, and forward them along to other
friends, and so on. Sharing is an essential quality of all of the
media this fifteen year-old has ever known. In his eyes, if it
can’t be shared, a piece of media loses most of its value. If it
can’t be forwarded along, it’s broken.

For this fifteen year-old, the concept of a broadcast network
no longer exists. Television programmes might be watched as
they’re broadcast through the airwaves, but more likely
they’re spooled off of a digital video recorder, or downloaded
from the torrent and watched where and when he chooses.

The broadcast network has been replaced by the social
network of his friends, all of whom are constantly sharing the
newest, coolest things with one another. The current hot item
might be something that was created at great expense for a
mass audience, but the relationship between a hot piece of
media and its meaningfulness for a microaudience is purely
coincidental. All the marketing dollars in the world can foster
some brand awareness, but no amount of money will inspire
that fifteen year old to forward something along – because his
social standing hangs in the balance. If he passes along
something lame, he’ll lose social standing with his peers. This
factors into every decision he makes, from the brand of
runners he wears, to the television series he chooses to watch.
Because of the hyperabundance of media – something he
takes as a given, not as an incredibly recent development – all
of his media decisions are weighed against the values and
tastes of his social network, rather than against a scarcity of
choices.

This means that the true value of media in the 21st century is
entirely personal, and based upon the salience, that is, the
importance, of that media to the individual and that
individual’s social network. The mass market, with its
enforced scarcity, simply does not enter into his calculations.
Yes, he might go to the theatre to see Transformers with his
mates; but he’s just as likely to download a copy recorded in
the movie theatre with an illegally smuggled-in camera that
was uploaded to the Pirate Bay a few hours after its release.

That’s today. Now let’s project ourselves five years into the
future. YouTube is still around, but now it has more than two
hundred million videos (probably much more), all available,
all the time, from short-form to full-length features, many of
which are now available in high-definition. There’s so much
“there” there that it is inconceivable that conventional media
distribution mechanisms of exhibition and broadcast could
compete. For this twenty year-old, every decision to spend
some of his increasingly-valuable attention watching
anything is measured against salience: “How important is
this for me, right now?” When you weigh the latest episode of
a TV series against some newly-made video that is meant only
to appeal to a few thousand people – such as himself – that
video will win, every time. It more completely satisfies him.

As the number of videos on offer through YouTube and its
competitors continues to grow, the number of salient choices
grows ever larger. His social network, communicating now
through FaceBook and MySpace and next-generation mobile
handsets and iPods and goodness-knows-what-else is
constantly delivering an ever-growing and increasinglyrelevant
suite of media options. He, as a vital node within his
social network, is doing his best to give as good as he gets.
His reputation depends on being “on the tip.”

When the barriers to media distribution collapsed in the post-
Napster era, the exhibitors and broadcasters lost control of
distribution. What no one had expected was that the
professional producers would lose control of production. The
difference between an amateur and a professional – in the
media industries – has always centered on the point that the
professional sells their work into distribution, while the
amateur uses wits and will to self-distribute. Now that selfdistribution
is more effective than professional distribution,
how do we distinguish between the professional and the
amateur? This twenty year-old doesn’t know, and doesn’t
care.

There is no conceivable way that the current systems of film
and television production and distribution can survive in this
environment. This is an uncomfortable truth, but it is the
only truth on offer this morning. I’ve come to this conclusion
slowly, because it seems to spell the death of a hundred yearold
industry with many, many creative professionals. In this
environment, television is already rediscovering its roots as a
live medium, increasingly focusing on news, sport and “event”
based programming, such as Pop Idol, where being there live
is the essence of the experience. Broadcasting is uniquely
designed to support the efficient distribution of live
programming. Hollywood will continue to churn out
blockbuster after blockbuster, seeking a warmed-over middle
ground of thrills and chills which ensures that global receipts
will cover the ever-increasing production costs. In this form,
both industries will continue for some years to come, and will
probably continue to generate nice profits. But the audience’s
attentions have turned elsewhere. They’re not returning.

This future almost completely excludes “independent”
production, a vague term which basically means any
production which takes place outside of the media
megacorporations (News Corp, Disney, Sony, Universal and
TimeWarner), which increasingly dominate the mass media
landscape. Outside of their corporate embrace, finding an
audience sufficient to cover production and marketing costs
has become increasingly difficult. Film and television have
long been losing economic propositions (except for the most
lucky), but they’re now becoming financially suicidal.
National and regional funding bodies are growing
increasingly intolerant of funding productions which can not
find an audience; soon enough that pipeline will be cut off,
despite the damage to national cultures. Australia funds the
Film Finance Corporation and the Australian Film Council to
the tune of a hundred million dollars a year, to ensure that
Australian stories are told by Australian voices; but
Australians don’t go to see them in the theatres, and don’t buy
them on DVD.

The center can not hold. Instead, YouTube, which founder
Steve Chen insists has “no gold standard” of production
values, is rapidly becoming the vehicle for independent
productions; productions which cost not millions of euros,
but hundreds, and which make up for their low production
values in salience and in overwhelming numbers. This
tsunami of content can not be stopped or even slowed down;
it has nothing to do with piracy (only nine percent of the
videos viewed on YouTube are violations of copyright) but
reflects the natural accommodation of the audience to an era
of media hyperabundance.

What then, is to be done?

Sodtherich by CHU

III. And The Penny Drops

It isn’t all bad news. But, like a good doctor, I want to give
you the bad news right up front: There is no single, long-term
solution for film or television production. No panacea. It’s
not even entirely clear that the massive Hollywood studios
will do business-as-usual for any length of time into the
future. Just a decade ago the entire music recording industry
seemed impregnable. Now it lies in ruins. To assume that
history won’t repeat itself is more than willful ignorance of the
facts; it’s bad business.

This means that the one-size-fits-all production-todistribution
model, which all of you have been taught as the
orthodoxy of the media industries, is worse than useless; it’s
actually blocking your progress because it is effectively
keeping you from thinking outside the square. This is a
wholly new world, one which is littered with golden
opportunities for those able to avail themselves of them. We
need to get you from where you are – bound to an obsolete
production model – to where you need to be. Let me
illustrate this transition with two examples.

In early 2005, producer Ronda Byrne got a production
agreement with Channel NINE, then the number one
Australian television network, to make a feature-length
television programme about the “law of attraction”, an idea
she’d learned of when reading a book published in 1910, The
Science of Getting Rich. The interviews and other footage
were shot in July and August, and after a few months in the
editing suite, she showed the finished production to
executives at Channel NINE, who declined to broadcast it,
believing it lacked mass appeal. Since Byrne wasn’t going to
be getting broadcast fees from Channel NINE to cover her
production costs, she negotiated a new deal with NINE,
allowing her to sell DVDs of the completed film.

At this point Byrne began spreading news of the film virally,
through the communities she thought would be most
interested in viewing it; specifically, spiritual and “New Age”
communities. People excited by Byrne’s teaser marketing
could pay $20 for a DVD copy of the film (with extended
features), or pay $5 to watch a streaming version directly on
their computer. As the film made its way to its intended
audience, word-of-mouth caused business to mushroom
overnight. The Secret became a blockbuster, selling millions
of copies on DVD. A companion book, also titled The Secret,
has sold over two million copies. And that arbiter of
American popular taste, Oprah, has featured the film and
book on her talk show, praising both to the skies. The film
has earned back many, many times its production costs,
making Byrne a wealthy woman. She’s already deep into the
production of a sequel to The Secret – a film which already
has an audience identified and targeted.

Chagrined, the television executives of Channel NINE finally
did broadcast The Secret in February 2007. It didn’t do that
well. This sums up the paradox distribution in the age of the
microaudience. Clearly The Secret had a massive world-wide
audience, but television wasn’t the most effective way to reach
them, because this audience was actually a collection of
microaudiences, rather than a single, aggregated audience. If
The Secret had opened theatrically, it’s unlikely it would have
done terribly well; it’s the kind of film that people want to
watch more than once, being in equal parts a self-help
handbook and a series of inspirational stories. It is wellsuited
for a direct-to-DVD release – a distribution vehicle that
no longer has the stigma of “failure” associated with it. It is
also well-suited to cross-media projects, such as books,
conferences, streamed delivery, podcasts, and so forth.
Having found her audience, Byrne has transformed The
Secret into an exceptional money-making franchise, as
lucrative, in its own way, and at its own scale, as any
Hollywood franchise.

The second example is utterly different from The Secret, yet
the fundamentals are strikingly similar. Just last month a
production group calling themselves “The League of Peers”
released a film titled Steal This Film, Part 2. The first part of
this film, released in late 2006, dealt with the rise of filesharing,
and, in specific, with the legal troubles of the world’s
largest BitTorrent site, Sweden’s The Pirate Bay. That film,
although earnest and coherent, felt as though it was produced
by individuals still learning the craft of filmmaking. This
latest film feels looks as professional as any documentary
created for BBC’s Horizon or PBS’s Frontline or ABC’s
4Corners. It is slick, well-lit, well-edited, and has a very
compelling story to tell about the history of copying –
beginning with the invention of the printing press, five
hundred years ago. Steal This Film is a political production, a
bit of propaganda with an bias. This, in itself, is not
uncommon in a documentary. The funding and distribution
model for this film is what makes it relatively unique.

Individuals who saw Steal This Film, Part One – which was
made freely available for download via BitTorrent – were
invited to contribute to the making of the sequel. Nearly five
million people downloaded Steal This Film, Part One, so
there was a substantial base of contributors to draw from. (I
myself donated five dollars after viewing the film. If every
viewer had done likewise that would cover the budget of a
major Hollywood production!) The League of Peers also
approached arts funding bodies, such as the BritishDocumentary Council, with their completed film in hand, the
statistics showing that their work reached a large audience,
and a roadmap for the second film – this got them additional
funding. Now, having released Steal This Film, Part Two,
viewers are again invited to contribute (if they like the film),
promised a “secret gift” for contributions of $15 or more.
While the tip jar – literally, busking – may seem a very weird
way to fund a film production, it’s likely that Steal This Film,
Part Two will find an even wider audience than Part One, and
that the coffers of the League of Peers will provide them with
enough funds to embark on their next film, The Oil of the 21st
Century, which will focus on the evolution of intellectual
property into a traded commodity.

I have asked Screen Training Ireland to include a DVD of
Steal This Film, Part Two with the materials you received this
morning. You’ve been given the DVD version of the film, but
I encourage you to download the other versions of the film:
the XVID version, for playback on a PC; the iPod version, for
portable devices; and the high-definition version, for your
visual enjoyment. It’s proof positive that a viable economic
model exists for film, even when it is given away. It will not
work for all productions, but there is a global community of
individuals who are intensely interested in factual works
about copyright and intellectual property in the 21st century,
who find these works salient, and who are underserved by the
media megacorporations, who would not consider it in their
own economic best interest to produce or distribute such
works. The League of Peers, as part of the community whom
this film is intended for, knew how to get the word out about
the film (particularly through Boing Boing, the most popular
blog in the world, with two million readers a week), and,
within a few weeks, nearly everyone who should have heard of
the film had heard about it – through their social networks.

Both The Secret and Steal This Film, Part Two are factual
works, and it’s clear that this emerging distribution model –
which relies on targeting communities of interest – works
best with factual productions. One of the reasons that there
has been such an upsurge in the production of factual works
over the past few years is because these works have been able
to build their own funding models upon a deep knowledge of
the communities they are talking to – made by
microaudiences, for microaudiences. But microaudiences,
scaled to global proportions, can easily number in the
millions. Microaudiences are perfectly willing to pay for
something or contribute to something they consider of
particular value and salience; it is a visible thank you, a form
of social reinforcement which is very natural within social
networks.

What about drama, comedy and animation? Short-form
comedy and animation probably have the easiest go of it,
because they can be delivered online with an advertising
payload of some sort. Happy Tree Friends is a great example
of how this works – but it took producers Mondo Media
nearly a decade to stumble into a successful economic model.
Feature-length comedy and feature-length drama are more
difficult nuts to crack, but they are not impossible. Again, the
key is to find the communities which will be most interested
in the production; this is not always entirely obvious, but the
filmmaker should have some idea of the target audience for
their film. While in preproduction, these communities need
to be wooed and seduced into believing that this film is meant
just for them, that it is salient. Productions can be released
through complementary distribution channels: a limited,
occasional run in rented exhibition spaces (which can be
“events”, created to promote and showcase the film); direct
DVD sales (which are highly lucrative if the producer does
this directly); online distribution vehicles such as iTunes
Movie Store; and through “community” viewing, where a
DVD is given to a few key members of the community in the
hopes that word-of-mouth will spread in that community,
generating further DVD sales.

None of this guarantees success, but it is the way things work
for independent productions in the 21st-century. All of this is
new territory. It isn’t a role that belongs neatly to the
producer of the film, nor, in the absence of studio muscle, is it
something that a film distributor would be competent at. This
may not be the producer’s job. But it is someone’s job.
Someone has to do it. Starting at the earliest stages of preproduction,
someone has to sit down with the creatives and
the producer and ask the hard questions: “Who is this film
intended for?” “What audiences will want to see this film – or
see it more than once?” “How do we reach these audiences?”
From these first questions, it should be possible to construct a
marketing campaign which leverages microaudiences and
social networks into ticket receipts and DVD sales and online
purchases.

So, as you sit down to do your planning today, and discuss
how to move Irish screen industries into the 21st century, ask
yourselves who will be fulfilling this role. The producer is
already overloaded, time-poor, and may not be particularly
good at marketing. The director has a vision, but might be
practically autistic when it comes to working with
communities. This is a new role, one that is utterly vital to the
success of the production, but one which is not yet budgeted
for, and one which we do not yet train people to fill.
Individuals have succeeded in this new model through their
own tireless efforts, but each of these have been scattershot;
there is a way to systematize this. While every production and
every marketing plan will be unique – drawn from the
fundamentals of the story being told – there are
commonalities across productions which people will be able
to absorb and apply, production after production.

One of my favorite quotes from science fiction writer WilliamGibson goes,
“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly
distributed.” This is so obviously true for film and television
production that I need only close by noting that there are a lot
of success stories out there, individuals who have taken the
new laws of hyperdistribution and sharing and turned them to
their own advantage. It is a challenge, and there will be
failures; but we learn more from our failures than from our
successes. Media production has always been a gamble; but
the audiences of the 21st century make success easier to
achieve than ever before.

Monorex 5th Birthday Party by CHU

Mark Pesce - Words.
CHU - Images.
Steve 'Fly Agaric'' - Mixing

Dudley Council Challenge. LET US HAVE OUR SAY like in Stoke-on-Trent

2010-07-12T03:43:00.000-07:00

LETS TALK!

Hell yeah, lets talk, lets have a power point presentation, then talk. I hereby call upon Dudley Council, Ms. James and the Black Country to speed up the 'open' let's talk principle that STOKE-ON-TRENT council are trying.

In principle this seems like a 'democratic' process, where the 'people' actually get to vote on HOW their money and resources should be divided, shared, secured, advertised, etc.

So...what is the catch?

--Steve.

Residents Invited To Have Their Say On How To Save Approximately £30m

12 Jul 2010
Posted by Tony Walley

Residents are to be asked what they would like Stoke-on-Trent City Council to prioritise its spending on for the next financial year, on the back of stiff government cuts.

The authority, which has a budget of £209 million, needs to save approximately £30 million next year – a 14 per cent reduction.

A six-week ‘Let’s Talk’ public consultation will begin on Monday, and residents’ responses will help with tough decisions on where government cuts need to be made.

The consultation, which will run between 12 July – 20 August, will include:

* Face-to-face surveys carried out in local centres, shopping centres, markets, libraries, museums and bus stations
* An on-line survey via stoke.gov.uk/letstalk
* Billboard advertising to inform people about the consultation
* A dedicated phone line – 01782 235104 – where people can give their views in person

The council is responsible for hundreds of services in the city, from bin collections to schools. Some of the services are statutory, which means the council has to carry them out by law – these include looking after children in care and vulnerable adults, to highway maintenance and planning regulations. The authority also provides many discretionary services which the council believes it is right to offer residents – these include libraries, swimming pools, museums and allotments.

The survey questions ask people to say what is important to them from a list that includes:

* Encouraging more jobs and businesses
* Reducing anti-social behaviour and fear of crime
* Looking after the environment and tackling climate change
* Improving health and well-being
* Repairing and maintaining roads and pavements
* Keeping streets clean
* Improving educational achievement
* Supporting and protecting vulnerable adults and children
* Increasing recycling
* Providing sport and leisure facilities
* Providing decent and affordable housing

The results of the consultation will be reported to the council’s cabinet and the overview and scrutiny committees that help to put the budget together.

Councillor Kieran Clarke, cabinet member for finance, performance and governance, said:

Quote:
“We face very tough economic times, and the amount of money the government is asking us to save means we have to make very difficult decisions on where we prioritise our spending.

“Residents views are always important to us, but are even more so given the cuts that need to be made. Saving £30 million is a very hard task and will simply mean that we will not be able to deliver some of the services that we have been doing.

“The government’s emergency budget made it clear that we will not be allowed to raise council tax next year to help pay for services, so it is crucial to know what services are important to residents to help identify where the savings must be made.

“I urge as many residents as possible to respond to the consultation. By getting a good range of views from across the city, we will be able to take their views into account when setting the budget.”

http://pitsnpots.co.uk/news/2010/07/residents-invited-have-their-say-how-save-approximately-30m

UK demoloshion of swimming pools for leisure clubs.

2010-07-12T03:17:00.000-07:00

The theme of this blog and most of my writings and my activities include swimming. I have been involved in campaigning to save three pools in the Dudley burrough, Stourbridge, Brierley Hill and Coseley.

From my experience meeting and listening to councillors, M.P's and reading the news press, and protesting I have concluded that lawyer run capitalism, and the 'leisure and tourism' business in the UK is for the most part responsible for this national closure of 'swimming pools' in favour 'fun pools, before the 2008 economic heist, this process of removing 'free' public services has been on-going and has a complex of 'origins.

Generally I presume the process of 'privatization' and the wrestling of the 'agency for change' from the people, in effect turning us into property. The degradation of the consumer as well as the product. I have seen this process eat away at the 'economy' with private off-shore banking, public services with private investors, health and nutrition with 'private' health clubs, social community injury's inflicted by 'private' surveilance, private 'security', private 'clubs' and private 'pubs'. Profit based death-cogs in the super-rich, super-major corporate ooze that's eating up global resources and turning the UK into a mini American satellite state, one giant mall with the occasional internement camp linking the parts together.

I don't presume that voting can make a difference in this process. I suggest that every individual must familiarize themselves with some simple questions:

1. Who distributes it?
2. How?
3. How did it get that way?
4. A hieracrhy of values?

--Steve

A swimming pool that sparked protests when it was threatened with closure has failed to sell at auction.
Campaigners rallied to save Edwardsville Swimming Pool in Treharris, Merthyr Tydfil, but were unable to secure enough money to keep it open.
Merthyr council closed the pool to make way for a new £30m leisure complex.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/wales/south_east_wales/10346418.stm

Meeting discusses Leeds sports centre community plans
* Social enterprise plans ambitious £1.5m scheme for threatened South Leeds Sports Centre
* Organiser 80 per cent certain community ownership will go ahead
Beeston residents last night attended a public meeting to discuss plans for the community to take control of a sports centre threatened with closure.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leeds/2010/jul/08/south-leeds-pool

David Cameron and Nick Clegg and control

2010-07-12T02:33:00.000-07:00

David Cameron and Nick Clegg : We'll transform Britain by giving power away

Dealing with the deficit is vital, but the real mission of the Coalition is to give people control over their lives, say David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

By David Cameron and Nick Clegg
Published: 6:57AM BST 12 Jul 2010
60 Comments

For decades, governments have assumed that the only way to make things better is to centralise Photo: Getty

When we formed our Coalition just nine weeks ago, we did so because we shared a view that our country needed strong and stable government to steer it through a time of enormous difficulty. With the largest peacetime deficit in our history, the inevitable short-termism of an unstable minority government wouldn't have been good enough. So we put aside our differences to work together in the national interest, and have set to work tackling Britain's debt.

But, for both of us, sorting out the public finances is a responsibility, not a passion. We didn't come into politics just to balance the books. We are both ambitious for Britain: we want to change our country for the better. We want to see the best schools open to the poorest children, a first-class NHS there for everyone, streets that are safe, families that are stable and communities that are strong.

Whatever the differences that exist between us and our parties, we both passionately believe in giving people more power over their lives. It has become increasingly clear to us that we can be a strong, reforming government if we build outwards from the instincts we share.

But our commitment to give power away isn't just born of instinct; it has been strengthened by the evidence of the past. For decades, governments have assumed that the only way to make things better is to centralise. Of course, central government has a crucial role to play, but it cannot and should not try to do everything. It's time for the central state to allow the genius of grassroots innovation, diversity and experimentation to take off.
We know this won't be easy. We know that the political machine has an inbuilt tendency to centralise. That's why we are bringing in a new way of coordinating government action. Last week we started publishing Structural Reform Plans, one for each government department. Don't let the dry name fool you. These are radical documents that are going to change the way government works.

