From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Sat Jun 8, 2002  4:34 am
Subject:  Jane Makeover

Riverland is full of all sorts of fashions ... and girls who would
make natural models ... which is why we sent out own special
correspondent little Ms June Makeover to investigate a local
modelling course.
It started as a typical Saturday morning. It finished with her legs
aching, a £13 parking ticket, and a new-found image with a veneer of
sophistication.
She had rolled out of bed, splodged some make-up on to her barely
open eyes and bowled down to the Pat A. Cake Agency for a one day's
intensive grooming and self-improvement course.
The other girls were immaculate, most of them wanted to be models,
and most of them were about 15 years younger than her.
'Never mind,' said Pat, immaculate blonde, and former Ms Great
Britain, 'this course is about confidence, that's what we're here
for.'
Jone had always fancied herself as a kind of down-market glamour
kitten with tousled appeal. Someone once told her she had cheekbones
like Bo Derek. Nothing else, just the cheekbones.
When Pet started out with make-up she knew she was kidding herself.
Off came the stuff Jine'd only just put on. The lines and shadows
under her eyes that Jene'd always thought interesting came under
attack.
And there was more. Deportment - sitting, walking, taking off a
jacket, entering a room, ascending and descending stairs (models do
it sideways). They paraded in front of the huge mirror, with Pit
intoning 'Heel-ball of foot, heel-ball of foot'.
Over lunch they chatted.
Pot has all kinds on her books - glamour girls ('a bit of class'),
fashion girls, children ... and 30-something-year-olds who are in big
demand with the advertizers who need 'ordinary' looking people the
punters can identify with.
'The children are great, but some of them have very ambitious
mothers,' she said.
'One lady rang the other day and said "I'm having a baby in three
weeks, can you put it in your books", which I thought was taking it a
little far.'
She conceded that modelling work was tough, and sometimes she
accompanies her girls to make sure they don't fall into the wrong
hands.
'You get a photographer who says "You're fat, get out", which really
knocks you. You have to develop quite a thick skin,' said the last
woman in the world anyone would dream of calling fat.
In the afternoon, the utterly charming Irony Washername, herself a
model, arrived to tell about grooming.
Everything from interviews, sitting down, shaking hands, to waiting
for a bus, and choosing clothes.
'It hurts to be beautiful,' Irene said, with a beautiful smile. 'But
remember, you're as good as you think you are.'
At the end of the day Jane asked Put what her chances were in the
modelling world. 'Fantastic!' she said - and they both collapsed with
laughter.
The rest of the world watched out for them.
+++++
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Sat Jun 1, 2002  7:20 am
Subject:  Re: So how come no ones discussing Heraclitus!? :)
Dear Mike
Thanks for your generous message.
I don't think I have a new creative way of regarding Heraclitus. I
follow the lead of (old) Plotinus (mentioned in a message dated
01/09/02) who suggested Heraclitus 'leaves us to conjecture and omits
to make his argument clear and to reach conclusions, perhaps because
he realised that we should inquire for ourselves as he himself
inquired'. If you are studying 'limitless matters' (which is what
philosophers do, isn't it?) then you can start anywhere - and the
fragments of Heraclitus are among my starting places.
I acknowledge huge debts to Hopkins, whose love of asymmetic off-
double patternings and 'all things counter, original, spare, strange'
has never been far from my thinking since I first encountered the
Pied Beauty poem as a boy. Plus with Hopkins there is a great respect
for humdrum-seeming everyday-daily-job-doers ('all trades, their gear
and tackle and trim')- who are often neglected, even sometimes
despised, by the more academic-minded and by the some of the more
unwordly sorts of mystics.
Personally I am trying to mix spontaneous art with hard graft labour
and bits of mystery - in a cheerful sort of way. I don't think I have
succeeded yet ...
Good luck with your grad school applications. I have difficulty with
formal application processes myself - I find orthodoxy quite
difficult ... and I tend to digress ...
Take care...
Philip.
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Sat Jun 1, 2002  7:30 am
Subject:  Re: On matters of footing.

