sexiest woman room

What's a bloke to do? Here I am with a desktop overflowing with unfinished pieces - 'World Death Organisation', 'Satanism and the Self', 'Bonuses for the Most Expensive Fuckwits in History', 'The Daily Global Fear and Desire Index' etc. etc. - and all of them knocked back.


I knocked them back because... who gives a shit? Or to put it another way, we're at the town meeting, called because a thirty metre tsunami is due in an hour, and a voice pipes up asking what the council's going to do about the cracks in the footpath that the tremor caused. And the guy's got a point: the cracks are so bad that you could fall and break your hip. But in the face of the tsunami... who gives a shit?

Actually that's just our little world. Truth is, back in the real world everyone is rolling their eyes, catcalling, and otherwise laughing their heads off. Broken footpaths, the collapsed bus shelter, and what-about-the-insurance, is all they want to talk about - and who is this dickhead blathering about a tsunami? What tsunami? Doesn't he watch the news that guy? Sheesh! If there was a tsunami, they'd tell us. The worst is over - they said so on the news!


Yeah well, we'll leave them to it. We're having a whole other conversation, and there, between 30m waves; and bits and pieces of broken infrastructure, one of them is a topic worth discussing and the other is a mere series of clues pointing to it. Can you dig it?

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Still, a little nagging voice says that maybe it won't be so. What with the death cult following the Fabian creed of gradualism, perhaps there won't be a tsunami at all - just more run-of-the-mill rollers wearing away, wearing away. Dig it - it's the condemned man keeping his fingers crossed that he won't go before the firing squad and will instead be sentenced to hard sodomy for the term of his natural life. "Oh thank God, it's only daily rape." Whew!

But really, as if the death cult would be so rigidly doctrinaire. If gradualism suits, they'll use it. And if a world war is what's required, then dandy, cue the fire bombing. Or whatever! - they're nothing if not versatile. As if the people who control our education, media, and government are going to leave any bases uncovered or otherwise resile from anything because, well, "That's just going too far..." Besides, there's just too much now and it's there for anyone with an ounce of curiosity to see.


Just to be precise, I figure we're in for an unholy trinity - Economic Collapse: 426 trillion imaginary dollars. Never mind the 'recovery' - is everyone familiar with a 'head and shoulders' curve? Okay, so we're at the shoulder and now comes the long drop, all the way down. Cue the, um... 'Great Recession' is it? Ha ha ha. I guess that's like a Great Depression but with more hype. And more deaths - six million in the US alone last time around. Global Pandemic: A fake virus treated with a vaccine that's no such thing. Will this be the greatest act of mass murder in history? Sure, why not? The CFR/Bilderberger mob has already declared that five billion dead would be just dandy. World War: Iraq, Afghanistan, even the coming smashing of Iran - all sideshows. The big game? Russia v Nato. And are Ladbrokes offering odds on Israel nuking someone? If evens is the best you can get, it'd be worth laying a hundred bucks on.

Any one of these would qualify as an event of unparalleled wickedness. And we're going to get three! Yay - fans of history, rejoice! And sure enough we, who ordinarily prefer history at a bit of a remove, ask the question - What's to be done?

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Well, we must oppose it! Fight Fight Fight! Well... there will be fighting and no mistake. We'll meet the enemy and he'll be us - the streets will run with blood and the death cult (looking down from their corporate boxes) will roar with laughter. Who said there's East and there's West and never the twain shall meet? He didn't own an Armalite obviously. East/West - North/South - Muslim/Christian - white/coloured - rich/poor - military/civilian - It's time to do the us-and-them cha-cha, and all to a rat-a-tat beat. Buddha was bullshit and his so-called "middle way" nothing more than an excuse for Hegelians to smash two opposites together. Bring on the Revolution! And cue the impossible voice-over guy - "This revolution has been proudly brought to you by International Banking."


If people want to pile in on that, good luck to them. I'm sure the death cult won't have seen them coming. Meanwhile where I live, in this cardboard cut-out town, in a cardboard cut-out state, in a cardboard cut-out country - with Rupert Murdoch in charge of the paper, scissors, and Perkin's paste - ain't nothin' gonna happen. Between the bang and the whimper (with no third option), it'll be "A whimper for me please. And how much is that? Ten trillion dollars? Um... okay, just one then, and not so big thanks." What nice manners we have, even for our rapists.