Each government department has its own plan, with a list of objectives and deadlines to achieve them by. So far, this might sound like the last government with its Public Service Agreements and Prime Minister's Delivery Unit. The difference is in what we're asking departments to do – not to control things from the centre but to put in place structures that will allow people and communities to take power and control for themselves. In place of the old tools of bureaucratic accountability – top-down regulation and targets – are the new tools of democratic, bottom-up accountability – individual choice, competition, direct elections and transparency.

Decentralisation will mean different things across different services. In the plan for schools published last week we identify the major task for the Department for Education: to set schools free, encourage diversity and allow people to start up new schools, thereby opening up the state monopoly on education.

Instead of teachers thinking they have to impress the department, they will have to impress parents, who will finally have a real choice over where to send their child. The most disadvantaged children will benefit from a "pupil premium" so that schools have an incentive to take them on, rather than the incentives they have at the moment to keep them out.

Today we launch our White Paper on health. Yes, we're committed to increasing NHS resources in real terms in each year of this parliament, but we're also committed to reforming the NHS. To help achieve that we'll make sure every penny is spent more effectively, removing £1 billion a year by 2014/15 from bureaucracy and waste.

The plan for health, like all the others, says a lot about the Coalition – not just that we're committed to reform, but that the very act of combining our policies has made us more radical about decentralising power.
It combines Conservative thinking on choice and competition with the Liberal Democrat belief in local democracy to create a truly radical vision for the NHS – giving general practitioners authority over commissioning and patients much more control, and ensuring democratic accountability with councils taking greater responsibility, in particular over public health.

Dealing with the deficit will be painful, but if we ensure reform goes alongside it, Britain will be stronger, freer and fairer. We hope and expect that people will look back at the days when central government held all the power and think it arcane and bizarre. If we continue on the path laid by these plans, if we are bold enough to let go of the controls of government and if we can truly empower people and communities, this country has a great future to look forward to.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/david-cameron/7884681/David-Cameron-and-Nick-Clegg-Well-transform-Britain-by-giving-power-away.html

2010 words on the Gulf Oil Spill (edited from a previous poem)

2010-07-08T04:19:00.000-07:00

“Us clams must stick apart” –Feudal Baron Periwinkle III.

Aphrodite rose from sea foam in film.
A centrifugal waterspout, sucking out the poison.

A Shell and a Sunflower are branded,
Sucked of meaning.
Twisted arms of godsoilmen
Workers, investers, safety chiefs,
Some work with sludge in hands
Some on the tongue, others dodge
Regulators.

Meet the supermajors
Finance and business from sifting Oil
Gulf scoop past oily Slick Cheney
Eating Warburtons with Shell fish

We roe past energy task force positions.
In still of night, calm waters, we release
The mycelium.
From the world Clam.

The Galloping Scallop clad man of greek myth come up
Knights of the Periwinkle clown swimming,
Bejewelled with clam lips and kisses.

Rich blue Oil spill or mother of pearl?
Like blended parrots and dead plankton,
Mixed emulsions. Beautiful Miss Oil Spill?
How can I find beauty in this Oil terror? I tried
And reality slapped me across the Horizon

Crude awakening to the spill-age.
A Collosal squid princess come's up
Riding old Jakobsschelp, a Mycelium Goddess
To help a Hutch load of old scallops rise out
The Seafloor Blues
And infiltrate the slick.

The Deep sea Mollusc speak out:
“Lo! Scallops of the ocean,
Down by the great rising Chiefs of coral.
Take this Big Periwinkle into your earshel and Smell the sign
Touch the logo and ask:
How many ridges does a dream have?

Who regulates the regulator’s.
Dead Plankton in the paint
And the city sewers flowoil
Heed the clam of commerce and the
Cockle-shock shimmy of stock.
What sea-shell, what Sunflower?

Up comes a horse covered in Scallops,
Prince Periwinkle gargling:
“Skullops for one shelling a dollop”

Sea wave-wind Mussels flex into fossils.
The smell of oilamp from the limpet.
“Lets Oil the Oystery of Oil and stir with a staff,
Lets foil sharks with electric shocks,
Struck coil!”.

“Swim with the titanic Semantic shift,
Up out the shell flower.
Again, to tell a snail tale of the planetary shaft.
Rock Drill. Oil Men. Usury. Greed.
Son’s of Thunder Juice, Snel, quick up
To defend the word.
A sea slug with untold feet runs with you
On a hyperbolic plane.

Hoily Tools of the Big Petrol scoop
Walloping the marine scene with oil sheen.
Another spellage. Ocean deep n' blue and
Black rusty red, bloody.

Petrochem generation X. Drill here.
Die here. Who makes the plans, the cuts,
The safety checks, who sets the profits,
Who banks in the cayman Islands, and
Exploits every loop-hole, who, now who.

So wee rise up like foam,
Mycelium to eat the Oil
My thoughts on it: I ride a bike.

Waxy Parrot Snot in the sea bank
How to dress up a death spill?

Casting Shells from my hand,
The wavy lines trace a swellmighty calm.
His Holiness the Buddhaclam Caliph of Pearl
Comes up, out of the Santiago Shell mound gate
To tell us of what fate?

Great clam emperor of the
Mollusca lineage comes up
“By nature the sign, 500 Million years of geometry spun
Into this Sunflower, into this Shell. What lies?”

The Duke Periwinkle of Clam tissue
And the Ivory Sheen realm
Comes up
“Look down the well. Oily DEA and ivory salt newspaper
Scalping truth, their lies litter our vessel,
Truth and beauty from underwater vents”

Meanwhile oilmen pollute the ocean-Green with
Sculpted Pipe lines, crime lines, below
Waves of DEA projects, No Oildea how sticky
the handshell shakes over the Sunflower.
Ode to the Great Old One's,
Please hear us and help a sign-sailor resist
A super-major temptress,
Ocean blackmail.

Oil spill, pipe-line, spoil, Usury, coercion,
Interference with natural deep sea black smokers

Oyster Gods of ancient oceans sculpt the wave
And weave pearls
Serpents teeth sew
Sew Sew an oil net to stop the leak.

A solution in the name of thy snakeoil potion,
Rise up Sea-meat wonders with one hundred eyes
You that dwell upon Old heraldic shields,
Rise up like bubbles and show us your shape.

If only Molluscs could grow wings?
Dutch English American Oil statistics?
More scallops?

Now our chariot of sea gods roam the ocean wide
With the Sigil of Galloping Periwinkles,
Sea weed tales of a great green whale and
A clam with hinged jaws.

Big Blood and looting operation disaster
After disaster, after disaster.
We charge the water and turn the planet
Back into a healthy paradise,
In this poem.

Our Seal: Coningklick.
We raise a toast to Scallops and the food of Godzilla,
And celebrate the marvel of Clam propulsion.
Bio-technology is trying to show us HOW.

Venusa comes up
Surfing on a scallop, leading with a shell in hat
And staff in hand.

Ms. C. Scholar and her mussel
Swimming down Saint James's glory-gate to
Oil Cow & coo

“Now Scoop it. What News Independence.
Who distributes it, how?

And the church wants TTOTTAL Informollusc awaveness.
Sculpt a skull and crossbones in the Crude
Awakening to sea Pirates.
Send in Jack Sparrow to help waterworld.”

Cockoily and Crude Millions scalloped out
Of the earth's body PO.
To the Botticelli Shell-mex
Mix of Soupermajor Bumbling Patroilmen.

Heart of calcite, home of crystal, listen,
I Toil to swim with the Amateur Swimming Association
Esso sponsored swimming, like
Greenpeace sponsored Oil Drilling.

Pick a Shell and drink our James Juice.
The word can plug that sucker up.
The word, the vessel of communication.

The sacred periwinkle proportion.
Now sea gold and Periwinkle Cockle
And aragonite Shillyshellying,
On land we're all out of gas?

Crashing oil and Blood in synchronous waves,
Half-mollusc, half man with vulva comes up,
The crowned Cuthulu cult riding a clam to shore,

To soil on past British Patrolingmen.
We and the sea leagues of 93’000 species
Of Mollusc, and cuttlefish, calcium from sea foam
We are the froth of Saint James Juice.
We lament the spill to blunt the drill,
Gather and think to cap and fill.

Rock Drill and Throne.
HOLY Scollop of truth Swim on your way!
Scooping the word and sludge, selling lies.
How deep does the drill hole go?
Blue Black pills sp'ills?

Up comes the Count of cockles
To calculate fossil fuel foolishness.
Re-shore em’ that Oystery contains Pearls.
History is ours, oceanic.

Hollow Earth Krewe come up to protect the crust.
Don't drill, hear!
Listen, HEMP!
Pull down thy vanity,
Pull up thy drill rig.

The silver pink flesh of salmon
Emerald sea weed and Electric blue
Dance on our Shield.

What pearls lie in the sign?
Schaaldrake Unreeled from the Well,
The conscious net.
The day of the Dolphin Gulf prayer,
calling all Oystery’s hero’s.

Winds blow above the abyss of humanity
Deep space
Mind link sleeping beauty on the sea bed.
Awake.

A clamber of underwater shimmers
“What the devil’s covering you, old directors?”
Holy floor, must be peak oil time!

Fisherman on fire, Oil brigade, fire brigade
What Sustenance?
Entangled oil pipline artery of earth rot?
Well well well, Oil be damned!

The dead seamen-oil-blood transfusion.
The workers that died, the injured?

Investigative poetry safety bill,
The profit margin and depths of energy mob
Investment.

The TAX dodge.
The Tectonic shifts and shafts of geopolitics.
The ocean gods versus the greedy monkey man.

Swallow the shilly-shally sea
And go a’ rummaging
Through tears,
Craft a dam good idea.
Boom, boundary and boundary dissolution
Be A solution

The ocean, the salt.
Oil and sea water mixed.
A mussel bound with a wisdom tongue in a Dutch
Pit, Venus in shell, A tongue enters shell.
That feminine Scallop.

Yes, make love, and drill for love
In a land bed, not a sea bed,
Drilling for oil, making death.

Beware the starfish and oystercatchers
The Condi Rice tankers,
Our boat enters the earshells of Leviathon.
Invisible on a mind wave,
Seers are feeding,
We meditate on bivalvia underground chants
We grow new ears from our Gulf of tears.

Total germs and a fake Sunflower
A suspect Shell and five sided fuel mob are
Apprehended by Sea worms.

Please dive off the Euro board, twist and tuck pike
Summersault in James Juice.
Send word, make merry love.

Hoily Houses Haunt the Oystery sauce.
The currents of Oysery in the Musselmen’s mind.
How to Oil the machine and then stir, sir?
Who distributes it, how?

Scallop filtration of nature’s Mouth pit.
The Dogon Dragon’s of ocean deep
Breathing black smoke
The mouth to hell.

Up comes,
Hermaphrodite of the black-gold waters.
Global eyes of the oceanic gleam
Where Ibskal speak of sea diamonds, pearls
Nommo booty.

Do not disturb the Calm mud.
Look Deep, look well , Deeper.
Lick the James Juice-oil, drink the poison
And ride the snake to the pit of Saint DEA,
Eat them all, spit fire and burn off.

To planet Exo-Clamboil.
Go drill land if you must drill.
Elders send word of Hopi,
Inducing Amanita Mollusca.
Sometides wash nutrients up Ripples of the great
Allrudy wish-ways, ripples and
Baron periwinkles dimples.
Smiles.

Chevrollop, clamswallop, wham, Bully Peakoil
Big Shh’ galaxy, in silence.
Sit ans send ‘word’ shaman styles.
Get roots, touch and ingest earth.

And inside the noble clam chamber
Mr. Mussel finds shelter from transfusions
And Cockledoom on a dinner plate. He says:

“Oh shil, you supermajor logo shystirs.
Rumble of waves around scalloped edge
Where Venus teleports - to visit ecstatic ten-thousand
Million hundred gallons.

And Brand new standards, drink the ocean ink
Of clam soup, Ingest the Hoily Ocean Extracts
Spit fire and burn of excess Vapourdiz

Wade through the bauxite,
Don’t step on our eggshares
Show foresight. Transparent business
Transparent waters, in soiled by fuel addiction.

Juice the wellwell markets, be merry,
Ppeak into these eggshawls. Schelp,
I need some clammy mammy?
Muscle and sperm of capitol, testoss and hydrocarbons,
Spilling on land, sea and air. Who’s share
Who...and how?

Thankyou, the pearls really shine.
500 Million years of Scallop evolution
Sculpted from chalk with tyme.
Real Crotch Oil spread and royal flush
Roe Smoothie ripple?
The synchro-swimming around,
Mixing a schaal Pink into the rusty current.

Shellfish swim for Global ecosystem
And it’s edges.
Interconnected, balanced, shared biological systems
Ecological logic and example, begging to be copied
By Human industry, ECOnomic.

The taste and the Zap,
Filtering compost on a sea-bed,
The underwater awakening like Fungus,
The Clam infiltrates the swill.
To Clam the cap, and Clam the leak.

Shell shaped filler, nature’s way has your answer
Physics of plugging.
Heaven and Hell,
The birth canal off Lucifer von Periwinkle and his
Turned Kingdom of Oilmen! Lo,
The Darth Vader, using modern technology:
The force,
To extract fuel from our mothers vitalorgans

The chatter and Swell at the centre of the Earth.
The Venus Princess and the Vulva of life,
New birth.

Up against the rig,
Marian’s well like a Mermaid's pool
Moist and as a peachy love nest.

Master of devices and of painted Green weeds.
Help us Grow. Overcome Oils vices.
A Pilgrim Artefact slyjacked.
Van Gogh’s Sunflowers stolen by British thieves.

Marian! Murmur and maid,
With comb and mirror,
Homeless, bedless.
Comb exchanged for a clam-pick to pluck
Our Lyre songs of ocean goddesses vs.
Godsoilmen.

Merry tinkles of shells and deep-blues for heads.
Shimmer of garments, skirt trim with coral.
Oh yeah, to schell the proof to buy the truth.
Can’t buy these shell shoes sir.
Only our boat is for sail.

Sea Red and sigil read
Backwards. Michelle, and her pink mantle.
Swimming with our vows
To explore the edges of the Sun behind
The sun, the Sirius star system of
Galactic ideas, focused on the Gulf Hole.

Elixir of Baron Periwinkle
To makes a tasty tipple.
A plug mixture, to cap the hole with a
Fungus cap. An intelligent goo.

A tale of a virus so vile to us! Oil.
With a treacherous hijacked Scallop
Snapping at your toe,
Hoily mollusc of Saint James,
Protect all sea life.

Claims the clams that a clamp down on
Periwinkle’s clump, a cap oer’ the hole to hell
Dive down and pry benearth,
Think.

The Venus Mermaiden’s
Have risen from the sea to show you how
She-sails.

Petition to try to save the What? Centre

2010-07-05T06:13:00.000-07:00

WHAT? CENTRE TO CLOSE IN OCTOBER.

After 25 years of The What? Centre being in the Borough and helping thousands of young
people and their parents and wider family, we will close in October unless we can persuade the
Local Authority to make a ‘U turn’ on their decision to cut all of their funding for our service.
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP US?
1.
Sign our petition either in the street or at the Centre
2.
Help to fill our graffiti wall with positive comments about the Centre
3.
Join our facebook
4.
Take some petition forms and get them filled in by your colleagues
5.
Email us with your stories about the What? Centre and how it has helped you on
thewhatcentre@aol.com
6. Help us with writing funding bids
7. Contact your Local MP or councilors or leader of the Council Anne Milward
8. Write letters to the newspapers, i.e. Stourbridge News, Dudley News and Express
and Star expressing your concerns.
Thank you for all your help, without you it will be impossible to have any hope of turning
around this decision. Telephone No: of What? 01384 379992. Address : 23 Coventry Street,
Stourbridge DY8 1EP.

Petition to try to save the What? Centre

Petition summary:The Local Authority has cut our funding for advice work. This means almost certain closure of the What? Centre

Action petitioned for:
We, the undersigned, are young people and partners of the What? Centre who urge our council leaders to re-think their decision to cut 100% of the funding they provide to this service

Signature
Address
Comment
Date

Please return this petition to The What? Centre, 23 Coventry Street, Stourbridge DY8 1EP
This petition will be presented to John Polychronakis, Chief Executive of Dudley Council & Anne Millward, Lead Member for Dudley Council

Who What Why Where When? Stour CLAY?

2010-07-02T06:36:00.000-07:00

Up the Stourbridge Glass cone went our lonely hero.

Up and out the top of great Glass factory where

Stourbridge Clay lead to a Crystal meme sale
Of Wonka.

Royal Clay from the earth,

Mud and clay people, clay artists

And what is Industry? Who owns it and how?

Sandstone and Rocks of earth,

Geological formations, coal, bones, calcium

Oil are from the earth, how can we own them?

Who’s industry and patent, who’s business?

Earth business and man business.

Trees and paper.

Rivers and River banks.

The Indus Tree
The Rowen Tree
The Great World Tree
Twig Drizzle.

What is money and how did it get that way

In Stourbridge

Who set the gold standard?

How are Royals majestic?

Why no Glass pipes in Stourbridge?

Who’s pencil that draws the boundary

Who’s eye’s to perceive the line, the divisions

And divisions.

Who’s visions and translations of God.

Who’s Christ Jesus story,

Who’s pen, who’s now

Who’s when?

What Gods give the all seeing eye?

Who’s shepherd and who’s sheep?

Where in the small print?

What authority do you claim on this earth here?

Who’s feet and hands walked and dug,

Work for who and for what?

God and Earth, God or Earth.

Who measures the weight,

How did the instruments get that way?

What is your margin of error tolerance?

What about humans who did not vote

How can you represent us, Oh Politician?

How can you represent Earth or God

Truth and sanity?

How do you represent?

What media do you share, what is private

And what is public representation.

All property maybe theft,

All things may lead back to earth

Why laws prohibiting Marijuana and LSD

And tax breaks for Monsanto, Glaxosmith?

Open source education, on-line schooling

Open Source Omniversity is underway

I am a proponent of the shared arts of

Education.

We are the Maybe Logic Academy

See Magick, NLP, and Non-Euclidean politics.

We are the representatives of the Black Country

We draw the lines and erase the boundaries

We are the creative heart of the Blackcountry

Writers, poets, painters, sculptors, dancers.
What Royal stamp?

Art is our shared language of resistance

To reshape and edit our worlds, shared worlds

Shared Inhabited realities, built by urban Shaman

Shared through voluntary risk and struggle.

Artists and the equivalence theory?

10’000 hours of hard crafting and grafting

vs. 5 seconds it takes sign a contract?

And forward along the credit,

Borrowed from the Royal chest,

Bottomless, Jewel encrusted and in league

With the printers of the majestic paper?

Who makes the paper Majestic and how?

What economic knowledge?

Excuse me, usury?

Basic truth of fairness and equality

Humanity.

To have equal share of the profits

Divided honestly and equally,

Economics without distortion and the

Genghis Kahn virus:

The biggest and most powerful,

The richest and most brutal

Rule.

I present Open Source Economies

Transparency and new Social Credit systems

Employment seems a kind of disease,

Spreading bad business practice, bully boy tactics

Lawyer Run Capitalism.

The core of Conservative Rule.

The core of Deaf Labour,

And even the liberals hate the poor

What of sub minorities?

Why highlight something as flimsy as race?

To base wrongheaded policy and funding scheme?

What do you mean?

You do not represent me, my friends and my experiences

Within the territory you claim to represent.

In fact everything you say it is, it isn’t.

British Labour danced in a conservative agenda dressed in

Blood Red bondage gear.

Another Christian evangelical called Blair,

In league with Bush and Cheney.

Hello...corporal Malvern.

We have seen your continued conservative trickery

Over 34 years.

Every day in Britain, under the boot of the Big

London Banks, the Christian American Business

Partnership.

The discrimination against minorities,

Against self owning ones, against social co-operatives

From Thatcher to Major, to Blair, to Brown and Cameron.

No change in the crying game, the lies, the support

Of military intervention for private interest

Continued useless and failed, failing
Multi Billion Pound

War on some drugs, and the Irony of British Opium history

Poppy fields and Government Heroin cartels.

Oh, don’t start me to talking,

And backing up my lines with historical evidence.

Labour/Conservative, what is the difference?

Politics has become a business game show,

Played by some families with large fortunes.

Why do we love our Royalty so much?

And so our political leaders and goons that beg pardons

Beg spies and join the privileged classes.

The language of Army Majors, the

Mind of a serial killer and temper of a psychopath.

The role of a modern representative is best described as

Henchmen of the Devil and his
Lawyer Run Apocalypse

John Adams came to Town in 1786.

Lo! The gravity of the situation

The measure of damage and death, destruction

Globally based on British rule

Balanced with the great help we give foreign nations?

Our Industry and Heritage is the double cross system.

Getting the otherside to work for us,

Laywer Run Capitalism and Banking Monopoly

American, Dutch and Swiss Banks.

Abe Lincoln say what?

American, Dutch and English slavery history?

Why make a man work for what is inherently his?

The Earth and God within, without and throughout all men

All space and time?