...visions of Swastikas...
...
Germany 8, Saudi Arabia 0
...
... it was just a football match, but one saw ... light-skinned burly
merciless-seeming Teutonics trample all over darker more slimly built
semites...
...
it seemed a shema that the Saudis were not gifted at least one goal...
...
some might say that pretty babies (boys and girls) have to clear more
of the blood and filth shit out of their systems ... or temporal
tectonics might bring in revenges ...
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 4, 2002  10:22 am
Subject:  4 kids

ADVERTISEMENT

The Fat Prince, the Cream, and the Jelly.
In the land of cream and jelly, the streets were foul and smelly, the
jelly, you see, had rotted and the cream had soured and clotted. The
king of this land was sad to see all of his kingdom go bad. `Oh what
can be done?' he sighed as he sat in his palace and cried. His son,
the Fat Prince, had plan, and that clever but greedy young man
said, ` I'll get rid of the smell you hate,' then he picked up his
spoon and he ate. And he ate and he ate and he ate, he cleared plate
after plate after plate, of smelly jelly and rancid cream, his
favourite foods, it would seem. After four long days of scoffing,
the prince showed no signs of stopping – he's eaten three tons of
cream and jelly but had room for more in his belly.
A while later, when the job was done, and all the cream and jelly had
gone, the prince was as big as a whale – and he burped with the force
of a gale. But the king still sat and cried, and when the prince
asked why, he replied: `You've got rid of the smell, that's true, but
you've eaten my kingdom up too!'
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  12:31 pm
Subject:  Re: inclusive consciousness

PS
...
Poe (for Susan)
I shall cork the MS up in a bottle ... and throw it into the sea ...
Yours ... PUNDITA.
[pppps ... pretty pretty pretty peggy sue ... got married ...]
PST (for Creatives and Observers)
There is much more to creativity than self-expression (which is a
relatively minor matter).
PT (for Rosemary)
... perhaps I am starting to 'use that brain' of mine a little
more ... but don't expect miracles ...
PTO (for Madonna)
... and ... do you know what it feels like for a boy? ...
... and ... when you open up your mouth to speak ... could you be a
little weak? 
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  12:39 pm
Subject:  Re: 4 kids
A child in time met a man who called himself Mr Possible.
'Why are you called Mr Possible,' the child asked.
'Because I can do some things some people believe are impossible,'
the man replied.
'But if you can do impossible things you sould be called Mr
Impossible,' the child suggested.
'No ... it is not possible to do impossible things and I cannot do
them,' said the man, worried that he had been misunderstood. 'What I
do is demonstrate that some things that some people believe to be
impossible are in fact possible.'
'What sort of things are possible?' the child asked.
'What do you imagine?' the man replied.
The child imagined. 
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  12:49 pm
Subject:  Unblocking Parmenides

ADVERTISEMENT
I will speak of two searches.
There is a search for what is or might be and there is a search for
what is not and could never be.
The first is a possible search (what is or might be can be found),
the second impossible (what is not and could never be cannot be
found).
The dishonest person wanders through the world stupefied and two-
faced: gazing at what is possible and what is not.
The undisciplined and/or closed mind, which maintains absolutist
positions and/or huge internal contradictions, never moves towards to
truth - it is in stasis, with the forces of truth checked by the
forces of falsehood.
There is the world as it is and there is the world as you would like
it to be - and the latter often is not and never could be.
Do not waste time trying to prop up absolutist beliefs that you
secretly know to be false (or at least not completely true), however
much you may want to believe them.
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  1:07 pm
Subject:  Excuses
ADVERTISEMENT

Height:   4 5 6 7 ft  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 in
Weight:  
Sex:   F  M

