...but fear not — rejoice! — for like Tammuz himself, it will be reborn and make ten thousand years of ecstatic god-love with Ishtar. Yes, that’s it for this blog. No more posts. I’ll be retiring it in a few months before...

Thought I’d share the fruits of this morning’s collecting and collating: twelve superb essays about society and civilisation from the utterliest of outside perspectives. From Oscar Wilde‘s weird spiritual socialism to the rare modern satiricon of ‘The Papalagi’ via some classic meditations on work, play, the body and (my own contribution — also to be found on this site) history. I’ve put together a pdf, mobi and epub version which you can download here. Except, awfully sorry, you can’t anymore because I’m updating it ready for the avalanche of material mentioned above.

The hundred and one best books of all time. According to me. Don’t argue - I have read every book that has ever been written and I used a complicated scientific theory to work it out and God told me. Okay?

In improvised theatre you walk onto an empty stage and create a story. When it works selves dissolve like sugar cubes and reality roars in a-flowing. Often though, it doesn’t work; fear, violence, hope, addiction, imagination and excessive planning or theorising—all the second impressions of self in charge—get in the way. The scene crumbles, and everyone scrambles around, clenched and desperate. 

There’s a hard, bald meathead on the gates of Eden.

The first time you go for a run after years of inactivity you feel like you are going to die after five minutes. If you’ve lived your life on low-nutrient sugar-rich junk, you’re more than likely to judge a fresh high-fibre meal as lacking in excitement, difficult somehow. And if you are a city dweller in your bones and swan off for a few months to live off grid in the middle of nowhere, it soon becomes, after the initial novelty wears off, hideously boring.

These kind of difficulties are well known. Less well known is the reason: God’s Bouncer.

Also known as The Guardian at the Gate and Dr Cold Turkey, God’s Bouncer stands between the self-led life and the life-led self. He is there, in weed form, when you make a move from monoculture to permaculture. He’s there as the background irritation of ‘don’t like’ if you turn from rapid-chatter, murder beats to symphonies of mood or thought. If you fast, if you stop working, or if you radically change any entrenched self-gratifying habit, relationship, or social class; he’s there, either telling you its pointless, stupid, impossible or slapping you round the suede with his existential meathooks.

A song of divine piratical self-overcoming, in Hackney.

The self-based orgasm is a physical, mental and chemical – which is to say technical – event. And like all technical events it can be described numerically. A powerful orgasm with someone you don’t particularly care for, or are bored of, or are merely excited by – yourself perhaps – might be a seven or a nine.

T shirts here in Japan say things like: 

Left, right, forward, backward. Move arm + leg rhythmical and all will be invited to the ‘you won’t miss’ too good!

I read this on a tin of biscuits which someone gave me as a present for the blossom season:

This is the door into the world filled with a great many flowers. Here, all the flowers are different from others as there is nobody but has the same face. The flowers repeat themselves to be out vividly, gone beautifully and re-born one after another. The world full of bright energy will certainly give one feel a comfort for a while.

Last night, looking over Kurashiki valley from our eighth floor living room, we saw a thunderstorm like no other. The lightning, rather than forking downwards, flew across the sky - mad cracked webs of white fire that flared across the purple horizon, strafing the valley before finally, in a deafening blinding strike, bursting a tree under our balcony into pink flames.

The Unbelievable Essence Men are a superhero group appearing in Kamichan comics #86 - 88.

Ram-man Super-power: indestructible head and laser-firing horns.* He can’t fly but he can jump from tall buildings, just as long as he lands on his head. He can also summon millions of sheep, from miles around, to help him escape from empty warehouses surrounded by the cops. His weakness is that he can only solve problems that require charging full pelt into a wall.**

The Sempstress When super-heros gain their super powers they also gain superb tailoring skills. The sempstress is alone in only being able to stitch, knit and crochet, but at lightening speed and with any material. She can, depending on the super-villian she’s facing, instantly knock out titanium gloves, electric corsets, custard socks or trousers made of clouds.