What of light? Who owns light?

Can you really buy a star and name it?

What if the stars named you?

What is a Stourbridge Clay Kitchenette?

The Political Mafia Hit Stourbridge for the Politics Show.

2010-04-03T16:51:00.000-07:00

Wavering voters meet the future prime minister

By David Thompson
BBC Politics Show reporter

It is what party leaders always say they want - the chance to debate the issues that will win or lose the general election directly with the public.

Voters don't often get the chance to talk to the PM face to face

For the past three weeks, the BBC Politics Show has made exactly that happen... but sometimes Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg must have wondered whether they should have been more careful about what they wished for.
All three came to Stourbridge to meet precisely the kind of people they need to win over - a roomful of undecided voters.
Why Stourbridge? It is the knife-edge marginal constituency the Politics Show has adopted as its own for the election.
Not only is it a key political battleground, it is also Britain in microcosm.
If it is happening in the High Street there, chances are it is happening somewhere near you too.
But it is not just that. People in the West Midlands are famous for telling it like it is - and they did not pull their punches with the party leaders.

Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown took questions from wavering voters worried about the state of the NHS

First up was Gordon Brown. He came face-to-face with clinical psychologist Sally Austen, who told him point-blank she doubted whether he could deliver on Labour's pledge to ring-fence funding for frontline NHS services.
She also said that in her hospital, targets were distorting patient care and an incessant round of changes had left staff tired and demoralised.
The prime minister promised to look into her specific concerns - but when asked whether he thought staff like Sally were on the front line, said that was a decision for individual health authorities - not him.

Gordon Brown was asked to justify why troops are still operating in Afghanistan.

Ann Probyn lost her son Daniel when he was killed by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2007. She believes he was not properly equipped and wants answers from the Ministry of Defence.
Mrs Probyn cut to the chase, asking Mr Brown: "Would you like your son to go out on a night patrol with no equipment?"
The prime minister expressed his condolences to the family and insisted that equipment was being upgraded all the time.
But he also said that if Mrs Probyn wanted her son's death to be investigated further, it would be done.

Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, answers questions on immigration policy from a group of undecided voters in Stourbridge, West Midlands.

Nick Clegg was asked about his party's plans on immigration, particularly the idea that people should only be allowed to move to sparsely-populated parts of Britain.
Brian Craddock wanted to know whether, if they lost their jobs there, they would be allowed to move. Nick Clegg said quite simply "No."
So would immigrants be given unemployment benefit? Would they be deported? Could Mr Clegg say whether regions like the West Midlands were full?
The Liberal Democrat leader said he could not go into that kind of specific detail - but insisted his party's plan would give Britain the benefits of immigration while reducing the demands it made on the country.

Nick Clegg outlines his party's position on the level of fuel duty depending on the budget.

Mr Clegg was also grilled about fuel tax - would he increase it or freeze it?
After some sustained questioning, he appeared to say he thought it should go up. However a few minutes later, Danny Alexander, his Chief of Staff, called for a freeze on the Politics Show Scotland.

David Cameron

David Cameron: Single parents 'will not be disadvantaged' with marriage tax breaks

And what about the man who could be our next Conservative prime minister?
What most people seemed to want from the Tory leader was clarity - what would his cap on immigration be, would he scrap the rise in National Insurance contributions, how deep would Tory cuts in public spending be?
Single parent Sam Billingham wanted to know whether plans to recognise marriage within the tax system would leave her at a disadvantage.
Mr Cameron said no, but also said we would all have to wait until the election campaign proper before he would spell out exactly how the system would be reformed.

Cameron: Competition 'would create huge improvements in the education system'

On education, teacher Remley Mann said she feared the Tory idea of increasing competition between schools would actually make things worse - what was needed was a period of consolidation, not more change.
Mr Cameron took that one head-on, admitting he had a very different vision from his questioner, but insisting that his plans to generate choice and competition would create huge improvements in the education system.
Mr Cameron, Mr Brown and Mr Clegg came to Stourbridge, they saw, but did they conquer ?
That's for the voters there to decide - but for all of us, make-up-your-mind time is getting ever closer.
The Politics Show broadcasts on Sunday at 1200 GMT on BBC One and for seven days after on the BBC iPlayer.

London 2012 Olympic logo, a la goatse

2010-03-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

London 2012 Olympic logo, a la goatse - curiously appropriate

Posted by Cory Doctorow, June 4, 2007 8:58 AM | permalink

The BBC is holding a competition to suggest alternatives to the London 2012 Olympics logo (itself a uniquely horrible design). Hilariously, one entrant managed to smuggle a Goatse variant into the entrants.

It's actually not a bad choice, given that hosting an Olympics games is an experience much like being sodomized by a battering ram. The corrupt, bribe-taking International Olympics Committee are extraordinary bullies, inspiring Orwellian surveillance, taking brand-whoring to new lows, and demanding thought-control over the local populace. I'm moving back to London this September, but with any luck I'll be gone again by 2012.

Sean Stayte: "Here is my design for the Olympic logo. It is very simple and so memorable. The hands represent Britain pulling together to reveal the Olympics."

Link (Thanks to everyone who suggested this!)

Update: Chris sez, "Sadly, the BBC pulled the goatse Olympics logo pretty soon after your Boing Boing post on it, but I managed to get a screengrab in the nick of time. Sean Stayte, the genius who submitted it it, comments below: 'I'm surprised it got through in the first place.'"

Coseley Baths Demolished

2010-03-22T17:14:00.000-07:00

Coseley Baths Demolished and passionate Coseley voices.

2010-03-14T17:34:00.000-07:00

Brian Guest, who has led the Save Coseley Baths campaign to save the pool, said: “It is a really sad day, not just for the people of Coseley but for all the swimmers in the borough.

“We would like to thank all the people who have supported us, not just financially but also through the hundreds of letters we have received from residents in Coseley, people from across the borough and even around the country.

“What we believe is the decision taken by this council has deprived hundreds of people in the borough of the opportunity to swim and keep fit. This council does not want to listen to what the majority has to say, the councillors should be ashamed of themselves. We shall continue to fight for a new baths in Coseley.”

http://www.expressandstar.com/2010/03/10/work-begins-on-demolishing-baths/

Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality maps | Video on TED.com

2010-03-02T07:05:00.000-08:00

Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality maps | Video on TED.com

Coseley Baths face bull-dozers

2010-03-02T02:59:00.001-08:00

Coseley Baths face bulldozers

Bulldozers will move in to knock down Coseley Baths this week, reducing the building to rubble after more than four decades.

Workmen at Birmingham-based Coleman & Co, the firm appointed to demolish the Pear Tree Lane pool, will step up the pace of the project after removing fittings and asbestos.

Cabinet member for property Councillor Adrian Turner confirmed today heavy machinery would arrive “on Wednesday or Thursday”.

Defiant campaigners said the latest blow in their fight to save the building would signal a new stage in their battle.

Chairman of the Coseley Civic Trust John Wilkes said today: “The feeling is that if we manage to stop demolition that would be a bonus but if not we are prepared for it, we are ready to go in other directions.

“As soon as the fencing went up round the baths we knew this was on the cards. This will mark the start for a new fight for a new baths in Coseley. I certainly intend to make sure that will happen but I don’t think people will need much encouragement.”

Work to remove windows, doors and asbestos from the building started last month after Coleman & Co won the contract for the project. Fences were erected round the building by workers clad in high visibility vests and hard hats.

A section of wall has already been removed as part of the initial soft stripping works, with rubble piled outside the baths.

Residents complained they had been treated with “utter contempt” after the work started unannounced.

Then the Save Coseley Baths campaign group suffered another blow when it was refused funding to launch legal action.

Mr Wilkes has applied for the baths to be granted listed status and criticised the council for moving ahead with demolition before the application was decided.

The council was cleared of blame over claims it breached conservation rules after a colony of bats was found roosting in the roof.

Ulysses and James Joyce Documentary

2010-03-02T02:04:00.000-08:00

SWIMMING POLITICS AND UK WHITE WASH

2010-03-01T06:37:00.000-08:00

Dr. John C. Lilly "Wonko The Sane"

2010-03-01T06:09:00.000-08:00

Solid State Intelligence

Solid State Intelligence or SSI is a malevolent entity described by John C. Lilly (see The Scientist). According to Lilly, the network of computation-capable solid state systems (electronics) engineered by humans will eventually develop (or has already developed) into an autonomous life-form. Since the optimal survival conditions for this life-form (low-temperature vacuum) are drastically different from those needed by humans (room temperature aerial atmosphere and adequate water supply), Lilly predicted (or "prophesied", based on his ketamine-induced visions) a dramatic conflict between the two forms of intelligence.

[edit] Cultural references

Lilly's work, particularly his development of the sensory deprivation tank, has been referenced film, music and television productions.

Laurie Anderson's CD The Ugly One with the Jewels features a song about Lilly: "John Lilly, the guy who says he can talk to dolphins, said he was in an aquarium and he was talking to a big whale who was swimming around and around in his tank. And the whale kept asking him questions telepathically. And one of the questions the whale kept asking was: do all oceans have walls?"^{[citation needed]}

Ed Annunziata cites Lilly's work as one of the inspirations he used in developing the Ecco the Dolphin video games for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. ^[6]

Lilly was also referenced in Douglas Adams' book 'So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish', the fourth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, as John Watson, aka "Wonko the Sane".

The Cannabis Diaries Part 3

2010-02-07T08:27:00.000-08:00

Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition 1800-1928 By James H. Mills

Got up, had tea and granola. Checked email. Washed and went to the toilet for a number two. Smoked a small roll-up with a thin lacing of Indica. Found the Cannabis Diaries by Debra Bell linked into Google news articles and started to read them. Chatted with friends about the issue of Cannabis and cannabis propaganda in the form of books that are promoted by the newspress, due to the overblown sensationalism and perfect media frenzy about them. Had a cup of coffee and talked a little of the war on some people who use some drugs.

Read a news item about Alister Campbell's defence of Tony Blair that gave me a slight headache after reading. I typed 'Cannabis' into my google news window and found hundreds of articles showing the law enforcement at work, jailing kids, kicking down doors and panicking about a few plants that tend to produce thinking in those that consume them.

I ate a waffle, and then started to write about faith-based drug policy and the correspondence with faith-based political policy, leading to the illegal wars and world banking crash. I played some music by the Meters and turned the volume up a little. Then, my phone rang and my mum told me sad news. I wept a little, gathered myself and continued where I had left off with an article about Cannabis and 'Faith-based' drug policy and the horrors of prohibition and the war on some people who use some drugs. It starts like this:

"Faith-based drug policy and faith-based war policy are responsible for the untold deaths of Millions of people and the suffering of Billions more around the world today.

Add to the physical damage inflicted upon cities, homes and people the dramatic effects upon global finance, global climate change and geo-politics. The mind boggles at what humanity might achieve if it were to plough money and resources currently spent on warfare and drug prohibition, two of the most obvious failures and weak points of human civilization.

Bertrand Russell, the brilliant Philosopher, once said that the greatest accomplishment of the 20th century is 'suspended judgement' and inversely, I might add that 'blind faith-based judgements' have led to the worse atrocities of the 20th & 21st centuries.

In the 21st century, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, both confessed practicing religious followers have been responsible for the worst faith-based judgements possible: the decision to invade Afghanistan and Iraq leading to the global mess described above."

Next thing I know I'm rolling another joint, my second of the day as I felt a creative surge coming on, to try to write this stuff out and bring some balance here to this madness. Especially after reading the Cannabis Diaries by Ms. Bell and the rapid spread of the book and the far-right conservative views within it, throughout the media sphere, as if it were supported by the Government and the Newspress in a way that any other book about cannabis, would not. Unless a celebrity was involved somehow.

In fact, in my experience living in the UK for 24 years, the British Government and the British press suppress any positive drug research, or anything presenting an alternative to prohibition and zero tolerance. Professor David Nutt however, seems to me to be a special case, where the public get a small taste of how Governments really operate when it comes to drugs and changing human consciousness through using lies.

The British Institute of Psychiatry has a disgusting history of misuse and abuse of drugs, especially during and shortly after the second world war, paralleled only by the deranged CIA' MK-Ultra programme where drugs were administered to people without their knowledge and combined with torture and horrific surgical procedures. Meanwhile, both the US and UK governments continue a prohibitionist stance on some of these drugs that they use in clandestine operations and often as bait, to lure in more potential criminals to keep the crooked criminal (in)justice system turning. I think.

So, here's what I wrote about two hours ago, based upon the so called 'Cannabis Diaries' by Debra Bell.

"I would place Debra Bell, with Jacqui Smith, who some might say look alike (as police detectives?) with a common faith-based war against scientific research ever taking a foothold in the creation of responsible British drug policy. The word 'responsible' is suspiciously missing from the words 'Drug Policy'

I might replace the word 'responsible' with faith-based in the UK and US models. (although America is making some progress with responsible Cannabis drug policy)

Jacqui and Debra both exhibit a similar faith based psychological condition, sending them on a faith based mission to fight a medicinal plant, a plant that can be of great benefit to humanity, if used in the right set and setting, like all other media that interact with human consciousness. Not to mention the infinite benefits of Hemp.

AN OPEN LETTER TO DEBRA BELL, author of the Cannabis Diaries.

HI Debra, debra @ talking about cannabis.com

Hi, I live and work in Amsterdam within the Cannabis Culture/industry.

I notice that you have a new book and a multimedia campaign to forward your views on Cannabis, but alas, I don't yet see a public forum for proper debate and feedback, which is strange to me as you seem to want to talk' about cannabis, according to your books title. So...

I would like to invite your son, William, your husband and yourself, plus anybody else who would like join to me here in Amsterdam, to possibly talk about your new book and cannabis at an open forum. We'll even record the events and/or stream them live on internet if you like.

My personal view is that the United Kingdom spearheads the war on some people who use some drugs, along with the United States, and who coincidentally, spearheaded the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you see a link between these two phenomena? because I do, and it makes a mockery of the law, fairness, equality and every principle of what humanity stands for.

Also would you comment on the sacking of the independent drugs advisor David Nutt by the British Government, possibly due to his intelligent comments about Cannabis and other drugs, and also maybe on the Governments bigoted inability to accept scientific research in favour of faith-based policy, precisely as they ignored international law and intelligent legal advise concerning invading another country.

Just out of curiosity Debra, do you support the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by British forces? I apologise if you see this as a digression, but for most Cannabis users and supporters I have found that they also oppose the war, another strange coincidence you might say. As a supporter of prohibition, I wonder if you support the war too? Maybe you do not support these wars?

I understand that your book is anecdotal, and that your simply writing a diary of your experiences. But, due to your further pronouncements on Cannabis and outreaching programme (talking about cannabis) I feel that you want to get involved in the bigger picture with politics, law and policy making, psychology, sociology, neuro-science etc. Yet, as simply a writer of diaries, I can't see any reason why others should pay any attention to what your saying in the sense of good scientific research, good clear and balanced information and the broader question of (responsible) drug policy? Why does the FRANK website not have a free response forum? or a free comments page, to increase the ability for first responders?

I'll counter every story of a mother or parent you mention, that feels happy that they have found your Cannabis Diaries, due to similar nightmare experiences, or bad fallout from the war on some people who use some drugs, with a story of parent who has thanked me, personally for giving their son or daughter Cannabis in a safe and responsible setting, here in Amsterdam, and left happy, together, as a family. This reinforces my view, contrary to prohibition, that some drugs in the right set and setting can help build family bonds, and help diffuse the build up of some tensions, bringing relaxation, humor and a greater ability to suspend judgement.

Finally I would like to address William, your son: 'Like what you like, enjoy what you enjoy and don't take crap from anybody' I implore you to write back. Start writing and publishing, maybe attempt some poetry, make a small movie and post it on youtube, Yes, you can, love Steven"

SOME SOURCES:
Drugs and the future: brain science, addiction and society. By David J. Nutt

The Beatles Diary: The Beatles years / Barry Miles
By Barry Miles, Keith Badman

Cannabis and cannabinoids: pharmacology, toxicology, and therapeutic potential. By Franjo Grotenhermen, Ethan Russo

Cannabis in medical practice. By Mary Lynn Mathre

America's Longest War. By Steven B. Duke, Albert C. Gross

Cannabinoids. By Mary Ellen Abood, Roger G. Pertwee

Conversations with Tennessee Williams. By Tennessee Williams, Albert J. Devlin

Flyblog O'Crillic

2009-12-30T16:54:00.000-08:00

Flyblog O'Crillic

Deerunk over maybe aboat thirteen cups for aboat tirteen mouths of Kullendar, i guess eye was stumblynn, cristcrossin the mumblemore bayouliffeystour alongside the steppingstones pub, skippin cyclikal snare circle breath beneath noyne bubblyn brooklynn braunstone marrone-castagnu colored; chestnut arches of the Lyfstour viaduct. Peeping skylyke at starrysporia above lye town eye woz daiseyd runk, kungfuzzed� and i sed alofty brothly;
Oh wow Lady dee!
look at the stars man
check tha."

Plop. Swurlysquirly. shheeeteyez fell fallen tigerskin-water, wetsox snakeflow. Oh no. Suckling vortex pulling under, Steerbridged undercurrents got hold ov my heart now, no escaping love currents strong and sturrdy.
"Death alive!" i thought,"i'll be drowndeadderunken sunk silly for sure! kicking, Nuotare, Zwemmen, swommenguage, swimmin for me dear old flylyf. Armies twizzling; windmilling cedar branch after branch, covered in rusty salmon fleshmingo and fuzzy dark guinness hair of beaver coffeetoffee syrupuppyfur
"Where's ma ferry man? don't let me drown, don't let me droun and visit the deepdead river soul show, oh lord no i must swim upinfinite streaming
Summerhow eye manage to scramble ma'sage ashore from churning miss Leafystar hug, shocked from headcold to footsytoes, confronted with a knu rehistoric landbrushedscape, way way way before the end of the beginning of zepiwynetyme, or so it felt, and feels to my frozen clotted-memorybugs.

Loonytune bullbust above the whorizon-axis hung her; guyganormous milky southern knocker of skypot. Peeping kraftykut peephole in skybra spandroopled, backbooty blackground curtain. "Oh' laydy dubz."
To the nord, est, ovest and sud eye gandid;� bogclogga muckamuck clay pouches everyeveningwhere.

Bogboggeybhongbhangpuckpocketpouchpucaphookabolgamuckablagbagginz. Phoukin ell, I maybe stuck in bogscape for all eternity,
Oh Shyty! Skratchin me yed with blueberry popsickle pucapickled flingerpickers, i blurted out me gob; singing and lyebyes; Ode to our ladies grace!

ouch! felt lyek struckaneen poison or sumert took old of me gutter pouch and churned my inside tides aboat, tideturned moonblunder boat in ma poorly jellywhalebelly, i could feel my easter egg up-rising, reminds me early December San Franstarburg. I'm turning sickly bewildered, cramped lyme and i'm wonderinglord what to do? and whywonderinglord blu tidalforces lead me like lamb. Attention slyjacket by great full-cream dairyknocker in sky, a thunderflash turned bluack. Blueberry sauce slivers bluack bustbursted butter blewack bank's and flooded her apple breasted crates with inky thick bloodberry. Phuckin weirdmate, im tellin ya. We herd.

Moving fast n'scramble glitch spingboard diving from hervein; alien, unfamily, utterly bolgalung tin dazzle kamikazequetzalconda. Flaming madollar. Sun blazing out piercing eyes. Bananananda legbeak school bus. Buttock slick head. Very Slowly, it drew nearer, u.f.o morph burningbird; battle of the planets?, balded burningbird of fire scream TzolkienParker bopplyk be bop like bop, bop terrordragonbatadactals. Just behind this sonosovereign providence of mind Jimmy Hendrix fades into being; Mahatmamishmashmavishnukali Arckestral manuvers in the dark; raga sagas upon myndstage for a split secund; Sparking up his parafinn smuthered axe. Dreamy Hentrix Juss beginning to explain -
"If six was nine."

Swooshydown the dinosaur gracefully landead, looks me full in the face up close. Eye cd/ clearly read the mottogandha shaved upon hir crestnuts; Wee the People of the Euroknighted States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the Euroknighted States of Amirroruncle."

Without using spokeword eye communicated dreamypalelogic spinning cyclesagas of tymetrouble to the giant chickenlookin chuckchuck. Revolutionary Kullendear. Drunken fall buzzed international buzzard severnlyf brook transnational splashbabel transformations, swimtripkicked up ashore, freestyle to bogpockland medium, slungsongs. Bewildeyedead depressed lost lonely blues, lost at last, baby lion lynn, bisexualpolar bear rap. dribble pillow lusty, oh phuk i'm pissed. The letter i mishmashed upstream.

