mugshot or surplus to needs

Formally it seems that one could easily hang some signature accessory on a villain, a passably sinister profile, trim of moustache or a particular brand of smokes that might be forever reviled by the horrified public and associated with notoriety. Currently, however, we are all essentially naked with no distinguishing uniform or props (other than the occasional posing) and are just left with rather non-descript—though susceptible to certain judgments, reflective, innocent, ill-informed, poorly counselled, discordant, overly-tuned or just plain skanky in the same fashion as we might rate the cascade of loose-associates—parade-ground of our social-mediators, I wonder where those strains of repulsion dwell, unsafe in the knowledge that we all have a virtually immediate connection. We ought to all delete our accounts—if that meant more than acquiescing to an archive. There’s incubating speculation as well about how the perpetrator of the massacre in Orlando worked for a security contractor that supplements services to the US government’s Department of Homeland Security, including the goon squads at airports and the farming out of newly arrived immigrants by bussing them to points beyond. And while the parent company may enjoy such a position of public-trust and does perhaps deserve to have its employment-screening practises looked into, that particular fiend only had the warrant of a mall-cop. It’s chilling nonetheless, to imagine that he might have been deputised as something more, although this identification and aversion (like the avatars above) is like the high incidence of engineers attracted to radical groups. It is not that they are recruited for their potential bomb-making skills, as one might think, or for their ability to design some diabolic juggernaut, but mostly because they’ve pursued a certain career path and found that there’s not the jobs in the industry to support their numbers. The preponderance of (failed) engineering students is not a commentary on the field, but rather a criticism of the schooling systems of many places in Africa, the Middle East and Asia that puts all its resources in post-primary education for the few, mainly males who survive a childhood of neglect and discouragement.

mordantly queued litheness

Though perhaps better known for their compendia of infernal characters, the Lesser Key of Solomon (definitively edited by Aleister Crowley) and the Pseudo- momarchia Dæmonum (the False Hierarchy of Demons) that inspired the former, the grimoires also contain a range of mandalas—magic circles for summoning and casting-out above referenced malevolent forces, but naturally (although unlike the cleromancy of I-Ching divination or Tarot whose permutations are mathematically defined and all possible oracles are set forth) not all variants, whose compliment of iconography includes fimbriation suggestive of the works of Piet Mondrian and bar-codes and all sorts of symbols, could be contained in a single tome, no matter how big. The Lesser Bot, however, could—in theory—generate every possible spell. This achievement sounds quite dangerous but without an incanter, I wonder if it counts.

With such hate and suffering in the world, nuancing the politics of the outcome with a foresight that’s only the lens of hindsight mean that truly the Tea Party teaydists have won and are playing right into the clutches of chaos and division that obscures any chance for change for the better.
As much as we all are united in prayer for the victims, family and friends (and for those who’d discharge compassion without stint or judgment), I think we most also rally behind the prayer for strength to stand up against tyranny and intolerance, whenever and wherever. One cannot simply throw back the argument that those who want a better homeland, be it America or Syria or Afghanistan, must be willing to fight for it is not wholly fair as there are significant roadblocks and the same intrigues erected all around that can lame an uprising (mostly by proxy) even before it can be conceived, but I’d wager that immigration policies—whatever the intent—have attracted a desperate class who’ve gotten out through alternate routes that are in the minority but mostly undifferentiated from the network of rubbish and opportunist smugglers that brought them and would willing exchange roles. Any one of us can gain security through strife but it is not a rewarding boon to pass along, neither as guest nor host.

oh—they’ve encased him carbonite

Although many believe that the sequestering of carbon-dioxide and other greenhouses gases (out of sight, out of mind) is a tenable solution, the practical application of the technique is slow in coming. Many risks still remain and leakage is a serious issue, potentially unleashing tremors and spoiling of aquifers like fracking operations.
Heretofore, only one commercial plant is on-line in Canada, pumping the noxious by-product deep into a part of the Earth adjudged to be a reasonably safe oubliette. In volcanic Iceland, however, scientists have been able to turn to chemistry to fix atmospheric CO₂ and transform it into the basalt substrate that the island is composed of, incorporated as veins of chalk (limestone). Like trolls (Trölli) turned to stone when caught in the light of day, perhaps special conditions exist in Iceland which would make the technique somewhat of a challenge to export, but maybe this form of carbon-capture could help clean up industries globally one day.