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"Hey nobody, what's that in the title, about Les and Pascal having a bet or something?" Oh yes, I do thank that imagined fellow for reminding me. It seems that in setting the mood in the first couple of paras, I've done my usual trick and written a thousand words already. But rather than quit and come back, I'll just plough on.


I have Les pegged as today's Hunter S. All he lacks is an editor to sort out his possessives, contractions, and plurals, ha ha. Sorry Les! (He also lacks Thompson's uncannily accurate descriptions of the paedophocracy, which until Jeff Wells laid them out, I'd always taken as a variety of metaphor. Those stories about Thompson? Well, if Operation Mockingbird and Laurel Canyon got funky together, and the result was a natural child, what would that offspring look like?)

The above is not me dropping any dark hints about Les. I have as good an ear for falsity as anyone, and I've yet to hear Les strike a false note. There are real people in this world and Les is one of them. Or to put it another way - I wouldn't bother discussing Les if I thought he was bullshit, or insubstantial, or any other epithet. I come here not to bury Les, but to praise him (backhanded, of course...)

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That being said, let's carry on - the point of the exercise here is merely a continuation of me turning Les' discussions of the coming tsunami in deus ex machina terms around in my head and wondering at them from different angles. And that's when Renaissance man, Blaise Pascal, stuck his tuppence in. Primarily Pascal was a mathematician who, amongst other things, built one of the world's first calculating machines, invented the science of hydraulics (and the syringe specifically), and was otherwise the founder of the modern theory of probability.


As if that wasn't enough, he was also a religious philosopher who spent the whole latter half of his life cloistered in the Jansenist convent of Port Royal. Cloistered or no, he never forgot the libertine friends he'd made during his 'worldly period', and with them in mind (and as you might expect from a mathematical expert in probabilities) Pascal sought to appeal to their scepticism by way of a simple bet with what's now known as Pascal's Wager. Here's Encyclopaedia Brittanica -

Pascal assumed, in disagreement with Thomas Aquinas but in agreement with much modern thinking, that divine existence can neither be proved nor disproved; and he reasoned that if one decides to believe in God and to act on this basis, one gains eternal life if right but loses little if wrong, whereas if one decides not to believe, one gains little if right but may lose eternal life if wrong. In these circumstances, he concluded, the rational course is to believe.

It's hard to believe I know, but I'm not the only fellow who turns things around and comes at them from different angles. Brittanica again -

The argument has been criticized theologically for presupposing an unacceptable image of God as rewarding such calculating worship and also on the philosophical ground that it is too permissive in that it could justify belief in the claims, however fantastic, of any person or group who threatened nonbelievers with damnation or other dangerous consequences.

Good point. But you've got to love this - "...it could justify belief in the claims, however fantastic, of any person or group who threatened nonbelievers with damnation or other dangerous consequences." Ha ha ha, that sounds like every religion ever invented doesn't it? It certainly sounds like the Christian church.


Unsurprisingly, with Pascal effectively an adherent of a Jewish sect (er... that would be Christianity), the whole discussion is one of what's-in-it-for-me, driven by the twin carrot-and-stick prospects of the fear of damnation versus the promise of a glorious eternity. And me, I have to ask the question: What sort of insecure God is this?

If a fellow was an incarnation of Francis of Assisi (say), leading a life of perfect virtue devoted to the well-being of all living things, would Pascal's God get angry with him if he didn't know who He was? Absolutely! The Christian God (besides being a slavish adherent to the old bullshit maxim of 'ignorance of the law is no excuse') is a jealous one who visits the iniquity of the father upon his children to the fourth generation merely for failing to acknowledge him. Jesus Christ! As if a God who's every kind of 'omni' wouldn't be above such petty concerns? Where's the serenity?


Bugger it. Why don't we turn Pascal's wager on its head - and plug it into Les' deus ex machina while we're at it? And so: given that Les' manifestations of supernature are not insecure and do not demand we tip our hat every time we sneeze; given that a shit-storm tsunami to end all shit-storm tsunamis is definitely coming, and if anything was ever going to warrant a deus ex machina response, this is it; given the rightness of Epictetus' discussions of 'what is in our power' (thanx Kikx), with stopping a tsunami not being one of them; and not forgetting yours truly being a Buddhist of his own description, attempting to embody the right end of the continuum (at the top of the page), we arrive at the following 'thus' -

Supernature or no, if one sheds fear and desire, and acts with reverence for all things as if they were possessed of supernature, if right, one gains all that might be hoped for, but loses little if wrong, whereas if one embraces fear and desire, and effectively reveres the self, if right, one gains little beyond the ephemeral, but if wrong... "Hey, the ocean's just gone out. Let's go down and look."