"F'li," squarked the dinosaur. After a lungfull thought moment, "I'll fly you right out of this stinking inferno, I got wings flinn i-boypod buddy, look at ma flapperdadies."
"All right! sounds great, thanks man," i splurted. Beastrode the fliyeburdee; wondering why the firebird chose to speak egglish to me, and if a bird was able to learn human languages somehow, which would it choose primarily and why; Enosquarkian? Gooselick? Beek? Eyetalian? Portchugeese?
Up and up we flew in quicktime clock-blue air. High, hoog, alto, up and up zoomin quick as berries.
"Where we eddin, sur?" i said, as we flew over lyekingsfordbridge
herbengarden.
"Hold your lymee tongue, fli, mind your own dizziness, and don't be interfering with the commercio of others now."
" Gli affari sono affari" eye imagined
"Shush flyangelo," says the flamebird
So i bit my murmelen, and held on tight.

Sleek sealhead, kojackish with tagliente-blonde talons, still gripping an olive branch and some salmon arrows, he flew onward alla two d'war. Piercing oogles reminded me memory of the stunning seal; Amirikle. Something seems to be askyouwiffy, this strange bird and his motto. How can a bird possibly carry my weight, the Escutcheon and a scroll? No wonder it skritches lyke that lucy. Poor buzzards overloaded and overbirdened, overgrown and over woostershe:her now. "Oh my goodness" Together we flew on thincrust of air, and the firebird talked and talked and i tumbled into a dream...
In my search for a way to illuminate myselfs to the infinite flux of being, i once upon a time found an old old heresy, hidden inside a riddle within a riddle within a riddle. it is hidden, and it is hidden, and it is hidden. So, i played hide and seek for 9 years with this riddle, infusing myself into different aspects of its being, moving around the intangible pieces of its puzzle body. Grabbing at fragments which occasionally revealed themselves to me in actuality; only to find when i opened my hands that they had actually vanished, and soon after i often had the feeling that the thought and memory of it's being had vanished along with it like a soap bubble - poof. I was often left excited and bewildered at the same time, foolishly thinking i had something in my possession, which i most obviously on second and third thoughts - did not.� Thus the game of hide and beek continued day after day and time after time again i got my hops up and then let down again, chasing my own tale with my puzzled tribemind, looking for an objective thingymajig, looking for loveglue and time bondage devices; the only remaining ideologies i believed were actually capable of making it [I]real[I] and tangible in the flesh, the only method of keeping it here, keeping it reel and present. On and on the river flow, and i got pulled and swished around by the undertow, painting puzzle pieces into my flesh, drawing them on walls, translating them into different frequency vibrations, music, poetry, yoga. I tried to split the riddle in half between my ego and self, between the moon and the sun, between the microcosm and the macrocosm, even between life and death itself, and after all my suffering and heartache, careful attention, patience and suspension of disbelief; i still found myself running in logical circles each morning when i awoke with yesterdays wisdom on the tip of my tongue but with incompatible, speech pattern recognition software, uploaded into my domain. My dome, my human bio-cumpooter.� I felt lost in spacetime on many an occasion around about noon or 2 PM;� just as the stars were congressing, and i was getting hungry since having just a blueberry donut for breakfast, and some electric kool aid around 12:12 this afternoon. Some days i would keep it real way through into the evening hours without deluding myself too much, it bacame kind of psycho-sadistic for a while there, i would neglect even my notion of "I" in the confusion i felt in the early stages of divining between ego, self, super self, super-ego, supra-conscious and the stoopid unconscious. Round and round like a caged mouse glued to her wheel at full spin cycle, i spun for reality. Eye spit out spider words, consciously, or so i thought, directing them toward solid structures, biological systems i could swing between and blend myself into, but most of the time my web of words hit a seemingly solid structure which would without warning turn liquid or slippery and unstable, i found myself wondering..."can there be such a thing as an unwobbling pivot? I doubted it, and doubted again. And for all my doubting i just recall the pain. The suffering of seeing through the veil, of seeing my fellow human beings impaled upon alphabetical empires and squashed like grapes inside the imperialist sovereign empire; the super proper gandhi machine; crushing the fruit of wisdom with the sheer weight of metal currency. Choking the natural abundance of wealth with ideological hierarchies, similar to the Christian blinker which obscures the infinite flux of being with finite spells 'ABOUT" the infinite flux of non-being, or the death of manjesus and the resurrection of the super-ape being; christ. The supreme being of infinite stupidity and ignorance, this seems to be the same being as the being who the money gods worship, the abstracted spirit from the symbol, resurrected through the ideology, the conscious projector of prejudice.� With Dollar symbols and Pound signs leaving their trace every which way these suckers look, and every way they indent grace with their vulgar language and ugly categorical rhetorical dream of a mericle; a dream in which they can cash in all their stolen ideological loot for the real abundance of natures wealth. The worshipers of the money gods dream of the day that Christ turns their golden bonds into another symbolic system, more dissproportionatly riggamortis, ratio-edited so that they can steel more actual natural abundance with their pirate monopoly money; their empire enforced credit; so called wealth. They are dreamers who created a metaphor of my own spiritual quest for the elusive infinite flux of being, wherever i turn my gaze throughout the havoc and haze of this life i pull down the veil, to no avail. People do not stop and stair, they walk on into the bank of heaven, and reinforce the trixsters of the finite world in their project of world domination through flipping the poles of infinite and finite to produce a world word war of terror; the national pride and collective ego play the role of abusive farther priest to the only begotten son; the individual, the self evident infinite flux of immortal spirit, the Chrudder self, not bound to any book, doctrine of ideological symbol system by necessity, but, by choice. The sheeple need a sheperd, or so it seems to me, even though the fences and social hedgerows have been refuted and denied to exist as limits in any way shape or form since the begining of time. Since the onset of self consciousness and self realization we are.

The chains of law have been broken, why don't the people want to play anymore. "Don't be afraid of the riddler" was a mantra i repeated when i thought about the imaginary walls of authority enforced by the imaginary essence of occidental identity, and maybe, the solution to the problem of identity being the explosion and brutal destruction of further investigation, or fair, reasonable, deductive criticism by the blind hammer of monism. Certainty. non-doubt. Your either with us, or against us. Duality must be smashed and reformed into a pure sword of truth, a sword which, although sharp, and well made, can never split anything in two, because by the very nature of it's forgery, it can never create dualtea, just stir it up. Everything it cut becomes reformed and remoulded by the power of a singular God. Christianity has multiple identiteas. A sword cast from many chemicals allied with the use of magic and mystery, and a sword which has been known to have a mind of it's own, to be unpredictable, a sword which turns into a lightening bolt or a stream, this sword is now the principle of metamorphoses. Christian English rhetoric and thought described in the western tradition through metaphysics and super abstract propositional functions bear about as much resemblance to their signifiers as a pharmacists typewriter resembles the Amazonian rain forest.
These are the thoughts which sometimes came to visit me on an evening, if i ever get that far into my search for the infinite flux of being inside the finite flux of this keyboard. I have found that on my quest the spirit knowers and so called psychics are annoying and irritating to me, what you know cannot be a part of your nature i used to shout, but after the first round of saying this i realized my own infinite regress and fall into meaninglessness. Since that time i have being constantly vigilant for any knew techniques or methods for transferring my insight about my conflict with the flux, and yet avoiding the many pitfalls and come down's associated with psychological showvanism in the western mindspace. I invented myself as a superflux hero with wings and bionic powers, but at the same time, i still had to take a shit and shower. One day i turned my critical insight upon myself and discovered a hidden garden of passionate and vibrant energy fluttering between scenes, always on the move, everchanging semi recognizable but...very interesting. She was interesting, and she was a female. I must confess what happened to me myself and i when i found out i had a women inside of me all this time, and that she had never raised her head or made a murmur until this day, the day the earth stood still, summer, and "I" came to realize myself and her relationship with the other; my other brother, our mother and great great great grandmother identity; flux.
She made me mad as a poet, mad as a street cleaning vehicle, it was a miricle how i ever found my way backto back here, into a sentence with a semi logical flow, a sentence with a release date somewhere in view, rather than a prison term called life, with no end in sight, with no new beginning possible for that very same reason. She had mistaken me from the end of the beginning and backtoback through the middle part, and onward to the beginning of the end on so many occasions that i had become, a timelessness critter of the immortal Tao. Well, that's what i call myself now in this alphabetical plot to tie a knot into form with structure wrapped around your cranium. Vibrant, beautiful well watered geranium. Tao the way everyday, everywhen, everyman, everywomen, all the time and all-at-once. Moment after moment, before before and after after, the now Tao has a timetravel function in which it can construct a future universe scenario and aim to apprehend the event. With a bit of luck i hope to apprehend Christianity with the Tao before the monotheism and ignorance of the western religio-political predator eats my own mind, or bombs to smitherines anymore whom will not swallow the godma of tyrannical nations; hell bent on acting out their favorite parts of their favorite book by their favorite author. Beware the critter of one book, and be especially aware of the reader who takes the infinite literally. Beware the Supreme sovereign farther of the divine identity. He may rape you, steel all your belongings and take advantage of you with His grand title. He may sentence you to death with a poison pen or mistake you for the villain inside His own rotten heart. Beware the monotheist and the naive realist, beware the saviour spells; question authority - and on and on like a broken looping phonograph record; and we flew to my greatest astonishment, all the way up to Lady daybookreader hershelf.

"Flyni," said the burred, "im tired after flying; get off me and sit down on the moon until i rest myself awhile. Hang onto that vadjra thunderfinn sticking out the side of the moon over there, see it?"
"No way man, i'd flail 'n fall again and that would be twice and Christ, i would be smashed to smitherrunes on the hard earth below; flat as a pancake, split like humpty O'raysiris. Djed eye would be no doubt, Deada thon a doornail."
"Not at all, Flyknee," said he; "Catch hold of that hook and hang out a while. Go on get off me now."
"i wanna go ohm for phucks sake, that's all."
"Maybe flyni, Maybe." bawled the bald hawking
"Foul bloody flirebird," i said under my breath, in a sly black kuntree-eyerash dialectical cypher, for fear he'd know wot i said. Eye got off his back with my heavy heart, took a hold of the harkhookfinn, and squatted down upon the great creamy space bub contemplating telepathic jazz; flatted seventh vamps in F#.

"Good morning to you, Flyni," said the bird, wings fanned out, picturesque, spanish, spanningish blackdrop drip slilver sun mu'n sparkle; spandanangled outerstella regions. For a brief moment i grokked the whole seal; obverse and perverse; spreadeadoggled; turning in the luce affinity between transvestcentdented stars and the familiar earthstar projection below. My precious metalmoony affinitea; stars and sterlingbling. Panspermia and panning for gold, spanning the galaxy for mold so i wos told
"I am the wings of providence and karma, here's yr/ manifest drama for taking offspring from their nest, you stole my egg's remember flick, remember those eggz you egglish tea leaf?"
"Ugly Amerikaanse eland... is this the way you serve me at last?
Mansteen! You really are a bird of pray! Faith, Il tempo e denaro. Arrrgh. Zeeduivel. U-bent devil!

(My funny babble woz no use; sounded out of context and could have been delivered with more subtle nest.) he spread out his mckarmic whigs and burst out laffin, ha ha haa flying and laughing away he flew hue huw. I sungslang after him with my candy sweet lyelabye and bellard opera, chillin on one leg he would return sun. Dolore...sorrow flippinfly away with him. Go on blues be gone. I don't want you no more.

Stuck inside another pickle jar with Dutch pekelen i cryed and zang zouten tears for fear of grief, "why me? why fli? i blurted. All at once a leak sprung in the middle of the moon, out the leak came oozing liquid mirrorstuff swirling misteamilk swurly half cream. Gooing morphwards forming pickledographs in front of me oogs; forming the old dude in the moony, eye knu im by his long lookin gray chin, and his cheesy cracked dry smile.
"Good next week to you, Flyni. Wot's up with yourshelf?"
"Book all" i harped, rather calmly considering.
"What in the world brought you out here to the moon Flee?"
So, i reeled out my tongue twisted tale; i wuss a tinkle pissed dronken on maybe tirteen grail of sealsons abyss and sun finest brew tang; slipped and fell into the river Lyfstour; swam for me lyf and then became stranded on a rehistorick islandbrushscape. I continued to wind and weave breeze through my multistory with extra luminous details and spiritual outsights aboat the snailsung i singh, and the rockthrone which i had perched upon to think, and how i lost my way in the phooken boggaclog. Eye added how the slybird of prayer promissed to fly me out of it, but instead flyhjacket me up to the big boob, while telling me all about the firebird suite and how his evileagle brother was bad, and how they were planning to flyjacket the moon very soon.
"Flyni, you must not stay here." said the loony critter
"Eye don't wanna be ere man!� you hear what i juss said? i was
kidnapped and brought here against my will by this crazy bird! yo, how am i gunner get back ohm tu buggeridge man, I know i must leave but tell me moondude...how shall i go?
"That's your bizzinesst, bee off in less than no tyme!" snapped the grumpy cheeseball. "Flyem doin no arm ere sur, only holding on fo my dear lyf by this vajrafinn ookyducky, i don't wanna fall to morto and be splatted tommatoe"
"That's what you must not do, flyni."
"im not let tin go mi hold you phoukin moonatrick. I'll be djedead wunt eye."
Without a word he pulls out a massive crooked Qcumber from hiss crack house and gives two bhangs on the sharkhandle huck which wuz oldin me up, and wallop... it split twice.

"Good morning to you Flyni," the spiteful old moonguy sez, as he watches me fall, rolling, tumbling, zwerverin clappers, runk with half a vadjra tight in my grasp, falling Luce. Again. Moksha.
"Ghod alp me" i mumbled, on my decent to the unknown, again. Must i flie to stay awake?

And no sooner had these wurds left my lips unto the air that whizzum, what should fly by my earwig but a fluck of whirled geese all the way from me ohm town boggeridge, how else could they have know me? The old gander who was their general turned his noggin and cried out to me;
"Is that you flyni?

"The samesame," said eye, not a bit fluxed at what he said for flyni was by this time experienced with bewilderment, phase, verbijstering, trickery, drunkenness, hallucination and surprise. Besides, i knew him from back in the daze before tyme. It felt like we were brothers for a moment, bonded by birth placenter hoods.
"Falling falling fallen you are, Flyni," says he
"An understate-ment your honor!"
"And where on earth are you going so fast?" said the commander gander, since i just noticed his stripes, so i unfolded to him flibagins snake charm; too much woest worden honingsap, the fall, the swim to isola rehistorica, garaj mahal, stuck in the stinking muckapucka, and the flagming struisvogel thief who flew me up to the moonmiller while ronin strange axis radio stories of his vortex woman called Dianna, snapped the kalkamandollardajra with his crooked Qcumber which was keeping me up and sent me tumbledumpty down bouwvallig; sovereign sungold coin flung dropped wishingwell. New Flesh for old.

"Flyni," said he, "I'll save your sorry ass, grab onto my legs and i'll stop you falling any further."
"Sweet, dolce is your hand in a pitcher of honigsap, my gioiello," says i, and grabbed the gander by the leg and we flew off fast as gofast with the rest of a six pack or dozen wildeyed muther flockers.

We flew and flied and volair and flown and vliger and flew till we came right over the wyde oceaan blu. "Where the phook am i going now i thought, where to? The Ocean of potion, the knu whirred Wu?
"Fly to land, if you please Sir!"
"it's impossible flyni, because you see we are flocking to Slyberrya. We all gather summer fire around June 21'st each year.
"Cyberia! that's phunkin mouths away, in some foreign slice of the world, it's gonna tek us yonkers mon, i just wanna go Ohm, please take me ohm."
"Hold your flipping tongue,"
Once more pleading for my dear lyf i pray for Amirrorcle and then, sure as war, an oil tanker boat sails into sight below, carrying stolen loot from the miggle est back to Amirickle i guess.
"Can you just drop me off here on the oil tanker Gandhi mate?" i asked.
"if you must, you must. I think you have mist it though...there you go...take your own way. And don't call me gandhi again flyni. All right,"

With that he opened his claw, dropping me down to the blackpirate tinkertanker below.

Sure as day i missed the boat and came down sploshington into illicHcilli oceanpond, sinking down through the churning asparagus broth schimen, down, deep downgreen emerald, falling lucifer mossrocks, eye gave up on myself then forevergreen, when, out of the ruddy hulk warter a porpoise came swamming right close up to me, right up close enough to kiss me, and i think i might while she's skratchin her blow hole and stretching her finns out after a good nights sleep i bet, yeah, she looked me full in the face with some Hunab ku looks and never a word of English she did say, thank goodness, but, lifting up her tail, she splashed me all over again with cold salt water, the wet stuff, not the words here; until there wore a dry stitch upon my boggysoggy carcass.

I remembered the firebird and how he vivisected my mind without word with pickledgraffs, i was beginning to receive signals from the dopefinn about spacetimespace and outermindbrainplace things and holographic thoughtfacetime stuff, then i heard a distinctive angel's voice, slightly pissed in the murky distance; a voice and tone i mecognized.

"Wake up stephan you lazy phuka!"
There she was - a man eater, splashing agua all over me hip hop stunkin carcuss, my beautiful wyf had metamorphosed from mermaid into bullhound half human alarm clock. I was ringing wet.
"Get up, stand up!"
"Why do you lye under them ould walls of boggarigapooka huh? it's such a mucky stinkin baga wind. Honeysap maybe the death of you Stephan...one of these daisies you'll stay runken sleepin and never wake agen! Never in a month of sun will you learn your lesson from moonshine brewers.

Spun from an Irish fairy tale about Daniel O' Rourke, collected in County Cork by Thomas Crofton Croker (1870)

Re:mixed by Fly Agaric23/Acrillic

Copyleft 21:12:2012 Fly Agaric 23

COPENHAGAN BIG OIL SUMMIT

2009-12-07T20:37:00.000-08:00

“Us clams must stick apart” –Feudal Baron Periwinkle III.

Aphrodite rose from sea foam in film. Merry Mermaid & love goddess surfinn her scallop chariot through twisted arms of godsoilmen and sludge. She has risen to meet the supermajors to balance scales and dance to the finnance seers circe song. Gulf scoop. Venus Arise! Awake. Hail Eris! Drink snail wine and toast to King scallop, loops. Sail up Botticelli’s shell birth canal, known by cockle, hat and staff, Cruz’ past oily Slick Cheney news. We roe under the sign, past energy task force positions. The Galloping Scallop clad man of greek myth. The Knights bejewelled in clam lips and kisses. Rich blue Oil spill or mother of pearl? Like blended parrots and dead plankton, mixed emulsions. Beautiful Miss. Oil Spill?

Crude awakening to the spill-age. A Collosal squid princess riding old Jakobsschelp to help a Hutch load of old scallops rise out the Seafloor Blues. Deep sea things speak! Lo! Scallops of the ocean down by the great rising Chiefs. Take Big Periwinkle into your earshell. Smell the sign, touch the symbol, has it got ridges? Dreams cast to sea to see in a Venus shell in a mother of pearl breast. Dead Plankton in the paint painted on Saints of the swamp. And the city sewers flow. Heed the clam of commerce and the cockle-shock shimmy. A shell of transfusion, what sea-shell sign symbol confusion. Emerging on a horse covered in Scallops? Yes, Prince Periwinkle gallops-up stream like Salmon. Skullops for one shelling a dollop. Sea wave-wind Mussels flex into fossils. Oh, more yet, invisible smell of oilamp from the limpet. The Penis of Mr. Big Periwinkle is swelling, a telling sign of the times. Lets Oil the Oystery of Oil, and stir with a staff, lets foil Big sharks, get shocked, struck coil! Row roe with the Tide Swell batter and salt. Swim with the titanic Sementic shift, up out the shell, again, to tell a snail tale of the planetary shaft.

Son’s of Thunder Juice, Snel, quick up to defend the word. A sea slug with untold feet, runs with you. Hoily Tools of the Big Petrol scoop and scope scheme, wallops the marine scene with unclean oil sheen. Another spellage. Ocean deep n' blue, packed full of shell-rooms, true teachers of petrochem generation X. Drill here. Rise up like foam, Alexthunder Oil the Shah Cockle and the unseen shellhand scoop, arise fortuna. Waxy Parrot Snot in the sea banks, how to dress up a death spill? Casting Shells - The wavy lines trace swellmighty calm. His Loch' Holiness the Buddhaclam Caliph of Pearl of the Santiago Shell mound gate tell us, what fate? Great clam emperor of the Mollusca lineage, Big Up your shelf. By nature the sign, 500 Million years of geometry spun, sings in holy brine water, the Duke Periwinkle Clam tissue of ivory Sheen? Look down the well. Oily DEA and ivory salt newspaper scalps litter our vessel, truth and beauty from underwater vents, meanwhile oilmen pollute the ocean-Green with sculpted Pipe lines, crime waves of DEA projects, No Oildea how sticky their handshells.

To the Great Old One's, please hear us and help a sign-sailor resist a supermajor temptress, blackmailing a redesign. Each cell on the Shell glitters and does not glisten. Clamco on our sex organs. Oil spill, pipe-line, spoil, Usury, coercion, interference with the flow. Oyster Gods of ancient oceans sculpt the wave and weave pearls for serpents teeth to sew. WWII elixir prohibition, in the name of thy snakeoil potions, Rise, Oh. Sea-meat wonders with one hundred eyes that dwell upon Old heraldic shields, Rise up like bubbles and show us your shape. If only Molluscs could grow wings? Dutch English American statistics, more scallops? Roam the ocean wide with the Sigil of Galloping shells tells a whale of a trial of a clam, with snapping hinge teeth. Big Blood and loot (bleep) swinging from the Scallops pole, I and Shelly, and our Seal: Koninklijk. A Toast to Scallops and the food of Godzilla, and the marvel of Clam propulsion.