3q

Incredibly, it has taken one major banking consortium a whole six years to tender a breach of copyright case against another bullying bulwark of telecommunications.
After both companies were granted too big to fail status and bailed out by tax-payers (and merrily we roll along) and the plaintiff (the banksters) were accorded a special gift from the US Patent Office for all their inconvenience in the form of a grant for a dubious trademark on the universal expression of gratitude of “thanks”—or rather “thankyou” since one cannot claim common words as intellectual property, and hence all the halcyon, word-like trade names in the pharmaceutical industry. The banks want the telecommunications company to stop using similar language in its marketing, though it’s not as if either company is at all grateful or gracious towards its customers, indentured servants. Of course, one cannot route for either party in this case and can only hope that the court dismisses it with prejudice and hold both sides in contempt for frivolity.

twinkie-defence

I’d venture to say that there could be nothing that so succinctly encapsulates the downfall of society into an overly-sheltered and gratified mockery of itself than the news that the fabled Playboy mansion has been sold to a cupcake magnate. There’s small consolation in the stipulation that the ninety-year old Hugh Hefner gets to reside there until his death, but the new owner has expressed interest in acquiring the whole empire. Who can say what the franchise, not that it’s necessarily worth preserving—but given this infantilising, sweet-toothed legacy, might be a vehicle for in the near future?

foilage

Perhaps we could take a leaf, in rather desperate times, from the pages of the industrious leafcutter ants (Acromyrmex) of the Americas to hopefully rehabilitate some of our notions about health and hygiene. These colonies have been in the business of agriculture, to include biocide and population health for æons, and have yet to find themselves in a pinch whereas humans just harnessed antibiotics and pesticides a few generations hence, and through abuse are seriously at risk of returning to pestilential times, plagued by crop-failures and untreatable infections to the exclusion of modern medical procedures.
Not that we weren’t warned from the onset, but adding an antibacterial sheen to everything and using it as a panacea of first resort has made the strongest thrive and is making the incurable more and more dominant. Returning to our friends, the leafcutter ants—whom drink the sap of the leaves for energy but actually take back the leaves to their nests to grow a specific fungus that’s the chief food staple, scientists are finding that having evolved symbiotically with the resources and threats if their environment, the ants are able to cultivate only what they’ve intended and keep weeds and other pests at bay (despite the inviting hot-house of a nursery they build for their favoured fungi). The blight of invaders is avoided, researchers believe, by a cocktail of novel antibiotics administered, which the ants gather (naturally occurring in the soil) and possibly produce through their own chemistry, confounding the ability to acquire resistance. Hopefully, we can learn something from these ancient farmers, and if we are granted a reprieve from returning to the medical dark age, hopefully we will not repeat the same mistakes.

unpalatable or hue and cry

What has been determined to be the world’s most loathsome and revolting colour, called Opaque Couché, is to be generic hue going forward for all plain-packaged cigarettes in Australia and the UK, which also won’t be allowing identifiable logos or signature typefaces.
Reverse-marketers are hoping the aversion to the colour, which looks like the filth of spent soil, will also deter people from smoking. Pantone, the tincture company who produced Opaque Couché and is known for nominating a colour of the year to reflect or determine the interior decorating zeitgeist of the moment, is not happy about having any of its carefully cultivated spectrum called ugly. For me it’s hard to image that any choice in palate won’t eventually become a branded look itself, even if it’s for the Victory cigarettes and gin of the addicted proles of Airship One—like the particular reds and browns that are associated fast-food and reportedly hunger. What do you think? There have been other proposed candidates for packaging that might prove a bigger deterrent.