For the last three days, I've been writing a piece attempting to nuance my definition of nihilism. And it was brilliant! Marvellous metaphors, jolly japes, pretty pictures, and even a little alliteration. But in amongst the frivolity I had some questions about that mumping villain Nietzsche and dipped into Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. Dear oh dear, how little I know. Never mind Nietzsche, whatever clever guff I had to say on the subject of, let's call it scepticism, I was perpetually being beaten to the punch by the Greeks of two millennia ago. Bloody Greeks! How dare they reach out from the past and shatter my illusions of me as great sage and equal of heaven!


Happily, the nature of monkey is irrepressible, so here I am blathering on with another 1000 words that hopefully I won't have to junk. (Hmm... perhaps 'happily' is the wrong word what with Monkey being on a mission to abandon his monkey nature 'self', but never mind). Anyway I'll start again and fingers crossed none of those rotten ancients gate-crash the party.


And so on to the grand topics! Take belief. Please! Any number of people will tell you that belief is a wonderful thing and without it we're all doomed or somesuch. That's all very well, but my problem is that there are so many beliefs, half of which are completely at odds with the other half, that one's necessarily forced to pick one or t'other, or some combination thereof. Sure enough, in choosing what one believes, one automatically rejects any number of other beliefs. Which is to say, a person who extols the rightness of belief is ipso facto simultaneously condemning the falseness of it. Or to put it another way, they're asserting that a false belief is better than none at all.


To be honest it never works that way. The epic majority of proponents of belief are not so much keen to have me, as unbeliever, believe in something-anything-as-long-as-I-believe, so much as to have me believe in their specific version of that-which-must-be-believed. It seems it's less about belief per se, but rather about whether or not one has chosen a belief that accords with that of the commentator. Hmm... perhaps belief is not so very different from teenage fashion sense, ie. it's little more than an expression of peer group pressure, which is to say 'fear'. And a fig for that.


What then is a self-described nihilist (that would be me) to do about otherwise credible people telling me stories completely beyond my ken and otherwise requiring my belief? Ha ha ha, is everyone here familiar with the phrase 'beg the question'? 'Beg the question' does not mean 'prompt the question'. Rather, it means to ask a question in which something is assumed or taken for granted that really oughtn't to be. And that sentence at the beginning of the para is a classic example. It assumes that one must either believe a thing, or reject it in its entirety. Which is to say, take it holus-bolus or throw the baby out with the bath water.


What's that clippety-clop noise? Is it some philosophical knight on horseback come to rescue me from my dilemma? Oh wait, it's the Buddha banging two coconuts together - a Python fan obviously. Says he, ever sensible, we may choose the middle way. Both belief and rejection are two diametric extremes. If one is convinced that belief is fraught with paradoxes why should it follow that disbelief is automatically the correct position? It's the equivalent of a nine year old in a car swerving from one over-correction to another.


So, er... what are we meant to do exactly? Neither believe nor disbelieve? Sure why not? Subsequently yours truly, otherwise full of loud-mouthed opinions, will upon hearing mind-boggling stories hold no opinion at all. Like I've said elsewhere, I dismiss nothing. I hear a thing, I hold it in my head, and I turn it this way and that: maybe I make something of it and maybe I don't. Do, don't, it doesn't really matter - whatever it is I've been told merely 'is', and nothing more.


Thus for all manner of things, from my friend John's curious preternatural encounters (Hey John), to Les' messages from the Devic Realm (Hey Les), I choose to form no opinion. The only thing I can say with complete certainty is that I have no experience of these things. And between what I have experienced and what I haven't, one makes the other look like Charles Atlas' 97lb weakling. For me to make declarations about what they tell me would say as much about me as them. Besides, here I am conveying thoughts to you the reader in spite of the fact that we're separated by hitherto unimaginable distances. 'Hitherto' is the key word there - when those smarty-pants Greeks were kicking around to even suggest that such things were possible would have been laughed off as a lunacy, or otherwise something belonging to the gods. And now we just take it as read.