Venus come surfing on a scallop, leading with a shell in hat and staff in hand. Scholar. Mussel Swimming down Saint James's glory-gate to stealth Oil Cow & coo. Scoop it. And the church Redlips TTOTTAL Informollusc. Sculp. Crude awakening. Cockoily and Crude Millions scalloped out of the earth's. Intimidated pilgrims raise a Church shoal. To the Botticelli Shell-mex, mix, to the - Supermajor – noGods’ and the shall he, Shall he not trotter. Heart of calcite, home of crystal. Toil to swim with the ASA Esso sponsors. Pick a Shell and drink James Juice. The sacred periwinkle proportions, now sea gold. Periwinkle Cockle and aragonite Shillyshellying, on land we're all out of gas? Gaia Scalp flaking, dry rot and sun burn, Crashing oil and Blood in similar waves, Half-mollusc, half man with a vulva Cuthulu cult riding a Periwinkle to shore, to soil on past British Patrolingmen. Deep Rejoice – Skol - of the sea leagues 93’000 species of Mollusc, calcium from sea, Saint James Juice “No thankyou.” Oh, resurrecting Periwinkle is forbidden? Greenwash be damned, HOLY Scollop of truth Swim on your way! Oh, Mollusc gas around pilgrims Hands. Scooping the word. Praise the Count of cockles who calculates the calcium content. Re-shore em’ that Oystery has Pearls. Barons to protect the crust. Don't drill, hear! The silver pink flesh remaining of ocean Sheild. What pearls lie in the sign. Schaaldrake Unreeled from the Well, winds blowing above the abyss of humanity.

A clamber of underwater James shimmer “What the devil’s covering you, old directors?” The Hat clamp too. Holy floor, must be peak oil time! Shall we use our gills to push? Praise oceans Brand waves. The fisherman on fire, Oil brigade, fire brigade. What Sustenance? Entangled oil pipline artery of earth rot? Well well well, Oil be damned! eyel. The stolen dead plankton. The dead seamen-oil-blood transfusion. The Tectonic shifts and shafts. Swallow the shilly-shally sea and go a’ rumaging. A mussel bound wisdom tongue in a Dutch pit. Venus in shell, that feminine Scallop. Beware the starfish and oystercatchers and Condi Rice. Our boat enters the earshells of Leviathon. Seers are feeding, so meditate on bivalvia underground and grow new ears. Total germs. Sea worms fight back. Please dive off the Euro board and Rejoice for James Juice. Hoily Houses Haunt Oystery sauce. The currents of Oysery in the Musselmen’s. How to Oil the machine and then stir, sir?

Scallop filtration of nature Mouth pit. Hermaphrodite Samuel of the black-gold waters. Global eyes of the oceanic gleam where Ibskal speak of sea diamonds, pearls and disturb the Calm mud. Look Deep, look well , lick the James Juice-oil, drink the poison and ride the snake to the pit of Saint DEA, to planet Exo-Clamboil. Elders send word of hope, inducing Amanita Mollusca. Sometides wash nutrients up Ripples of the great allrudy wish-ways prepear’d with proportions of Baron periwinkles dimples. Chevrollop, clamswallop, wham. Big Shh’ galaxy, in silence. And inside the noble clam chamber Mr. Mussel finds shelter from transfusions and Cockledoom on a dinner plate. Oh shil, you supermajor logo shystirs. Rumble of waves around scalloped edge - where Venus teleports - to visit ecstatic ten-thousand. And Brand new standards, drink the ocean ink of clam soup. Ingest the Hoily Ocean Extracts from the me-a-ning Well, it's all for the best. Wade through the bauxite, don’t step on our eggshares show foresight. Juice the wellwell markets, be merry, speak into these eggshawls. Schelp, I need some clammy mammy? Muscle and sperm of capitol, testoss and hydrocarbons, Thankyou, the pearls really shine. 500 Million years of Scallop evolution sculpted from chalk with tyme.

Real Crotch Oil spread and royal Roe Smoothie. The synchro-swimming around the OVA, mixing a schaal alliance. Pink into the black current. Shellfish swim for ecosystem and it’s edges. The taste and Zap, filtering compost on sea-bed, the underwater awakening, like Fungus, the Clam infiltrates the swill. Heaven and Hell, the birth of Lucifer von Periwinkle and his Kingdom Oilmen! Lo, the chatter and Swell, the Venus and the Vulva. Marian’s Well. Like a Mermaid's, always moist. Master of devices and of painted Green weeds. Grow. A Pilgrim Artefact slyjacked. Marian! Murmur and maid, with comb and mirror, homeless, Comb exchanged for a clam-pick to pluck Lyre songs. Merry tinkles of shells and deep-blues for heads. Oh yeah, to schell the proof to buy the truth. Sea Red and sigil read. Michelle, and her pink mantle. Swimming with our vows to explore the edges of the Sun. Elixir of Baron Periwinkle makes a tasty tipple. A tale maybe a virus. Vile us! With a treacherous hijacked Scallop - snapping - at your toe, out to out brand Oil. Way out. Respect the Hoily mollusc of Saint James. These Claims of holy clams clamp down on Baron Periwinkle’s clump, so Dive down and pry benearth. The Venus Mermaiden has risen from the sea to show you her she-sails.

Lawyers, Baths, Bats, MP's and the 'Coseley Report

2009-12-05T05:50:00.000-08:00

(Lawyers, Baths, Bats, MP's and the PM)

Oh my, this Swimming pool drama is turning into potential for a channel 4 documentary or a short story, between the bats and the chlorine spill this Coseley Baths palava may have a hollywood blockbuster in there somewhere. Here’s some bullet points of interest to me so far.

1. The local conservative headed council of Dudley insist that the roof of the baths is unsafe and requires £1000000 of funds, plus another £1000000 for general upkeep, which means that due to a shortage of cash the pool must be bulldozed, contrary to these figures, locals who thought for themselves figured out the work could be done for £666’000.
2. A colony of bats listed on the endangered species list decided to take up residence in the rafters of the swimming pool roof – as if sending a message to the wrecking crew and fans of using the bulldozer – please don’t demolish our home.
3. Three British celebrity swimmers of world status have spoken out and somewhat – joined the campaign – to save the baths. Sharon Davis, Nick Gillingham and Duncan Goodhew have pledged support, along with a host of swimmers and coaches who get to hear about this battle to keep the pool open, in the run up to the 2012 Olympic Games, UK. In 'The Coseley Report' Sharon is played by Uma Thurman, Nick Gillingham by Steven Segal and Duncan Goodhew by Ben Kingsley.
4. A 2000 strong facebook group emerged early in the campaign and has grown to indicate the tendency for people to connect and communicate, and to organize so as to become more intelligent, and have the freedom to feedback. I like to draw attention to how the campaign to keep the baths open has been generally tolerant of negative feedback and small-talk on the discussion board. Contrast this with the private campaign, behind closed doors, of the councillors and MP’s and lawyers. No website, no facebook group or any social network group, no blog, nothing other than carefully monitored and content controlled – news items – forwarded by the local newspuss.
5. Thousands of people have mobilized around the Coseley area and got involved with local democracy, and literally stood up, walked, shouted and sang with a passion about something they feel deeply enough about to act, which is a good thing, in these times of apathy toward personal democracy, and the general disconnect between people and their Government, and their birthright, as human beings, to become a part of the decision process that – manages & governs – any form of civilization, anywhere. Maybe Coseley Baths will become a landmark campaign and up-rising of empowered individuals, hyperconnected and armed with data, facts, sources and resources so as to literally, out-source the Governments sluggish, monopolized methods of – doing – civilization.
6. Early on in the campaign there was a dangerous accident at the Baths involving a Chlorine spillage/leakage that highlighted, among other things, the importance of health and safety and good management at any swimming pool, leisure complex, and any public facility that requires careful monitoring and attention. Maybe it was the Chlorine spill that attracted the bats?
7. Some sources have estimated that any court case directed against the closure of the baths, that would be taking Dudley council itself – to court – may cost as much as £25’000, to gain the help of a top brass lawyer. The potential court case draws my attention to a possible court scene drama, where all the perspectives, data and points of view can be correlated, discussed and evaluated, based upon the cinematic vision and creative screenplay writing employed to describe such a case.
8. Our protagonist and hero might be considered to be Brian Guest, the local campaigner, and no stranger to the council arena and public speaking it seems, he was recently invited to meet with Gordon Brown at Number 10, and I hope he said something like the twitter/coseleybaths bio that reads “Dudley MBC less than £120k spent on me over last 10 yrs £450k to knock me down !” In my cinematic vision I see Brian Guest played by Clint Eastwood, and the heads of Dudley Council played by Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Walkin and Al Pacino. Clint is joined by Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp and Matt Damon who take on the corrupt council in a shocking court room drama, that takes us far away to the giant Bat Caves of Borneo, and back to Dudley to the underground vampire chambers of Stourbridge. Sex and drugs scandal, spies everywhere and secret love affairs between enemies, corruption, greed and devil worship – The Coseley Baths report - will change the way we do cinema, the way we do social activism. A documentary drama with a final twist that would put hairs on a jellyfish.

--Steve fly.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=136918980500
http://www.expressandstar.com/2009/12/04/licence-granted-to-demolish-baths/
http://twitter.com/coseleybaths

SUN RA Interviews & Essays - HEADPRESS.

2009-11-29T17:16:00.000-08:00

I'm very happy to be a part of this groundbreaking collection of literature concerning the brilliant SUN RA!

--Steve Fly

SUN RA
Interviews & Essays

View Larger Image

Editor: John Sinclair
Availability:

Not Yet Available

Format: Paperback
Size: 216mm x 139mm
Page Count: 256
ISBN-13: 9781900486729
Weight (g): 300
Genre: Music
RRP:

Available exclusively from headpress.com in December 2009. If you would like to be notified of its release, click here to send us an email. Write "Sun Ra" as the subject header and we will get back to you.

Composer, bandleader, pianist, poet and philosopher, Sun Ra is one of the most colourful and enduring of musical legacies, transcending time, place and cultural genres.

From the mid 1950s until his death in 1993, Sun Ra led "The Arkestra", an ensemble with an ever-changing line-up and name which sometimes numbered as many as thirty musicians living and playing together under the despotic tutelage of Sun Ra himself. Their music touched upon the entire history of jazz, from ragtime to swing, bebop to free jazz,while the band also pioneered the use of new forms, including electronic music, space music and free improvisation. But Sun Ra’s legendary status was earned as much for his eccentricities as for his unique artistic vision. Claiming to be from Saturn, he developed and propagated a mystifying sci-fi mythology which he weaved into both the music and Dadaist performances of The Arkestra (performances which inspired artists as diverse as George Clinton and MC5). His ideas are still the cause of much debate and controversy, the poetry and prose Sun Ra left behind only deepening the ambiguities around his work and ideas.

This book collects together for the first time interviews with Sun Ra, the people that knew him, and his contemporaries, alongside illuminating essays and conversational pieces regarding his prolific musical output, mystique, philosophy, fans and much more.

Contents:

By way of an Introduction by Peter Dennett
Sun Ra by Amiri Baraka
Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth by John Sinclair
It Knocks on Everybody’s Door by John Sinclair: Interview with Sun Ra, Detroit Sun, 1966
Cosmic Catalyst by David Henderson: Sun Ra in New York City, Oakland & Philadelphia
Word from Sun Ra by Amiri Baraka
Their Space Was My Place by Ben Edmonds: Sun Ra & the MC-5 at the Grande Ballroom, Detroit, 2009
Life Is Splendid by John Sinclair: Sun Ra at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, 1972
Interview with Amiri Baraka by Lazaro Vega, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1999
I Know Everything You Need to Know About Music by John Sinclair: A Conversation with Michael Ray
Arkestra in Residence by Rick Steiger: Sun Ra & His Arkestra at the Detroit Jazz Center, 1980
Sun Ra Memories by John Sinclair
Twenty-first Century Music by Pete Gershon: The Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of alto saxophonist Marshall Allen
The Great and Wondrous Sun Ra by John Sinclair: In Conversation with Wayne Kramer, London, June 2008
My Night as a Tone Scientist by Wayne Kramer
Cosmic Engineering: Jerry Dammers & the Spatial aka Orchestra / Part 1: Interview with Jerry Dammers by John Sinclair & Dylan Harding, London, 2009 / Part 2: Concert reviews by Paul Bradshaw, John Mulvey, Ian Harrison & Jack Massarik
Schwartzegeist by Sadiq Bey: Live from Berlin: The Sun Ra Tribute Project
Sun Ra: Myth, Magic & Music by Steve Fly Agaric 23
The Mystical Estate / Part 1: Standing in the Shadow of Sun Ra by Dylan Harding / Part 2: Interview with Haf-fa Rool by David Kerekes & Caleb Selah, London, 2002
Sun Ra on Film by John Sinclair & David Kerekes: The Cry of Jazz & Space is the Place
Sun Ra Obituary by John Sinclair: New Orleans Times-Picayune, 1993
Photos & Comics / Part 1: Sonny’s Last Song by Mat Colegate & Dan White / Part 2: Scrapbook
Contributor notes
About this book

EDITOR BIO: In 1969, the poet-provocateur, MC5 manager and White Panther John Sinclair found himself the victim of that decade’s draconian American drug laws, and facing a twenty-year jail sentence for the possession of two joints. The counterculture Sinclair helped create came to his rescue, however, when John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs and others performed at a successful benefit gig to petition for his release. Since that epochal moment, Sinclair (whom Ben Edmonds calls the “hardest working poet in showbiz”) has travelled the globe with his beat verses and inimitable growl, performing with some of the world’s finest musicians. He interviewed Sun Ra in 1966.

http://www.headpress.com/ShowProduct.aspx?ID=89

SHANNANIGUMS WAVE. Widget.

2009-11-27T05:33:00.000-08:00

The British War On Swimming

2009-11-21T01:03:00.000-08:00

I was attracted to the campaign to save Coseley Baths this year, partly because I was born not far from Coseley, so I consider the Dudley Bourough and the Black Country my home. It's where many friends and family live, so I have a personal interest in the Coseley Swimming Pool closure, and more generally any NEWS concerning swimming and swimming facilities in and around that area. It feels to me like I am somehow genetically programed to take an extra interest in "what's going on" around the Dudley & Stourbridge area, maybe I have some patriotic genes that have an urgency to express themselves? Whatever the reasons, I have found myself conducting independent research into swimming and swimming facilities due to a lack of such independent research. When it comes to the political, economic and psychological information concerning swimming I have found a wall of disinformation, crooks working for private-profit, and money-power motivated individuals using a - racket - to replace older swimming facilities with new - leisure complex corporations, contracted by a new business network.

As I have mentioned before at my blog, I have personally witnessed the destruction of 3 swimming pool's - Stourbridge (87), Brierley Hill (2005) and now Coseley (2009). And spent hundreds of hours writing, reading and communicating my thoughts about swimming, swimming pools and how governments in Britain manage or miss-manage as to what the case maybe - SPORT & LEISURE?

My observations of swimming in the Dudley area have some similarities between recent cases of swimming-pool closure's up and down the country, for example:

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-evening-chronicle/2009/11/05/council-to-press-ahead-with-pool-closure-bid-72703-25098524/

http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1489317?UserKey=

http://www.northern-times.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/6875/Ceiling_problem_shuts_Golspie_pool__96_again.html

http://www.streathamguardian.co.uk/news/4744099.Council_closes_Streatham_swimming_pool/

One of my early memories of the corporate grip over sports in Britain was when I competed in the West Midland District championships and won a couple of events, to discover that oil giant ESSO were the major sponsor, and had their logo's on T-Shirts, Banners, medals and prizes. I guess that swimming and swimming facilities has found advantages from going into business with large corporations, banks and other sponsors, but there are downsides to such collaborations too, depending on your geopolitical standpoints, or your conceptions of international capitalist corporatism. There can be no turning back the clocks, swimming pools are being knocked down and replaced by leisure centers as the UK gears up for the 2012 Olympics. The painfully obvious contradictions we get from the corporate sponsored news and telecommunications media surrounding the games are highlighted by the plight of swimming clubs, swimmer's and their vital facilities in the UK.

The London-centric attitude and economic bias toward developing the south of England, only adds to the insult and injury to the rest of the UK (and by extension the world) regarding sports facilities. Compare the numbers of new SHOPPING MALLS, and/or corporate supermarkets to new swimming pools available to the public and capable of providing a swimming facility for clubs too?

Maggie Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are somewhat in the firing-line here, both Labour and Conservative, for selling out their culture, agriculture, banking, entertainment and healthcare of the subjects they were hired to help, very simply, the British Government has spearheaded the international finance capitalism or global gangsterism partly to blame for this slump in public facilities and good old fashioned markets or fair and equal trade, and the rise in TESCO like private corporations. Tony Blair and TESCO highlight the sordid relationships. Most local telecommunications media seem immune to such alternative thinking and continue the river of lies and bullshit.

--Steve Fly.

Who (is) a Jew? & Shroedinger's Jew

2009-11-12T16:40:00.000-08:00

"Isness is an illness' --Korzybski.

Did the world just make a small step into the world next door, the world of Dr. Robert Anton Wilson? Where logic and reason are juiced and blended with science and a calm, still – rational – mind, and applied to some of the most furtive areas of the shared human experience, questions of Identity, of being and of faith. Degrees of doubt and degrees of certainty may make the world a generally more sane – shared experience – without so many medieval superstitions and irrational make-believe stories having a grip upon our collective, world around economic, educational, telecommunications and agricultural means to production, means to play with, and tools to share.

To pierce superstition and bad judgement wherever it rears an ugly head with an array of probabilistic models, different ways of looking at the data, a new multiple complex of data, an analysis – something that can be scientifically and mathematically processed. Something to which formal logic and structural comparison can be applied to, something that I feel approaches the Utopian vision of equality and justice between entities, cultures, and people around the world. Here in the hard questions about how religious discrimination affects fairness, reason and scientific logic, when in 2009 – private and/or Government institutions around the world operate upon faith-based “I Said So...” basis, usually involving one supreme ordained individual who claims the power of one supreme almighty creator GOD, and so can – judge – what is what and who is who.

Maybe I’m not too far off the mark here, in my guess that Dr. Robert Anton Wilson might have been delighted by this recent London court hearing concerning the question of ‘jewishness’ and by extension ‘Identity’ and the bright prospect of a new scientific and reason based – logic - employed by both religious and non-religious people all around the world. In the life of the mind, you can be anyone you want, maybe; if it fits with the way you live you life?

I will reproduce the article from the NEW YORK TIMES in full. But first, I'll reproduce one of Dr. Wilson’s 'thought's of the Month', that struck me as linking logic – with this NY Times article. I wonder if any of the Lawyers at the trial had read this article? I hope, Bob loved lawyers. And he loved rats equally.

I think Dr. Wilson and maybelogic help define this moment of sanity and clarity, I hope all the religious dogma around the world can be defeated by science based research, probabilistic thinking and optimistic cooperative structures, open-source networks and information sharing. But without throwing out quasi-religious phenomena such as Magick, Shamanism, Spiritual exercise, Synchronicity. I hope that when such dogmas and the dangerous confusion of different semantical maps get revised and updated according to the latest data, the other phenomena will better observed.

To be revised...

--steve fly

Schroedinger's Jew. (Thought of the month)
Bloomsday 2001 e.v.
16 Juno 80 p.s.U.

97 years ago today Leopold Bloom, a fictitious man, wandered the streets of Dublin, a real city; and Joyce scholars still argue about his odd odyssey. I would like to add to the confusion with a note about Bloom's "Jewishness."

"Is" Leopold Bloom a Jew?

Not according to Orthodox Rabbinical law, which defines a Jew as the child of a Jewish mother. Bloom as the child of a Protestant mother "is not" a Jew.

According to Nazi law, however, a Jew "is" a person with a known Jewish ancestor. Bloom as the son of Rudolph Bloom [born Rudolph Virag], "is" a Jew.

See how easily a person can "be" and "not be" a Jew at the same time?

On the third hand, most humanists define a Jew as one who believes in and practices the Judaic religion. By this definition, Bloom who neither believes in nor practices any religion "is not" a Jew. But Marilyn Monroe, who practiced and probably tried to believe in Judaism while married to Arthur Miller, "was" a Jew by that definition-- for those few years, if not before or after.

Extensionally or phenomenologically, a Jew "is" somebody considered Jewish by all or most of the people he meets. By this standard the multi-ordinal Bloom "is" a Jew again.

