Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Monday 31 July 2017

The gloriously controversial

Slavoj Žižek gave a lecture entitled:
Under capitalism 80 percent of the population are simply disposable. 
Ultimately, he's right, but the notorious "checks and balances",
not to mention committedly rebellious folk
will ensure (short of nuclear war)
that 80 percent is not actually disposed of...
except, of course, the unimportant people in Syria
and at least 80% of the world...

Sunday 30 July 2017

Passchendaele

Mud three metres deep...
     The horses, the poor horses!
and the dead England- and Empire-resenting Irish
     mortar-bait
who fought allegedly for "plucky little Belgium",
and for whom no sickly-sanctimonious war-memorials
would be erected in their half-Free State.

[The three-month Third Battle of Ypres, fought around the village of Passchendaele (now Passendale, NE of Ieper/Ypres),began on the 31st July, 1917. 
The bodies of 35,000 soldiers on the Allied side,
drowned in mud, were never found or never identified.]

Saturday 29 July 2017

A nice (if awkward) little rhyme

from Aleister Crowley.

"Blot out mankind - and give the beasts a chance!
 Nature may in their inheritance grant
 Some semblance of a race
 Less infinitely base."

Friday 28 July 2017

When I smoke weed

I happily imagine
that I lose my identity
and become
Old Man With Dog.

Thursday 27 July 2017

The most ancient Conundrum.

How was it
that co-operative creatures
constructed the Pandora's Box
of private property ?

Tuesday 25 July 2017

Deep down,

I suspect that most people
are the opposite of what they seem.

Monday 24 July 2017

Why I have so few friends.

I did not know that I concurred with and followed William Blake's instruction:
























(Most of my friends are women.)

Sunday 23 July 2017

Unlike Emily,

I would rather my poetry
and my paintings, my name,
became known after my death than before,
thus enjoying the frugality of isolation
and avoiding the horrors of fame.

Saturday 22 July 2017

Ironic

that we borrowed the term joie-de-vivre
from the French,
who are somewhat dour and surly
compared with the Italians.

Friday 21 July 2017

The poetry of great prose.

"Above him the great dome made a lonely tumour above the ogre-king."

on the tomb of  Tamerlane or Timur in Samarkand, by
Colin Thubron in The Lost Heart of Asia.

Thursday 20 July 2017

Some mediæval 'Holy Women'

claimed that the foreskin of Jesus
'materialised' in their mouths -
like old rubber bands, perhaps,
or with the texture of a pre-latex condom -
but what did they do with it ?
[insert answer here]......................................
.................................................................
- and at least one Italian church
has a relic of St Joseph's Breath...


Wednesday 19 July 2017

Art

which began as a kind of homage to nature
is now an insult,
being like gold taps in a bathroom
without running water and no WC -
or like the donning of a sable coat
in winter with nothing underneath.

Tuesday 18 July 2017

Monday 17 July 2017

Infinity

is as ridiculous an idea as Heaven
or Yahwe/God/Alla'h,
yet, like them, is what our civilisation is based on.
In an infinite hotel
which is fully (infinitely) booked
there is an infinite number of vacant rooms
- or so I'm told.
This sounds like sophistry
of the most outrageous, religious kind.

(My dog, Asterix, however,
who had seven years of irregular
under-feeding, when he spent
his days in a cage, and his nights
alone in spooky warehouse dark,
tells me
that he
understands infinity -

because it is located in his belly...)

Saturday 15 July 2017

Thinking (yet again) about Syrian refugees

arriving in Greece
land of Clytemnestra, Œdipus, Antigone, Elektra
...and Diogenes,
I wonder
what's so marvellous about survival ?

Friday 14 July 2017

For Malcolm

I feel so privileged
and humble
eating your gorgeous
gooseberry crumble.

Thursday 13 July 2017

I am a Peculiar Person

who talks not only to himself
and to his dog
but also to his delicious
gooseberry crumble.

Wednesday 12 July 2017

Tuesday 11 July 2017

Afterlife

appeals to two opposed categories of human beings:
those who cannot imagine that their self-importance is temporary,
and those whose life is so wretched that their only consolation
is that a life-to-come might be a compensation.

Monday 10 July 2017

The only route

to emotional independence
is by avoiding peer pressure.
This is especially difficult
if you're a parent, so if you want
to be emotionally independent
it is necessary to avoid peer pressure
by not being a parent.

Sunday 9 July 2017

Although I am certainly not an admirer,

I would venture to say that the main reason
for the widespread dislike of President Trump
is that he is incapable of hypocrisy.

Friday 7 July 2017

Being so downright,

I don't think I have ever been upright
(as in upright citizen)
except in my teenage, year-long, religious phase,
when I was a sickening prig - polite,
and, very up-tight.

Thursday 6 July 2017

We are coming down with stuff -

but have hardly room to breathe
or laugh -
and so we seethe -

bothering only to study stuff
rather than our situations
or our mass, crass motivations.

Wednesday 5 July 2017

I guess I'm too late.





































In 1979 (aged 27) I was living with my German Sheepdog
as a part-time gardener on the 9,000 acre estate
of the Earl of Caledon, on the Irish Border.
I had read Jean Genet and Dostoyevsky,
but I don't think I knew anything about cocaine
apart from Cocaine Blues and a 1920s blues
that I cannot locate, but has been re-interpreted
by Jackson Browne.
I guess this is typical of a white middle-class nerd!

(listen also to the wonderful Memphis Jug Band's
Take a whiff on me.)

Tuesday 4 July 2017

On the Fourth of July

European-Americans celebrate
their independence from England,
so most African-Americans don't have to work.
They can spend the day
celebrating each other
and commiserating with, maybe even praying for,
Original-Americans.

Monday 3 July 2017

Before Independence,

New England (especially Maryland)
was a penal colony.
Three-quarters of the population
had been shipped from the British Isles in chains.
After the Independence of the USA,
Australia became 'home' to Irish Republicans,
vagrants, blasphemers and stealers of beans.

Saturday 1 July 2017

In 1968

(the year of the Prague Spring, Pražské jaro, Pražská jar)
one in every nine Canadians was an immigrant
or refugee - mostly draft-dodgers, drop-outs
and deserters from the USA.
In 1970 Canada was the world's largest exporter
of small-arms.
There is no connection.
The "vibrant" Czech small-arms industry
is based in Brno, called Brünn
in the anti-nationalist Austro-Hungarian Empire.