Speaking of the Greeks, I'm off now to finally read Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. I'm keen to see if any of those marbled ancients knew karate. Okay, perhaps not the thing itself but at least the intent that inspired its name. For those who don't know, it means 'empty hand', which I might paraphrase as 'with no pre-conceived idea'. And the Japanese didn't call it that for nothing. It's an acknowledgement that in a meeting between two entities, no one can know what the stimuli will be, nor the response. And crucially (not wishing to beg the question again) - nor if one is even necessary. It's a simple fact that within the concept of the open hand is the perforce possibility that one may do nothing at all. Hmm... I'm pretty sure the Greeks mastered the concept. Well, it would certainly explain why they all turned into statues, ha ha.

Obama is a place and I've been there. It's a middle size town in Fukui prefecture on the West Coast of Japan. It's chock full of Buddhist temples, and one of them is where I went to spend the rest of my life, or seven days, whichever came first. And in this picture postcard temple was a picture postcard shrine called a butsudan. It was pretty much the centre of the temple.


It occurred to me that if some bright spark in Obama started manufacturing genuine Obama shrines they'd make out like bandits. There'd be a photo of Barrack Obama there with candles either side and a little space out the front for offerings of rice, fruit, and cakes etc. An Obama we can believe in! And how better to express your belief than by praying at a shrine that's not only for Obama, it's from Obama.

I don't see why anyone should have a problem with this. Obama is just like all those other things we have to believe in. He said so himself - 'change you can believe in'. Ayah! Another belief, and we have so many already! Anyway, since it's all about belief, you may as well do it properly and have a shrine. A genuine Obama shrine!


Anyway there it was on TV - millions of believers, their eyes full of tears. Reality? Banished. What I saw on TV was so like what one sees in the born-again hallelujah halls it was spooky. And everyone said the same things. It was like listening to a mantra. The American dream was true after all! A black man as president! In our lifetimes! We never thought we'd see the day! If only my grandfather had lived to see this!

Mantras are good. They work to neutralise the brain and stop distractions entering. And who needs to be distracted by little things like Obama's years working at a CIA front company, or his cabinet appointments of the same old warhawks, bankers, and dual citizens, and never mind his abject kowtowing to AIPAC. Between wake-up-and-smell-the-catfood and warm-and-fuzzy, it's a no-brainer. And God bless the no-brainers, say the powers that be. In no-brainers they trust.


And in amongst the 24/7 adoration on the TV, not a single soul had a single word of doubt. No sentiments along the lines of - 'I'll believe it when I see it'. God forbid anyone should stand up and say, 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss' (or perhaps that should be - Meet the new puppet, same as the old puppet?) What's American for 'Burn them at the stake?' 'Burn them like a steak', I guess. Grain fed, of course.

But really you have to go hats off to the PTB. Obama is a stunning move. And really breathtaking in its cynicism. An African American gets dropped into the Presidency at the precise moment that the whole thing goes tits up. It's like handing the car keys to the teenage boy just as the rings, the diff, and the gearbox are all about to shit themselves. And when it starts grinding metal on metal, guess who gets the blame?


Otherwise, for those not already drugged into stupefaction Obama is the perfect Soma. But never mind Aldous Huxley, how about George Orwell? Honestly, what sort of regime would have a stern looking fellow as its pin-up boy? Is Ronald McDonald stern? Orwell never worked in marketing obviously. Those who've given the world Obama, get marketing.

Speaking of meat products, humans are smarter than cattle. This is obvious since we eat them, and not the other way round. But perhaps 'smarter' is the wrong word. Let's put it this way, are cattle capable of belief? No - but we are. And unlike those stupid cattle there's no way we're going to be led to the slaughterhouse unless we believe it's the right thing to do. And finally, with McSmiley Obama we can all believe again. Those who had lost faith have found it anew - the disillusioned, freshly re-illusioned.

The masses that George Bush had united in disbelief are now back on board. We are one, they all chant. Obama, we'll follow you to hell and back - for that smile, those adorable kids, those reassuring words - anything. And those doubters? Those enemies of the American dream? A black man is president! We waited our whole lives for this! Send them to wherever enemies of the state get sent. It's the least they deserve.


And as the miseries become legion: bankruptcies climb; old neighbourhoods become deserted; the hunger-driven discontent rises; law and order breaks down; the cops go berserk; and reality just generally goes to hell, the freshly minted believers will turn to their leader for solace. They'll light some more candles, put out a votive twinkie, and let the mantra fill their head banishing all distraction. A black man is president! I never thought I'd live to see the day! The American dream is true!