Once more: in terms of pure existentialism a Jew "is" somebody who chooses to consider themselves Jewish. Bloom obviously doesn't consider himself Jewish but Irish, most of the time. Only when under verbal assault by the anti-semitic Citizen in Barney Kiernan's pub does Bloom define himself as Jewish ["And Jesus was a Jew too. Your god. He was a Jew like me."] Here he obviously has in mind the "known Jewish ancestor" rule, because he adds "And so was his father," to which the Citizen replies, as a correct Catholic, "He had no father," and Bloom, unfamiliar with that theology -- logic played with deuces, eights and one-eyed jacks wild -- can only pragmatically reply, "Well, his uncle then."

But recalling the incident later, Bloom says "And he called me a Jew, which as a matter of fact I'm not." Here he returns to his customary "believer in Judaic religion" definition.

I suppose Joyce made Bloom such a tangled genetic and cultural mixture to expose the absurdities of anti-semitism; but I also suspect that he wanted to undermine that neurolinguistic habit which postmodernists call "essentialism" and which Korzybski claimed invades our brains and causes hallucinations or delusions every time we use the word "is." - DR. Robert Anton Wilson. June 16th 2001. http://www.rawilson.com/thoughts.html

Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question

LONDON — The questions before the judges in Courtroom No. 1 of Britain’s Supreme Court were as ancient and as complex as Judaism itself.
Who is a Jew? And who gets to decide?

On the surface, the court was considering a straightforward challenge to the admissions policy of a Jewish high school in London. But the case, in which arguments concluded Oct. 30, has potential repercussions for thousands of other parochial schools across Britain. And in addressing issues at the heart of Jewish identity, it has exposed bitter divisions in Britain’s community of 300,000 or so Jews, pitting members of various Jewish denominations against one another.

“This is potentially the biggest case in the British Jewish community’s modern history,” said Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper here. “It speaks directly to the right of the state to intervene in how a religion operates.”
The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews’ Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London’s Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts.

Britain has nearly 7,000 publicly financed religious schools, representing Judaism as well as the Church of England, Catholicism and Islam, among others. Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority.

By many standards, the JFS applicant, identified in court papers as “M,” is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M’s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew — nor was her son. It turned down his application.

That would have been the end of it. But M’s family sued, saying that the school had discriminated against him. They lost, but the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal this summer.

In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.”

The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.

“The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”

The same reasoning would apply to a Christian school that “refused to admit a child on the ground that, albeit practicing Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin,” the court said.

The school appealed to the Supreme Court, which is likely to rule sometime before the end of the year. The case’s importance was driven home by the sheer number of lawyers in the courtroom last week, representing not just M’s family and the school, but also the British government, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, the United Synagogue, the British Humanist Association and the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Meanwhile, the Court of Appeal ruling threw the school into a panicked scramble to put together a new admissions policy. It introduced a “religious practice test,” in which prospective students amass points for things like going to synagogue and doing charitable work.

That has led to all sorts of awkward practical issues, said Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, because Orthodox Judaism forbids writing or using a computer on the Sabbath. That means that children who go to synagogue can’t “sign in,” but have to use methods like dropping prewritten postcards into boxes.

It is unclear what effect the ruling, if it is upheld, will have on other religious schools. Some Catholic schools, accustomed to using baptism as a baseline admissions criterion, are worried that they will have to adopt similar practice tests.
The case has stirred up long-simmering resentments among the leaders of different Jewish denominations, who, for starters, disagree vehemently on the definition of Jewishness. They also disagree on the issue of whether an Orthodox leader is entitled to speak for the entire community.

“Whatever happens in this case, there must be some resolution sorted out between different denominations,” Mr. Benjamin said in an interview. “That the community has failed to grasp this has had the very unfortunate result of having a judgment foisted on it by a civil court.”

Orthodox Jews, of course, sympathize with the school, saying that observance is no test of Jewishness, and that all that matters is whether one’s mother is Jewish. So little does observance matter, in fact, that “having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn’t make you less Jewish,” Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently. Lauren Lesin-Davis, chairman of the board of governors at King David, a Jewish school in Liverpool, told the BBC that the ruling violated more than 5,000 years of Jewish tradition.

“You cannot come in and start telling people how their whole lives should change, that the whole essence of their life and their religion is completely wrong,” she said.

But others are in complete sympathy with M.
“How dare they question our beliefs and our Jewishness?” David Lightman, an observant Jewish father whose daughter was also denied a place at the school because it did not recognize her mother’s conversion, told reporters recently. “I find it offensive and very upsetting.”

Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism here, said the lower court’s ruling, if upheld, would help make Judaism more inclusive.
“JFS is a state-funded school where my grandfather taught, and it’s selecting applicants on the basis of religious politics,” he said in an interview. “The Orthodox definition of Jewish excludes 40 percent of the Jewish community in this country.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/world/europe/08britain.html

DR. MARSHMALLOW CUBICLE. Live in Amsterdam 24/11.

2009-11-09T19:58:00.000-08:00

http://www.cafe-belgique.nl/

http://myspace.com/flyagaric23

http://www.myspace.com/vinzentpp

COSELEY CAMPAIGNER SENT TO GORDON BROWN FOR BRIEFING.

2009-11-08T04:51:00.000-08:00

Um, I wonder how Brian got on? I wonder if the .gov/ tried to buy him, or bribe him? Maybe he'll become a new authority on how to save swimming pools from closure in Great Britain. Great sweetner Ian, thats more like it. Yes. But the crimes continue surrounding the closure of Coseley Baths. Burning lies and crooked bus...iness dealings, as usual. Now the Lawyers are getting paid again, what a racket: Ombudsman, Council-women, Lawyers and Journalists must love all the attension from Coseley baths palava. Open or closed, either way, they win, just part of the job. The difference between a Lawyer and rat, is you can't get a rat to do some things.... Where is the INDEPENDENT STUDY INTO THE ROOF costs, proposed about 6 months ago? why has so little of the information been SHARED witht the public? Why am I wasting my time with this classic example of faith-based government, in action?

--Fly Acrillic.

Google "coseley swimming baths" to find more articles. Again I simply compare the action of swimming, with the pseudo-actions of politics.

"Coseley Baths campaigner to meet Gordon Brown PM E-mail
Written by Assistant Editor
Thursday, 22 October 2009 08:17

The leader of the campaign to save condemned Coseley Baths will pitch to the Prime Minister this evening as residents continue their battle to save the pool.

Brian Guest is meeting Gordon Brown at a reception in Downing Street from 6pm. The summit has been arranged by Dudley North MP and Government minister Ian Austin who has commended Mr Guest for his “superb” leadership. Mr Guest said he was honoured to be asked but pledged to fight Coseley’s corner at the meeting.

“It is a privilege to be asked to meet the Prime Minister and will give me a chance to put Coseley on the map,” the 65-year-old, of Elmwood Rise, Sedgley, said.

“It’s not even just about the baths, there is the issue of the youth centre which should not have closed before the new one was ready to open.

“And we are just worried about what might be coming next.”

Mr Austin said: “Brian organised the campaign to Save Coseley Baths and did a fantastic job.

“The petition the group launched was signed by thousands of local people and the commitment and determination with which he led the campaign was superb.”

The pool in Pear Tree Lane closed at the end of August despite the efforts of Mr Guest and hundreds of campaigners.

Dudley Council says the building needs £1 million worth of repairs to make the roof safe and a further £1m to bring the baths up to scratch.

Campaigners are still hopeful of beating the bulldozer, and Mr Guest is exploring the possibility of launching legal action to prevent demolition.

Chairman of the Beacon Hill Tenants and Residents Association Peter Hartshorne and Emma Sealey, from the Dudley Christian Fellowship, have also been invited to Downing Street by Mr Austin.

“I am delighted that I will get to introduce Emma, Peter and Brian to the Prime Minister and give them the opportunity to discuss with him the issues they feel are affecting local people,” Mr Austin said.

THE RIVER STOUR . FLOW. HISTORY.

2009-11-08T04:31:00.000-08:00

Published deatils about the river stour - Stourbridge - make for good footnotes my book SHANNANIGUMS WAVE.

SHANNANIGUMS WAVE. BOOKS ARRIVED TODAY.

2009-10-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

I snapped a few pics of em' - luverly cover artwork taken from CHU's great wall of walsall titled "Hole In the Wall".

Tesco BANK

2009-10-06T06:39:00.001-07:00

http://www.myspace.com/flyagaric24

How will Tesco Bank shape up?
Alan O'Sullivan, This is Money
6 October 2009
Chat

The newly renamed Tesco Bank has a long way to go before it replaces some of the nation's biggest banks, but it has the potential to become one of the most successful banking brands in the country.

Skip additional links
Tesco Store
Every little helps: like being able to do your banking and shoppiing at the same time.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?

* Free banking with your supermarket shop
* Video: The supermarket banking grab
* Tesco expands for assault on banks

OTHER STORIES

* Easy steps to getting the best Isa
* The bank complaint X-Files investigated
* Nationwide's poor Guaranteed Bond offer
* Islamic bonds offer table-topping 4.5%
* Best buy savings that drop to 0.08%

SAVINGS TABLES
Credit cards, cash and calculator Find the best savings account to suit you from our entirely independent comparison tables:
>> Top savings rates
SAVINGS SAFETY
Bank vault We explain how to make sure all your savings are covered by compensation.
>> Safer savings

In a symbolic move that outlines its ambition, the supermarket announced today that it was renaming Tesco Personal Finance as Tesco Bank.

It revealed that it has attracted 300,000 customers to its banking arm over the past year, giving a total of 6m.

But as the banking industry may have to start charging for current accounts in the near future due to the current legal battle over bank charges, it may be able to grow this customer base much faster than its rivals by offering free accounts if customers spend a certain amount in its stores.

So how does Tesco Bank shape up and will it become a major force?

Savings rates

The bank has a good reputation for customer service and its savings products regularly appear at the best top of the best-buy tables. These accounts are often not as consistent as those offered by building societies, but are on par with those offered by the big banks.

For example, Tesco Bank's internet account is one of the highest paying on the market at present at 3%, although this includes a 1.75% bonus, meaning the rate will fall to 1.25% after 12 months.

The account saw a rush of customers at the start of the year, although This is Money readers complained about an overly complex and convoluted internet banking process.

Customer base

In terms of customers, Tesco still has a long way to go before it begins to rival the big High Street banking names: Lloyds Banking Group has a monumental number of customers at 30m, followed by RBS's 28m, Santander's 25m, Barclays 22m and HSBC's 16.1m.

As stated previously Tesco Bank attracted 300,000 new customers this year to reach a total of 6m. That means Tesco Bank grew its customer base by just over 5% in the last year, which means it is keeping up with some of its rivals, but not vastly out-performing them yet.

In comparison, Lloyds Banking Group recently announced it opened 1m new current accounts and 2.3m savings accounts in the first six months of this year, out of a total of 22m current accounts and 21m savings accounts, growth rates of 4.5% and 11% respectively.

Brand presence

Tesco Bank's brand is its strong point. It is as big a presence across the country as any of the major High Street banking names. It has a 2,300 strong supermarket network to fall back on with 3,000 cash machines, which rivals Barclay's 1,720 branches and 3,414 cash machines.

If Tesco was to buy up the branch network and business of Northern Rock, as has been rumoured in the media, this would considerably add to its presence. In terms of credit cards, it is already a major brand as the seventh largest credit card issuer in the country.

Despite its critics when it comes to its supermarkets and the state of the High Street, Tesco has an ace up its sleeve when it comes to banking. The supermarket has a reputation for reliability untainted by the financial crisis, which has hammered banks' respectability in the eyes of the public.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/savings-and-banking/article.html?in_article_id=491541&in_page_id=7&position=moretopstories

EQUAL DAY EQUAL NIGHT 2009

2009-10-05T19:05:00.000-07:00

Fly Agaric Studio > Bohemian National Home –
Friday, September 18, 2009 @ 1:00-2:00 am [20-0982]
Amsterdam, NL. > Detroit, US.

This episode is a birthday salute to John Coltrane and a bow to the Vernal Equinox with music by John Coltrane selected by Steve “Fly” Agaric 23 at his Oosterpark studio in Amsterdam and programmed by John Sinclair at the Bohemian National Home in Detroit. As Fly says, “Happy Vernal Equinox, or around about, please enjoy this good energy mix in celebration of the music and birth of John Coltrane. Thanks, John!”

Playlist #282

[01] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Welcome
[02] John Coltrane: Equinox
[03]. John Coltrane: Blues Minor
[04] John Coltrane: Crescent
[05] John Coltrane: All or Nothing at All
[06] Miles Davis: ‘Round About Midnight
[07] John Coltrane: The Drum Thing
[08] John Coltrane: Spiritual

A JOINT PRODUCTION
Hosted by John Sinclair for Radio Free Amsterdam
Music selected in Amsterdam by Steve “Fly” Agaric 23
Produced, recorded, edited & assembled by John Sinclair in Detroit
Posted by Larry Hayden
Executive Producer: Larry Hayden

http://www.radiofreeamsterdam.com/john-sinclair-radio-show-282/

DUDLEY ROTTEN BOROUGH COUNCIL

2009-09-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

The bourough seems to be healthy, the people awake and thinking, it's the council and the business enterprise that are rotten, making deals with huge corporations, selling off land and property to the highest bidder, without the slightest idea of what culture, community and health mean, in 2009. Dudley is a beautiful bourough, the people from Dudley are down to earth folk, mostly working class folk governed and bullied by a conservative, old World War II government, still today, we are governed by dinosaurs. Out of touch with the revolution, connectivity, change and scientific research opposed to faith-based thinking and faith-based policy.

"Dudley is slammed as a 'rotten borough'

12:00pm Wednesday 9th September 2009

comment Comments (8) Have your say »

A FURIOUS baths campaigner slammed Dudley as a ‘rotten borough’ with a Scrooge council - fast on its way to becoming the most unpopular in history at meeting this week.

Angry Brian Guest, who has campaigned passionately to try and save Coseley Baths from the axe, unleashed a no holds-barred attack on Dudley Council when he got his chance to speak at Monday’s meeting of the select commitee on regeneration, culture and adult education.

Referring to a letter about the Conservative controlled council’s handling of the baths saga which features in the current edition of Private Eye magazine - he said: “Dudley is now classed nationally as a ‘rotten borough’.

“It shows this council is the most unpopular in Dudley’s history.”

He also hit out at the council for having the “audacity” to approve a 25 per cent pay rise for councillors shortly after offering “Dickensian” late night and early morning swimming times to young members of Brierley Hill Swimming Club - which has since been forced to close; and for hiking the prices of meals on wheels for the elderly by more than 50 per cent last year.

He continued: “I think everyone in Dudley would be ashamed if this is the best this administration can do.

“Everybody in Dudley is angry with this council, which is now known nationally as a council with no heart.

“This is a Scrooge council - but when the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future appeared to Scrooge he did put things right - proving he had a heart. But we know this council does not have a heart.”

Leader of Dudley Council - Councillor Anne Millward - said afterwards: “If we’re so rotten - why are we a four star authority?

“We have got to do things we don’t really want to do because the of recession and financial situation we find ourselves in.”

What do you think? Is Dudley a rotten borough? - http://www.stourbridgenews.co.uk/news/4588476.Dudley_is_slammed_as_a__rotten_borough_/

"£300,000 losses at baths says leader

A Black Country baths was losing more than £300,000 a year before closing last month, it was revealed today.

Dudley Council leader Councillor Anne Millward said it was costing them hundreds of thousands of pounds to keep the pool open.

She said the council was snubbed by private leisure centre owners who said the Pear Tree Lane pool was “unviable”. The baths closed at the end of August. The council says the baths need £1 million of urgent repairs to make the roof safe and a further £1m of works to bring the building up to scratch.

Councillor Millward today said the council did not have the resources to keep the baths open – but reiterated that bids from any interested parties would be considered.

“If there is someone who has got the millions to bring it up to scratch and can then take a hit of more than £300,000 a year running the baths, I have said it before – we will speak to them,” she said. “But Coseley was making losses of a third of a million each year.

“We have spoken to private providers, we did that before the decision was taken to close the pool. They just did not see Coseley as a viable enterprise.”

Save Coseley Baths campaign spokesman Brian Guest said that it came as “no surprise” the baths were making a loss because the council had not shown the necessary commitment to the pool.

“I’m not surprised it was making that sort of loss because they reduced the staff and reduced the hours to such an extent it was not going to make money,” he said.

“Everyone knows swimming pools don’t make a profit and have to be subsidised but it is a service which should be kept for the community.”

Campaign leaders are taking legal advice about the possibility of mounting a courtroom bid to prevent demolition. Mr Guest is due to hear from barristers in London early next week. - http://www.expressandstar.com/2009/09/12/300000-losses-at-baths-says-leader/

--------

RAW PATATOES

2009-09-15T07:02:00.000-07:00

RAW PATATOES: FOSTER STRONGER COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS THROUGH PERSONAL TRANSACTIONS AND LOCAL TRADE.

RAW POTATOES ARE A TOOL FOR STRENGTHENING THE LOCAL ECONOMY BY PRIORITIZING THE LOCAL EXCAHNGE OF GOODS AND SERVICES.

ECOLOGY: BY ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO SHOP IN TOWN, INSTEAD OF ON THE INTERNET, RAW POTATOES DECRESE THE DISTANCE THAT GOODS NEED TO TRAVEL.

BY PROMOTING THE LOCAL PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF FOOD AND OTHER GOODS, RAW PATATOES ARE HELPFUL TO BUILD A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR A PATATOE COMMUNITY.

http://maybelogic.blogspot.com/2009/07/osiris-jones-gets-ice-cream.html

Swimming baths shut for last time. BBC finally shows up to tell us the BAD news!

2009-09-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

Notice the typically sick and tasteless choice of ADVERTS for this BBC news article, one advertising "Swimming Camps in Malta, Great offers for swimming camps In 50mtr outdoor heated pool" yeah, no shit, if you want to swim go abroad!

Swimming baths shut for last time

Protestors outside Coseley Swimming Pool
The protesters vowed to keep lobbying the council until the pool was reopened
Protesters gathered outside one of the Black Country's last public swimming baths as it shut for the last time.
Dudley Council said essential repairs to Coseley Swimming Pool would be too costly and it could not afford for them to go ahead.
Recent safety checks showed repairs to the building, which first opened in 1963, would cost in excess of £2m.
In April, more than 30 people, including children, had to be taken to hospital after a chlorine leak there.
Across the rest of the Black Country, pools still remain in Dudley, Stourbridge and Halesowen.
However, protestors said many of those were too far away for older swimmers to get to.
Parents, children and swimming clubs vowed to keep petitioning the council to get the pool reopened.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/west_midlands/8230207.stm

Print Sponsor
Advertisement
Ads by Google
Attention All Expatriates
Free Savings, Pension & Investment Guide Compiled By Industry Experts!
OffshoreInvestmentDesigner.com
Swimming Camps in Malta
Great offers for swimming camps In 50mtr outdoor heated pool
www.sundreamstravel.com
Ultrasonic Cleaners
Precision ultrasonic equipment for all cleaning requirements
www.ultrawave.co.uk

----

It’s not over yet say baths campaigners

Defiant campaigners desperate to save condemned Coseley Baths from the bulldozer have declared: “It’s not over yet.” More than 200 people attended a public meeting last night.

They discussed their next step in their battle against Dudley Council’s decision to close the leisure centre on Monday. It was standing room only as supporters of all ages, some wearing Save Coseley Baths T-shirts, vowed to continue their fight. Spokesman for the Save Coseley Baths group Brian Guest said: “We have been overwhelmed by the support tonight.

“It just shows the strength of feeling, not just in Coseley, but elsewhere in the borough.

“It is not over yet. We are going to fight for as long as it takes.

“We do not want to lose these baths.

“Dudley Council is not doing what it is supposed to which is looking after the health and well-being of children and adults in the borough.”

Dudley North MP Ian Austin, who is backing the campaign to save the baths, said: “The support for this campaign shows the determination and desire to keep these baths open.

“I have swum in these baths myself and I know how important it is to teach young people how to swim.

“During the recession it is clear to me that if they demolish the baths and sell the site, they not going to get the money for the site that they would get in the future,” he added.

“It wouldn’t cost much to keep the baths open.

“There is funding available from the Government for the management and maintenance of public swimming pools.”

Dudley Council says that the baths need £1 million of urgent repairs to make the roof safe, as well as a further £1 million spent to bring the building up to scratch.

Decommissioning works will run from September 1 to 11, when the building will be handed over to Dudley Council’s corporate property department.

Electricity and water will then be cut off ahead of demolition, with leisure chief Councillor David Stanley keen for bulldozers to reduce the building to rubble as soon as possible after closure.

The authority has yet to secure funds for the six-figure demolition bill, and the money may have to come from the public purse, chiefs have admitted.

http://www.expressandstar.com/2009/08/29/its-not-over-yet-say-baths-campaigners/

Master-builder (Bobby of Buddhafart) built a beatiful stage, flyer'

2009-08-11T03:25:00.000-07:00

Master-builder (Bobby of Buddhafart) built a beatiful stage, flyer'

http://www.buddhafart.com/

JOHN SINCLAIR and DJ FLY in Stourbridge

2009-08-05T12:12:00.000-07:00

PORNOGRAPHIC RIVER THUNBNAILS

2009-08-03T18:03:00.000-07:00

RIVER STOUR TROLLEY PORN: 2009

Pool, Church, Bank and Brains

2009-08-03T02:47:00.000-07:00

"AS Dudley Council shuts schools, libraries, museums and swimming pools around the borough, councillors agreed to give themselves a 25 per cent pay rise during a heated meeting of the full council on Monday.

As angry protesters from Unison and residents demonstrating against the proposed closure of Pensnett High School and Coseley Baths gathered on the council house steps, councillors voted to increase their allowances by nearly £2,000.-- http://www.dudleynews.co.uk/news/4493348.Council_chiefs_vote_themselves_25__rise/

How does Dudley Council and the human beings that influence social political policy in the area of Dudley get away with their actions as Dudley MBC. Why have the POLICE not been called to protect the PEOPLE of Dudley from mismanagement and outright criminal activities as they were called to protect Dudley MBC from the PEOPLE at the recent Dudley Council meeting of late July 2009? Well, in my opinion anybody who grew up in and around the Dudley area will know that the Police are not really protecting the people, or any rights of the people, they are their to preserve the order set by the Government, the councils and the private corporate sponsors of the urban programing. Don't get me wrong, they may just be doing their job, but i think in the case of the recent Dudley Council meeting incident where the police were called in because of - protesters - who were bringing the WORD from the people on the street to the council - highlights how the council and governments in general function: the abuse of power and the blatant un-democratic actions they take.

I feel like widening my criticism of what started with a swimming pool. The decision to pull the pool down in Brierley Hill, and now the same disaster all over again with Coseley Baths under the same circumstances brings me to conclude that no matter which way you look at it the local council and by default the national government act in a crooked way, for private interest and against the will of the people. In my opinion and from my experiences with Dudley Council and the political figures in the area, after attending more than 10 local Dudley political - council - meetings; that the People might consider organizing for themselves based upon there own resources and vision of a better way to do community, and encourage more efficient and fair methods to co-organize large groups of people, societies, health, wealth and wellness centers of human activity.

No doubt that this organizing can be a difficult activity, democracy is difficult and it is hard to get the whole thing moving in the right directions for everybody, and to pay attention to all-humanity while designing their own habitat. Co-operative and co-operation between individuals and the means to gain agency to change in their community. A two way street. I'll scractch your back if you'll scratch mine, a waltz, a co-creation etc. We have to work together and with all the good metaphors for open source, clear communication between groups of people and a decentralized government, made up of internetworked groups and individuals - connected - and equally holding a piece of the pie (the community, humanitas). How much longer can we sit and watch baffoons running around in packs, like Wolves - and soaking up our cultural inheritance and our natural resources? When we could do a better job ourselves, to mean 20 Million minds and hearts working together will be far more efficient than roughly 500, who are all of a generation out of touch with the open source networking revolution and dinosaurs that feed on young and old peoples blood like master Bob Dylan say.

Nothing new here really, people have been saying this for hundreds of years, power to the people - you know - but this swimming pool closure highlights how the council in Dudley operates. How many CHURCH roofs have been saved in the last 10 years? how much money spent on RELIGIOUS facilities for a few BELIEVERS? How many skate parks were built, how many authorized GRAFFITI areas, how many speak easy cafe's and POETRY centers? How many ROAD's were built? How much was spent on CCTV cameras? Security? How much did the council make by selling off LAND to private interests? Like Tesco, ASDA, Automobile manufacturers, Petrol, Oil and Gas firms? How much? And the list goes on, i don't wish to begin ranting and raving, i have more than enough at this blog already.

Please, if your reading this do a little research and do some math, and ask yourself how Dudley can behave in this way, against the will of the people. My message to them is to go and dunk yourself in swimming pool, get out the church for a day, and bank on your brain!

--Steven Pratt

Dudley campaigns protest at council

by Paul Bolton

Campaigns to prevent the closure of Coseley Swimming Baths and Pensnett High School, and sort out the single status pay agreement for council workers, protested outside Dudley council’s meeting on Monday of last week.

The Unison, Unite and NUT unions, with parents, school students and local campaigners, supported the demonstration.

Protesters stormed into the public gallery after the demonstration. They heckled the Tory mayor and leader of the council when they tried to justify their attacks upon our services.

The meeting was suspended by the mayor, the police were called and protesters were forced to leave. All three campaigns are determined to continue their fight. - http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=18520

An Evening with JOHN SINCLAIR

2009-07-26T16:45:00.001-07:00

An Evening with JOHN SINCLAIR & DJ Fly Agaric XX111 - 14th August 2009, Stourbridge, England

Posted using ShareThis

DEADLEY COUNCIL STRIKE AND SINK BRIERLEY HILL SWIMMING CLUB.

2009-07-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

I want to swim man, thats all
Without no water how do you fully front crawl?
all i got left is my freestyle, first off the blocks...
i don't care, i dive into rocks, mud ponds and sewers for sure.
I takes a dive into jive turkey rap land and build boats on jazz notes.
Coming back from a foreign land to an empty pool, Brierley Hill Baths demolished
i was planning swimmajik 33/3 yards.
Now its all gone bulldozed and its tragic, comic?
Coseley next? Can it be saved?

Swim club to shut as pool fight lost

A swimming club with 300 members has been forced to fold after 46 years due to the imminent closure of Coseley baths, it has been revealed.

Heartbroken swimmers were in tears when the move was announced by devastated volunteers who run the group at an emergency general meeting of Brierley Hill Swimming Club.

Volunteers say they had no alternative because of lost sessions at the pool in Pear Tree Lane, Coseley.

The club has been offered alternative pool times at Dudley Leisure Centre but treasurer Phil Steven said today it would be “unfair” to ask members, most of whom are children aged under 10, to swim at 7am in the morning or 9pm at night.

Father-of-two Mr Steven, a 56-year-old accountant, said: “We just could not accept the pool time offered on a Monday and Tuesday. We were offered 9pm to 10.45pm on Mondays and 7am to 8am on Tuesdays.

“The members wouldn’t swim those hours, it’s unfair on the children. It’s almost child cruelty, asking them to swim those times. Some of the children are that enthusiastic they would do it, but we just couldn’t justify asking them to.”

The club, established in 1963 and a registered charity providing free swimming for children from deprived areas, survived the closure of Brierley Hill baths in 2005 but the loss of swimming at Coseley is the final straw. It will officially close on July 24. Coseley baths will close next month, with council chiefs refusing to buckle to demands of campaigners to stump up the cash to repair the building. -- 15 th JULY - Expresso and Stir, http://www.expressandstar.com/2009/07/15/swim-club-to-shut-as-pool-fight-lost/

WATER HUMANITY SWIMMING LIFE SPORT FAIRNESS?

2009-07-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

Just simple swimming? when can you go swim these days?
Forget about indoor pools for a moment now
What of swimming free in the rivers, lakes, oceans from which we came?

I am all for saving swimming baths and facilities
In the urban environment
From the deadudley hidden hands of urban redevelopment
And private sector movements, but, and,
We swimmers should not lose sight of a future world environment
That is glaciated with access to clean water,
Water to drink, Water to wash with and to Water to
Swim in,

Water full of nutrients and life, a biological swimming facilitiy –
A reproductive and REAL lagoon with fish,
Plants and an living ecosystem.

In varying scales of magnitude, humanity can realise this paradise using the ancient models of Chinese, Indian, Greek and Roman use of waterways for many social functions. I have often composed verse and prose about swimming in the canal, or the cut, in and around the Black Country and especially in the river Stour, in jest at first but as the years pass i realize that our water ways are our life lines, both biological and man-made water ways, water works and water bathing facilities seem very important for social activity in the community, the list of benefits from swimming need not be mentioned, and then we come to competition, and that term that gets so contorted and abused – sport.

The fair and sporting activity of sport,
The sportsmanship of playing a fair game,
A good game, a sporting game in which you dedicated everything you got, gave your all
Opposed to SPORT the name tag of some minister
Or as a section of the most unsporting of entities – the tabloid NEWSPAPER,
Or a sports magazine, or T.V station... help...

Yes, we like good competition and a good game,
The spirit of play lies at the heart of healthy economic
Strategy, philosophy and
Some poetry, and all music –
Sing a song along with the activities most
Widely known as popular sports.

I feel the immersive environment of the given activity drying up already, no lagoon, no wetness, not even a foot bath, just a slightly soggy idea about how to distribute the survival tickets that will buy the means to make and break the rules for a few of the elite authorities in whatever water-world we’re floating in.

Forget about saving the old swimming baths of England,
Start planning your own swimming baths and swimming facilities,
Imagine them, a fresh natural water-world paradise,
Imagengine them....
without Kevin Cosner -
Draw, sculpt and sew them, show them
Model the environment, animate bigger larger and share your work.

We must paint our utopias and write our dreams and footnotes to the image.
The Art game can capture sports
in a way the news game cannot, i rekon.
The music game captures hearts in a way writing
Dream of.

Together we stir the components up
Cast our knowledge far and wide and show HOW TO.
Cast your visions for a new past present future.

LEGALIZE SPORTS DOPING.

2009-06-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

http://hplusmagazine.com/digitaledition/2009-summer/

aNDY MIAH: SPORTS, DOPING AND THE ENHANCEMENT ENLIGHENMENT!

History of swimactivism - in progress v.2.0

2009-06-15T14:16:00.000-07:00

History of swimmactivism
Category: News and Politics English ar wydely con.sidered fust modan
Society to develoop swimmin’ aza spirt
And, Poiklitics, i might add
As a tea tile bag of English tail

2008 – Coseley Baths Earmarked for closure by Dudley MBC
Can you tell that i bin trested in swimmin’ i ave’
April 1, 1974: The con. Mosh up a' former cownty borough of
Dude-ley, wiv the Burroughs of Alesowing
And flouridge. 2009: 2000 people join facebook group to saiv Coseley Baths
1837: Fust paddlin comps held in London's spashing pools.

July of 1967: Doodley con. ban folks from swimming in Lodge Farm Rezza
Because swimmers were becoming obstructions to boats on the water
Councillor Les Jones said protestors needed to be realistic. June 2009: Councillor Les Jones:“We have made a clear commitment
To closing the baths on safety grounds,”
“We believe our structural engineer’s report stands up
– we don’t use ‘fly by nights’.

1987: Teaurbridge Swimmin’ Club wuss demolishevelled by Mudley Clownsil
Cuz it was riffy, structurally unsafe, and beyonda fixin’ up. and them went an’ replaced it wida leisure pond fur the fancy pant 1990's Leisure con. and disinvestment industry
Very noyse, but unsuitable fur competitive swimumin’ me thinks.
7th January, 1869: furst meating of Amateur Slimming
Association.

4th June, 1901: Sturbridge Swimming Club founded as
31st 2005: Untied kingdome gives o'er
Her presidency of the Con. Of the Europeeing Youngyin.

2nd August, 1900: Foundry stone of Stourbridge Public Baths wuss laid by Isaac Nash.
Bath water come from a well cut in local sandstown.
Annual subscription fix'd at fiyv shillyns
Juss 25 pence, a bargain for a 12 yerolt kid
Werkin 60 hours a week for 2.d down a death mine.

1939-1945: Stourbridge baths closed fur public due to word war II.
17th May 1923: Open air swimming bath built at Stourbridge
June 2009: Victoria Baths – Portsmouth is closed, against local wishes.

3:30, 31st December 2005, Brierley ill Leisure Centre
Closed. By DudMetBo Council (Dudley MBC)
72 con.cillors, representing 24 wards
Both an election boundary and
A division...

1894: Brierley Hill comes an urb.an di.strict
Under the yocal yobernment Akt ov 1894.

2006: There are 23 olympic sized cuts in the YUK. England 15,
Scotland 4, Ireland 2 and Wales 1.
1 iz under con.struction in Dudley?
Poiklitics seems lyk a pools lottery in 2006x

An Oilympic Pool is 25m wyd
Depth ov 2.0m minymum
50m in length, while the 25m width
Allows for 8 laynes, each 2.5m whyd
With an extra 2 spaces of 2.5m wyd outside oss rowds 1 and 8.
2.5 x 8 tracks = 20m + (2.5m x 2) = 25m in total as

1896 and 1906, women could'nt participate in
Oilympic games due to Baron Pierre de Coubertin holding firm to the conservative
Dogma of the Victoryian eara, that women wuz too Frail to engage in competitive sports. June 2009: Sherwood Baths in Mansfield Woodhouse undergoes a £5m refit
And is renamed the Rebecca Adlington Swimming Centre, Becky meets
The Queen for her OBE for services to swimming.

Conlablibortive Burroughs talktics:
Slaving urban language Sub-contracts with precise
Gaffers waffle. June 2009: Campaign to save the historic Tyneside pool, NEWCASTLE
Kicks into action.

1960: British boyernment's Beeching Axe hijacks
The costs ov running the British tram system by pullin'
The plug, on what them considered to be unprofitable riffy’ trams.

Ow ya transfurring propertea
From public ownership to private merchant ownerships?
And/or, both/and... transfiguring the monagemint
Of a service or activitea from an arf soaked gaffernment...
To the private pocket secta
Who issues it, ow?
Rekkids are set crooked
With some Doodley Burroughs accense

1917: S.F.C Motto crafted upon the S. Coat of donnies.
Bridge and 2 gold'n froots,
Gold Fleace suspunded by black Chains of Skin
And Leather Dressing LTD.
Chayn Cable Industries, and them hanging sheeple.
'1 heart, 1 why', singleness of mind and
Purpoise. To steer, shepard, pilot, escort, swimmer.
1 pool, 3 million folks. No wey serviam.
Are yow billdin pools in Iraq for babee lovers that yow liberated?

March 1990: After many swummers protest throughout Thatchers layt 1980's
With signs and LOUD chanting
The grystal Leisure Centre wuz born, twice
Pun historic baths jed corpse
It re:open.ed con.plete wid gravy machine,
Ellefonts, Bond.i beach beats and
A Non-competitive swimming pund.

Will a swimmer be free'd from yampy chains ov capitalist slaverewind
When they docked away our baths for them's private
Pools, private betting and private gaming crackers
Save ALL the baths you have

Britomartis Triton Leucothoea Posedawone
[WORLD CLASS START QUALIFIER]

A SWIMMING COMMUNITY STUDY

2009-06-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

I have witnessed many swimming facilities - from my home, near where i was born - torn down - and redeveloped, in a way i find unsound and which leaves the community - and the SWIMMING COMMUNITY - with a paddling pool and/or sophisticated private/council run - leisure complex. Complex being the operative word here.

I hope to bring some clarity and add footnotes to the subject of swimming community that i have been writing about fanatically - since the closure of Brierley Hill Leisure Centre - that used to stand by the mighty Merry Hill Center, an event i watched closely, documented and tried to communicate further by writing poetry and writing some letters, i even jumped in the local river and pulled out a shopping trolley - expressing my wishes to the baboon reporter that he mention the closure of Brierley Hill Baths - which they carefully left out from the final article (The Top Image of this Blog.) smile!

One raving letter i sent regarding swimming community was reproduced, with some pictures, in an on-line magazine - you can read it here if you like? (I have since called down and no longer wish to race anybody, although it was tongue in cheek) Still, the council and the private enterprise business enterprise business complex seem to be slowly removing most of the original swimming baths left dotted around the U.K. But who are they, the staff are not responsible, the M.P's hands are tied, the Newsmedia seems to be the only force moving the MESSAGES around. And so a kind of deadlock ensues between a complex of forces, political, economic - mediated by the news, which for the most part is under the management of their corporate owners, and so the cycle of deciet continues and we loose our swimming pools. This is just one model, maybe i am getting old at 33 and not up with the new schemes regarding leisure center's and swimming facilities?

Still, right now, in Coseley - a very similar scenario is taking place, where a swimming baths has been EARMARKED for closure by the Council, against the wishes of many within the local community, and all within the swimming community (with a 2000 + strong facebook group to boot!) I figure that some writing and questioning are a good idea and a contribution to the others, the others who wonder what the hell is going on in Councils across the U.K shutting down swimming baths. (not to mention the other facilities and public spaces being sold off and out by some gambling M.P's and some council members.

Save Coseley Baths? From what or whom? Are people the problem here or is this a matter of circumstances connected with the economic machine? Is everyone just throwing their hands in the air and saying “The pool must close, sorry, we are so sorry but the pool is not safe, and we (who precisely?) do not have enough money to keep the swimming pool open. For what reason do you not have enough money? Have the voting public any say whatsoever in the way non-local government spends their money? Just what are their values? What comes above a swimming baths in their value-system of public related leisure facilities? Does the author or editor (who exactly) really have the authority to say what will or will not happen? Based on whose sources? And written in whose newspeak lingo? Are the authorities really going to make a final decision before ALL THE DATA HAS ARRIVED, like very bad scientists? Is Coseley swimming baths a PUBLIC baths or a PRIVATE baths?

Who defines these things? How many M.P’s or council members do you know? Do you know if they swim? Do you think that it is important for politicians and councillors to swim? Study philosophy and/or Neuro Linguistic Programming? How much more complicated does it seem to say that COSELEY BATHS IS TO STAY OPEN, and to give the scenarios and reasons WHY the baths must STAY open, opposed to repeating the baited headline COSELEY BATHS WILL CLOSE? Can we expect the newsmedia and the news journalists to be of any help when they are owned by huge private corporations? Why can’t the people of Coseley who want the baths to stay open start a private corporation to privately repair and run the pool? Who brokers the deals between leisure services, councils and wrecking crewes? Enough questions? After all, i do not propose to know any of the answers, unlike the Express and Star and the Council and many others, i mean, to be Frank how many of you are really thinking that the swimming baths will close and be reduced to a pile of rubble?

How many of you readers can build - in your imagination - A vision, yes, a vision of a thriving Coseley swimming baths in 2010 and on into the future, a baths with a new or repaired roof and happy familiar staff and a baths with reduced rates. Surely we must keep optimistic thoughts? Optimistic Thoughts are the key to keeping the swimming pool open in Coseley. Don’t let the newspress and the stinking cheats and liars they panda too influence your reading, your own research and intelligent use of the internet? Don’t let me dictate any more questions to you, write some of your own, just do it, Michael Phelps would want you to. Micheal Phelps will help us. He wants the pool to stay open. Jesus would have wanted Coseley baths to stay open, maybe for anointments and walking practice? Mohammed would want the baths to stay open, maybe to enable cleanliness and clarity of mind? The Rabbi’s would want the swimming baths to remain open, maybe because they have some sense of social justice and fairness? Buddhist Monks and the Dali Lama might like to see the baths stay standing? Shakespeare would want the baths to stay open? Mark My Spits.

Coseley Baths is available for community ASSET transfer? (see Worrel Swiiming Baths). Coseley Baths is not the only baths under threat – find the others? What did other swimming clubs do? Do swimming clubs keep in touch about plots and schemes to close down swimming facilities? Maybe a swimming clubs guide to council attack: a case study, or something like that is in order? “Council bosses say their hands are tied by a structural report.” The noose that ties these hands maybe loosened by an independent structural report. IF THEY CAN WAIT FOR ALL THE DATA TO COME IN. And not make a pre-emptive strike on the baths in haste? The community of Coseley and the greater area of Dudley shall not fight to keep the baths open, or protest that the baths (is) closing, no, we shall celebrate the vision of a healthy swimming baths, throw a party, any party - under the moniker of Save The Swimming Baths.

It’s not just Coseley Baths under threat but many around the country, similar forces pushing and pulling down swimming baths for re-development, often not suitable for club swimming, and for private interest. My advice must be to find the others and gather your data. Internet can be your friend.

I am doing an event in aid of Coseley Baths this Thursday - all proceeds going to (a box with “Coseley Baths” written on it) - i await further instructions of what to do with that money, who and what to send it too.

-- Steve Fly.

--The following was written just hours after Brierley Hill Baths was closed and demolished.

31st December 2005

Brierley Hill, Black Country, West Midlands, England, Europe, Earth. 4.57 PM

I just now literally had the plug pulled on me at my local swimming baths in Brierley Hill. I was also literally "caged in" like a dangerous shark by very large steel barricades while they emptyed the pool. The water drained from the pool either was or was not drained into the local beautiful Brierley Hill cannal.

My thoughts today are with those who will not get to experience the pleasure of swimming at the baths, its a great refreshing feeling. People having good clean fun and also learning an important skill, which someday may even save their life if they fell into the canal, or got into deep water while on holiday in the ocean.

As i was a past fully qualiflyed lifeguard at Stourbridge Crystal leisure center nearby, i fully understand and beg for forgiveness from the Dudley Metropolitan Borough staff slaving away at Brierley Hill swimming baths, and i swear on my Midland district title that this will not happen again. Ever again. Unless they refill and reopen the pool. Sorry for questioning your authority and not following your orders to leave the pool, i also would like to apologize for diving in the shallow end and petting once or twice in the pool some years back. I also apologise for squeezing and massaging some female breasts at Brierley Hill baths, forgive me farther for my sins.

I am a big supporter and interested participant in health and fitness around the black Country, West Midlands and In Great Britain generally. In fact i would like to see the whole world become more able to experience the pleasures and envigerating qualities of such sports as swimming, football, cricket, basketball, track and field etc. I hope in the future that our so called representatives from all nations around the world will factor in the need for investment and facilities for sport and leisure activities.