Those nihilists are nuts aren't they? Take me for example. Here I am tapping away at a keyboard that I don't even believe exists. I'm madly putting words in some kind of idiot order that can't possibly make any sense for non-existant people whom I don't believe can read, since there's no such ability. You'd wonder why I bother.

That's what a nihilist is, isn't it? Someone who madly thinks nothing exists? Has anyone met such a creature? Roll it around in your head - 'a person who thinks nothing exists'. Does that make any sense? Does it sound sustainable? How does it work on a day-to-day basis? Why would this mad fellow eat? Or scratch his arse? Or bother living at all? Honestly if you're prepared to entertain such a thought you really should wonder at yourself. The whole idea is idiotic on its face. And yet that's what I get accused of being. Since I choose not to believe in things, somehow nothing is real.


What nonsense. Real things don't require belief. They just are. The butcherbird singing a song on my windowsill in the hope of getting a piece of ham doesn't require a stretch of my imagination. It doesn't require me to take someone's word for it. I don't have to dispel doubt that he's there. No belief is needed because he's Right Fucking There, singing that berserk song. G'day mate, yes I know you're there, and no, you're not getting any ham. I'm a cruel man but fair.

What other things apart from butcherbirds don't require belief? Well, it's simple. Everything you can see, hear, smell, touch and taste is completely unconnected with the idea of, or the need for, belief. To attack an otherwise rational person on the basis that he can't tell the difference between what is and what isn't, is, gee whiz, I don't know... I just shake my head at the stupidness of it. But believe it or not, ha ha, I've encountered it many times. It's the standard sleight of hand employed by religious types to conflate a belief in a thing (ie. religion) with an absence of belief (ie. atheism/nihilism). Says they, these are equivalent 'beliefs': a Christian believes God exists; an atheist believes no god exists; whilst a nihilist goes further and believes that nothing exists. God spare me. It's a crap argument but crap arguments is all religious types have.


Perhaps when arguing with mad Christians it's better to concentrate on shared disbelief. Do Christians believe that that blue-headed elephant guy is a god? No? Okay cross him off. We could go through god after god in this fashion and have a lovely time agreeing with each other over and over. Cross, cross, cross. Yay! We smash fake gods! If we were to come up with a complete list of gods, the Christians and I would be in complete agreement over the non-existence of 99.99% of them. Go figure why they'd get all huffy about a single god amongst this uncountable multitude. Apparently this one god is special. But aren't they all? Who would worship a god that isn't special? Christians shouldn't take this personally. This line of logic is not specific to any particular religion. It's a 'catholic' argument, if you like, ha ha.

Anyway let's say we've arrived at the obviousness of atheism. Then there's the unavoidable question - why stop with gods? If I'm prepared to make that final tiny step from 99.99% atheism to 100% atheism, might I not cast my jaundiced eye at everything else I'm meant to believe? There's no shortage of these things. They define us and bind our society together. For instance, I am meant to believe that it is right that one should have unlimited desires and go to great lengths attempting to satisfy those desires. Apparently I should base my life on this. To moderate my pursuit of this self-gratification, there are certain fear-based proscriptions on my behaviour. All our laws pivot on the assumption that I shall not do a thing because I will be fearful of the punishment that will result. Is that the best we can do? We geniuses? We white men? Honestly?


What bullshit. I reject desire. I reject fear. A fig for arranging society thus. See if I can't do better, ha ha. I gave it a try just to the right here with my abjectly unsexy continuum. Between self and selflessness no belief is required. The less cluttered it is, the better. There are no proscriptions, no rules, no loopholes - merely an ideal to be aimed for.

Think about it. Nowhere here do I ask anyone to believe in anything. Nowhere do I say, Take my word for it. In fact, for the record I say, Don't believe it. Belief is not required and will not help you. Sure enough, in the meeting of the pursuit of selflessness and the mindset of perfect nihilism, there is no clash, only harmony. In fact I'll go further and state, right here, right now, that they are the same thing. True nihilism involves embracing the ultimate truth that there is no self. There is only a self if you believe that it is so. A person who can abandon this belief will know the mind of Buddha. You, me, anyone. If other people choose not to think about this, to use it as a self-serving straw-man argument, turn it arse-about, or any other goddamn thing, a fig for them, ha ha.


PS. And then there's the Buddha - "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense". Now that's nihilism.