Today happens to be the last day that Great Britain holds the presidency of the council of the Knu-European Union. To commemorate this historic event in passing i would once again like to draw attention to the closure of our local leisure centre and swimming pool and contrast it, if you will, with the ever expanding economic growth and retail industry that has been born from the corporate capitalist venture called Merry Hill shopping and business center.

Phelps is yet another great role model for cannabis

2009-06-11T06:52:00.000-07:00

To cont...(snipped from the west Oakland Leaf)

Phelps is yet another great role model for cannabis

By Paul Armentano* NORML

Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps joins a growing list of successful Americans who enjoy marijuana during their down time. This tabloid news story made international headlines. Phelps is hardly alone in his herbal inclinations. According to national and federal surveys, nearly one out of two Americans have tried weed.

Consumers include people from all walks of life. America’s current President said he smoked cannabis regularly as a young man. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former Vice President Al Gore, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and astronomer Carl Sagan all admitted cannabis use.

According to the US government, 70 percent of current cannabis users are gainfully employed. Statistically, most cannabis users are successful academically and financially. A National Bureau of Economic Research study even reported that cannabis use is associated with earning higher wages.

Some former and current users — like Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson, Progressive Auto Insurance founder Peter Lewis, and New York State Mayor Michael Bloomberg — are even multi-millionaires.

Perhaps our fascination with this story is because Phelps is recognized as one of the most talented and successful athletes today. He holds the record for the most gold medals won by any athlete in history. Phelps isn’t an anomaly in this regard either. Many top athletes use cannabis off the field — noting that it helps them to relax after the excitement of sports competition and alleviate the pain from nagging injuries. It won’t leave them with a hangover or adversely impact their performance the next day.

A 2007 New York Times investigation estimated that up to 70 percent of pro-basketball players occasionally indulge in the use of pot. Many high profile football players — most notably Miami Dolphins star running-back Ricky Williams, former Dallas Cowboys all-star Mark Stepnoski, and even Super Bowl XLIII MVP Santonio Holmes have spoken candidly about their off-field cannabis use. Canadian snowboarder and 1998 Winter Olympics gold medal winner Ross Rebagliati tested positive for cannabis use in the days prior to his history-making performance.

There will always be some who will criticize Phelps because they believe the 14-time gold medalist is sending a poor message to young children—that you can smoke cannabis and still be successful in life. Well, sorry that the truth hurts.

According to a recent University of Alberta study, the majority of adults who use cannabis do so as a pastime to “enhance relaxation.” Researchers concluded that their use is intended to enhance leisure activities and manage the challenges and demands of living in contemporary modern society. Participants reported using cannabis because it enhanced relaxation and concentration, making a broad range of leisure activities more enjoyable and pleasurable.

No doubt Michael Phelps indulged in the use of cannabis for these very same reasons. He ought not to be condemned for it nor branded a criminal for his actions. For that matter, neither should anyone else.

* Armentano is Policy Analyst for NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws

Phelps, hypocrisy ... and the Kellogg’s boycott

By Bruce Mirken* Marijuana Policy Project

Cereal giant Kellogg’s announced in early February that it won’t renew Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps’ endorsement contract because he’s been photographed apparently smoking marijuana. While hypocrisy is hardly rare in American life, this struck many as a particularly egregious example.

It’s causing thousands of Americans to swear off Rice Krispies and other Kellogg’s products. A boycott endorsed by the Marijuana Policy Project, Drug Policy Alliance, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and others was launched in February.

“Michael’s most recent behavior is not consistent with the image of Kellogg,” a company spokesperson told Ad Age.

Bear in mind that in 2004, Phelps pleaded guilty to drunk driving. But apparently that offense — also illegal, and it actually might have resulted in someone being hurt or killed — was not an issue for Kellogg’s.

As of this writing, baseball star Alex Rodriguez had not lost any of his endorsement deals even after admitting use of banned steroids -- an overt attempt to cheat at his chosen sport.

That athletes drink is hardly news. If Phelps had been photographed hoisting a beer, no one would have said a word. Yet, there is simply no question that if one wants to relax with a mood-altering substance, cannabis is far safer than alcohol.

Alcohol is more addictive. According to the Institute of Medicine, 15 percent of those who ever drink become dependent on alcohol; for cannabis, it’s said to be nine percent (and for tobacco, 32 percent).

Alcohol is massively more toxic. Every year, people die from alcohol overdoses, too often in college drinking parties and the like. And the chronic effects of heavy alcohol use, like liver damage, kill thousands upon thousands more. There has never been a medically documented cannabis overdose fatality, and the chronic effects of even heavy cannabis use are relatively mild and decidedly non-lethal.

Unlike cannabis, alcohol tends to make users reckless, aggressive and violent. As a review in the journal Addictive Behaviors explained, “Alcohol is clearly the drug with the most evidence to support a direct intoxication-violence relationship. ... Cannabis reduces the likelihood of violence during intoxication...”

So a boycott is on. The reaction to MPP’s initial email alert about it was huge.

Realistically, boycotts are hard to pull off, and many more fizzle out than succeed. But cannabis consumers are a huge market: According to federal surveys, 100 million Americans acknowledge having used it, and nearly 15 million admit using it in the past month. And millions more who don’t use cannabis agree that prohibition is irrational and far more dangerous than cannabis itself.

If that sleeping giant has been awakened, it could get interesting; and Phelps could find new products to endorse.

* Mirken is director of communications for MPP , mpp.org

FLY AGARIC 23 (2019)

2009-04-03T08:30:00.000-07:00

http://flyagaric2019.blogspot.com/2008/10/galactic-archive-12-20018-hash.html

SCRIPT FRENZY 2009 APRIL.

2009-03-31T18:10:00.000-07:00

SWIMMING ALL OVER AGAIN: THE CON.

2009-03-29T18:02:00.000-07:00

To keep my stroke and composure, to keep my head, while the swimming pool is drained. To stay calm when all the water has gone and i am left flapping around on the tiles like a shark out of water.

To keep breathing in rhythm, no matter what is happening outside the pool, out of the waterworld where i live. Keep breathing, don't loose your nerve. Keep breathing. Think of happy flowing thoughts.

To continue counting in my head while i swim, counting the amount of pools in the local area, and calculating the provision for swimming based upon statistical data concerning population, provision and church/state boundaries.

Lets follow the nature of swimming, the peaceful and relatively silent meandering through the thicker atmosphere of water, pushing and pulling, working the cardiovascular regions, and joints and muscles together.

Let swimmers weigh their words against the experience of swimming itself, and then let non-swimmers weigh their words about swimming, the importance of swimming, the finance, health, business and provision of facilities to swim in.

"maybe GOD didn't wear any trunks?" Billy said laughing a belly laugh.
"But he sure plays dice". Jan replied.

COMPREHENSIVE SWIMMING EDUCATION.

Swimming is an activity that is defined by each and every individual swimmer, and the incorporation of swimming, as a practical model - for advancing other activities and academic areas of research is limited only by access to WATER itself. But, human access to water, and water deep enough to swim in is not simply for everyone and anyone. You need a license to swim (in most lakes or out in the Channel) and some money and often transport to get to that rare pool of WATER. Still, human beings and water mix well and human beings will only find helpful and healthy information when they look at swimming - the activity itself, in the future, but splitting the activity of swimming from the practical requirement of having a swimming pool of water to swim in, becomes more difficult when confronted with a tidal-wave of old swimming pools closing, in favour of smaller paddling pools and pools with rounded edges and hot water, too hot for any serious swimmer who likes to propel themselves through the water using their hands, legs and body i.e to swim.

Maybe the paddling pool type water holes could be incorporated into the shopping malls and trendy night club spots, due to the ease with which people can just hop in and paddle about, wading in the water, maybe drinking a cocktail drink?

Lack of information: Everything and everybody benefits from a better flow of information. Swimming has some structural similarities with the flow of information and brings up, to my mind, the fields in which the future of the field lies. Movement through any given medium.

1. Dudley Council is not a human being, it is the name of a group of people and their ideas about government. So i ask why the majority of the news press quote Dudley Council as saying? They mean a spokesperson, for D.C. said... And they might name that person, or at least name the people who most strongly reflected the opinion contained within the quote.

2. Swimming is recognized as a universal individual human right, most governments, or those with sufficient resources - in the mostly white richer nations - advise that swimming be available to every man, women and child. Something about the richer nations around the world that seems commendable, a truly shared public facility that brings an equal pleasure and healthy option to 2009 electronic culture, coercive education and whatever else lies out there awaiting us in civilization. Swimming remains a form of sensory deprivation and isolation too, along with being a perfect environment for group activities, games, even sport (if that word can be equated with good spirited, fair play, in 2009?) WATER provides a unique environment for human exploration of both inner and outer worlds. More specifically clean and temperate water deeper that 8 feet, and pools longer than 20 meters. To mix measurments - another trick employed by those obssive compulsive people who also define geographical boundaries, activity design parameters and finance for so called - sporting - provisions.

3. Knowledge, education, good speech and right mind are ingrediants not usually associated with swimming, a physical activity that has not spawned many philosophers and/or artists. After all, look how well a fish can swim, how fast and efficient, compared with a human being. If the activity does not involves some kind of languaging facility, or human feedback through language - then what is the difference between man and fish, or man and dolphin, to use a better analogy? An Olympian then, in some sense should be one who combines disciplines, using one's atheletic ability to then share the fruits of spending so much time involved within a sporting activity. What wisdom and knowledge they must have to share with the world, wisdom and knowledge concerning discipline, sacrifice, mental agility and meta-programming of the human bio-computer.

4. Dr. John C. Lilly - whom i met and have studied as a layman for over 10 years has provided a huge body of work defining the importance of WATER for human beings, other species and the planet itself. Way beyond the scope of what i have said so far, Dr. John Lilly does however bring the field of swimming and water activity to another plane all together. And as a world recognized scientists his results and findings can be used as more evidence and support for the more basic principles of human access to bodies of water, and the provision for swimming and/or floating: a unique innovation of Mr. Lilly that brings many of the benefits of a reduced gravitational field or suspension in a body of water - into the home and private space of the individual. Something that individuals and governments should consider as a means of providing some, but not all, of the benfits of a body of WATER for a human beings to relax in. Yes, like a bath, but larger, filled with epsom salts and in combination with a learning and creative program, or not.

5. High level competition and sporting meets between different teams, nations and atheletes can also lead to policy revision and the involvement of the best people in any given activity - getting involved, having a say, and being recognized for their achievemt - not with a flag - but with some words, the ability and with encouragement the wisdom to share their knowledge and well deserved place as an authority, spending most of their life engaged in the activity they excel in. The arena of interactive competitions and meets of sportspeople - the sports grounds - might one day compare statistics and data about swimming within their local area, data about the amount of swimming provisions made available compared with the population and usage data. Why not? Surely those most deeply involved with the activity - swimming in this case - would be looking to turn on others to their art and craft, by way of helping to provide provisions for such an activity? Maybe highly trained sports people often loose a grasp on reality, the communal reality and remain submerged in a world dominated by training the body and stilling the mind - which is a very helpful program - but, seem to be very self-contained as both teams, and competitive individuals. Swimming does not see the kind of media attenstion football does, yet swimming is a more popular activity and is aeons older. This imbalance between different sports poses problums for those arguing for rather unique, specific and very expensive provisions for the activity.

6. Natural resources. I feel that humanity should at least make a picture and model of urban environments that make the maximum use of WATER ways, both natural and artificial and consider the possibility that one day, in the future, cities and towns may open up the water ways for swimmers and water revelers. Visualize a sprawling aqua park, where humans, nature and human-nature industry thrive together. Adequate activity provisions, clean water and access to good and frequently updated information. Visualize a utopian kind of Atlantis across the planet where intelligent WATER builds everything, molds, erodes and reduces gravitational forces. Intelligent WATER itself, may build these new cities, after the humans fail to read the signs about the importance of swimming, aquatic survival, water flow and rhythm, fluid-hydrodynamics, Ceteacean physiology, oceanography, swimming provisions for humans living in crowded areas.

7. The OLYMPICS? and the question of sports, for the individual and the nation and the relationship between the two, represneting one's nation in a sporting activity brings up many semantical and ideological paradoxes. Not least the poverty and closure of hundreds of sporting facilites, as a result of making provisions for the elite - Olympic one-off games and events - due to take place in Great Britain Summer 2012. More than this though, is the deeper Olympic ideal, to try to put a positive sporting gloss on this world famous Greek-American influenced meeting of developing nations in a sporting environment, where the best can compete tohgether on an international stage. But what do we the peole get from this? a sense of patriotism, wonder and media titilation? Inspiration to go and DO a healthy activity? soft entertainment and something better than the usual electronic and newspaper programing? A window for big business and international finance corporations to shop their customers products and ideas to the gigantic AUDIENCE, connected to the games via telecommunications technology, monopolized out of existence and out of the hands of any good natured sports fan, who might want to record their greatest sporting hero - to watch and learn agin, just how they DO it! Nike, Addidas and other sport pimps might consider a sponsor versus sponsorer - intercamp - competition, where they can switch roles and compete, communicate and work out. The executives and board members can run the marathon while some ethiopian and African runners dictate the next three years of sponsorship policy, money allocation, brand and A&R issues.

8. Music and sport. A structural affinity? Rhythm, anticipation, improvisation, dexterity, staminar, breathing, balance, practice, competitive spirit? yet, other than some boozed up football songs, what has popular entertainment done to promote sports and music? Celebrity come dancing with a Rugby player or tripple jumping showbuisness rooky? And yet all the above similarities mentioned above remain. Maybe this lack of cross-over is due to the rigid governing bodies of most sporting institutions compared with the flexible nature of music - which has that extra degree of communication of self expression through ART, that sports lack for the most part. Music also plays with the human emotions by using a more detailed language of vibration, rhythm, melody and often counterpoint. Sports, concentrate on the activity at hand and how to win the game or race. Music, is not really a race, whereas sports are often forced into racing for the title of the best. In music the question of the best is more of a utalitarian issue of subjective taste and accomplishment over a long period of time, but both sharing an equal commitment, dedication and discipline required to excel and master a particular activity. So, what might be the musical equivalent of such a master sportsman as Micheal Phelps - the 8 gold winning, bong smoking swimmer? John Coltrane? Elton John? Jimi Hendrix, Bach? Johnny Cash? Beethoven? how do you estimate musical ability and mastery? by the use of the vibrational physics that rule the musical environment? Public acceptence? Press reviews and popular opinion? innovation and starting of new trends like Duke Ellington and Theolonious Monk

Culture, Media and Sport Committee Conspiracy?

The great swimming Conspiracy SCRIPT goes something like this:

Swimming facilities are being torn down and demolished to make way for leisure centers and for private health clubs. Although technically - once Public swimming facilities, they now are quasi private-public entities due to the wrestling of public owned property, services and facilities in Great Britain over the last 25 years. In 2009 the multi-billion pound sport and leisure industry has turned into a shambles of mixed signals and hypocritical actions, with every government controlled sport and leisure group failing to acknowledge the growing trend, and frankly suspicious repetative cycles of mis management, low maintanence and rapid demolishion of our old traditional British swimming pools, in a favour of the providing a more Hawiian aqua experience in a fun paddling pool, with water slides and wave-machine. Not only energy wastful and impractical fad's, but the un-rectangular and un-square shaped swimming baths, so common these days up and down the UK are next to useless for anybody wishing to improve upon their swimming technique, cardio-vascular fitness, or play water-polo. The idea's and thinking from the British Government and its regional outposts seems much like the swimming pools which they encourage to be built around Britain: Shallow!

By proposing a conspiracy, i am raising the game on the authorities and Government agencies, they have continued upon a certain trajectory and have made a familiar pattern with their wrecking balls and bullshit in their wake, where once stood swimming baths of significant beauty and containing much Great British heritage.

The Conspiritors:
1. The Government Agencies responsible for swimming provision:
2. The Private business partners who rent out the swimming facility, at profit.
3. The ASA Swimming Association and their association with some of Britains greatest polluters, usurers and energy pirates.
4. The Olympic Committee and the elite few who dictate Billions of Pounds of sports finance and management, again, in partnership with the worlds greatest crooks, fraudsters and cheats. McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Addidas. Maybe AIG will become an Olympic sponsor?
5. Most Sports Governing Bodies, who keep silent about the dirty tricks and cheats being played upon the unsuspecting players themselves.
6. The Newspress partners and media marketing army, for not giving the public the data, or anything resembling the facts and forces involved in these sly political games played out in front of us. Shame on them.

I hope to use this model for a short TV series, or comedy set inside a swimming baths. But not the Brittas empire.

Swimming the Merciless A.K.A Mark My Spits.

FLYOLYMPIC

Leisure centre 'too expensive to save '

Leisure centre 'too expensive to save '

Dirty Council tricks close pool in Crewe

Anger as Sandbach Swimming Pool is closed during school half-term

Halifax Swimming pool closure!

Pride in Elland: Don’t close our pool, pupils plead

S.A.S Olympic Terrorist Squad!

London 2012: SAS build top secret base on Olympics Park to combat potential terrorist attacks

Sparkhill swimming pool up for grabs?

River Stour and River Stour B?

Doctor Marshmallow Cubicle Feb 5th 2011 pt 1

Cinematic Orchestra - The Man With The Movie Camera

Baby Huey - A Change is Going to Come

Knocking Down swimming pools to pay for Drone bombers

WikiLeaks cables: Conservatives promised to run 'pro-American regime'

Ratlines Catholics and the Red Cross?

shopping trolley over the river Stour

Stour Trolley over the River Stour 360

Doctor Marshmallow Cubicle Syblings at the Pick Up Club

The Death of Crippled Super-Market.

Smoking a fat Stourbridge cone

Stourbridge Tesco's and the 2012 Olympics

TTOTT 150 v1.0

Unevenly Distributed: The Wheels Fall Off the Cart -- Mark Pesce CHU Fly

Unevenly Distributed: Table of ContentsUnevenly Distributed:I. The Wheels Fall Off the CartII. The Barbarian Hordes Storm the WallsIII. And The Penny Drops

I. The Wheels Fall Off the Cart

II. The Barbarian Hordes Storm the Walls

III. And The Penny Drops

Dudley Council Challenge. LET US HAVE OUR SAY like in Stoke-on-Trent

UK demoloshion of swimming pools for leisure clubs.

Meeting discusses Leeds sports centre community plans

David Cameron and Nick Clegg and control

David Cameron and Nick Clegg : We'll transform Britain by giving power away

Dealing with the deficit is vital, but the real mission of the Coalition is to give people control over their lives, say David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

2010 words on the Gulf Oil Spill (edited from a previous poem)

Petition to try to save the What? Centre

Who What Why Where When? Stour CLAY?

The Political Mafia Hit Stourbridge for the Politics Show.

Wavering voters meet the future prime minister

London 2012 Olympic logo, a la goatse

London 2012 Olympic logo, a la goatse - curiously appropriate

Coseley Baths Demolished

Coseley Baths Demolished and passionate Coseley voices.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality maps | Video on TED.com

Coseley Baths face bull-dozers

Coseley Baths face bulldozers

Ulysses and James Joyce Documentary

SWIMMING POLITICS AND UK WHITE WASH

Dr. John C. Lilly "Wonko The Sane"

Solid State Intelligence

[edit] Cultural references

The Cannabis Diaries Part 3

Flyblog O'Crillic

COPENHAGAN BIG OIL SUMMIT

Lawyers, Baths, Bats, MP's and the 'Coseley Report

SUN RA Interviews & Essays - HEADPRESS.

SHANNANIGUMS WAVE. Widget.

The British War On Swimming

Who (is) a Jew? & Shroedinger's Jew

DR. MARSHMALLOW CUBICLE. Live in Amsterdam 24/11.

COSELEY CAMPAIGNER SENT TO GORDON BROWN FOR BRIEFING.

THE RIVER STOUR . FLOW. HISTORY.

SHANNANIGUMS WAVE. BOOKS ARRIVED TODAY.

Tesco BANK

EQUAL DAY EQUAL NIGHT 2009

DUDLEY ROTTEN BOROUGH COUNCIL

RAW PATATOES

Swimming baths shut for last time. BBC finally shows up to tell us the BAD news!

It’s not over yet say baths campaigners

Master-builder (Bobby of Buddhafart) built a beatiful stage, flyer'

JOHN SINCLAIR and DJ FLY in Stourbridge

PORNOGRAPHIC RIVER THUNBNAILS

Pool, Church, Bank and Brains

Dudley campaigns protest at council

An Evening with JOHN SINCLAIR

DEADLEY COUNCIL STRIKE AND SINK BRIERLEY HILL SWIMMING CLUB.

Swim club to shut as pool fight lost

WATER HUMANITY SWIMMING LIFE SPORT FAIRNESS?

LEGALIZE SPORTS DOPING.

Unevenly Distributed: Table of Contents
Unevenly Distributed:
I. The Wheels Fall Off the Cart
II. The Barbarian Hordes Storm the Walls
III. And The Penny Drops