It was Apollo who started it ...
the seasoning of tales of wars and humanity with peppar-dust excuses.
Blame it on the gods ... who splash the earth with pain and blood and
then - clean souls - wash it away with floods. It is deities' whims
that determine fate ... filling peaceful people with killing hate ...
and when guilt is denied and passed above, all humans can return to
their endless love.
And blasted beauty ... it too has killed many. Gracious Helen, not
even a full goddess, ... but she, they knew, was the real cause: her
passion-rousing face deserved a curse ... while galley left ports to
wide applause.
And the women know the truth of course ... it is all the fault of the
men, plain and simply.
And ignorance, it warrants a share ... not of our making ... born of
our natures ... a means of slaughter for the immature.
Ugly Thersites knew a version of the truth ... and jeered from the
ranks at limitless greed. 'What more do you want?' A question for the
booty-sated. They wanted a beating for the questioner it transpired.
Blind Homer obliged with blows [well the jobbing bard had to appease
his 'noble' masters] ... just for wise-cracking ... to smash the
scant-haired egg-head. But at least he let the shrill voice speak and
then live on into uncertainty ... others, less tolerant, killed the
freak, for doubting a great general's sincerity.
When 'great' people sigh, small children die ... dut do they sway or
move with the day?
And god, now single, carries the burden alone ... or (greater
mystery) merely watches ... an inventor shocked by consequences, who
cannot endorse all-licensed free will.
God damned, new culprits must be found to create the course of our
events.
Chance
powerfully powerless
forceless force
governs all
randomly ordering
formless
fragmenting
we wave goodbye to our particles
and blame the physicists)
And, of course, if all else fails ...
we can always blame 'the Other Side'...
However...
careful moments of reflection suggest (albeit with doubts) that
alternatives are always possible ...
and that, for better or worse, more often than not, we can determine
our own ways ...
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  1:23 pm
Subject:  flowing eastward for further education
... dragons and dynasties ... diversions and disturances ...
When Xido was finally released from prison he learned with horror of
the murders still going on and of how people were still drinking
soups made of other people's misery ... he began to feel queasy ...
then worse .. and with huge retches he vomited up a mass of puke
which seemed to writhe in the ground as if a living thing ...
Staring at this entity ... he thought and felt some more about the
mostly innocent victims and opened up his guts in grief again ...
Eventually he moved on, leaving the sickening mass for others to
contemplate ... some recommended burying it ... some thought there
might be much to learn from it ... many just turned away after giving
it a curious glance ...
As he travelled on, Xido was still haunted by the world-wide
injustices ... and by the question of how they might be undone
without violent revenges ... and although he seemed to be beginning
to build up some alliances .. he still lacked a close and trusted
wise counsellor, well versed in the natural arts and sciences and
other launguages ...
He sometimes dreamt of such a counsellor ... sitting apparently
fishing but not catching a single fish ...
... perhaps both the counseller and Xido were both too wary of the
possibilites of causing pain to each other and to the fish ...
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  1:32 pm
Subject:  Different song
Every church has a varying sway ... similarly singing different
songs ... and giving missing lines to all the other songsters.
So ...
... when missy mister missionaries song sing of apple pie and no more
trouble-kind when they go live up in sky ... walkabout naturals
wonder wanderingly why they take so much care not to die ... while
seaspray spitituals see things flowing countercurrently ...
[...which might be sung by the missing darker native Australian faces
in the shiney happy whitey people Aussie Neighbours slipply sloppy
soppy soapy opera ...]

From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  1:45 pm
Subject:  Bantu Banta

ADVERTISEMENT
One day Unkulaunty said on a whim to a chameleon 'Go and tell all
humans that they will not die'.
The chameleon started off towards humanity ... but it went very
slowly and ...
... some say it stopped to eat the fruit of a mulberry bush and then
went round and round and ...
... others say it climbed a tree to warm itself up in the sun with
the hope of increasing its speed in a heated state at a later
stage ...
... most agree that it fell asleep ...
...
Meanwhile, on another whim, Auntiuncle changed minds and sent a
second chameleon with a message that all humans would die. The second
chameleon made much more rapid progress, passed the first chameleon
and the way, and delivered its message to humanity first.
Eventually the lazy first chameleon did rouse itself, continued on
its way, and delivered its message second.
...
'Which message shall we believe?' humans wondered.
...
'Make your own minds up,' replied a third chameleon, which (foolishly
or not) believed it had a mind of its own.

+++++
From:  philtal_uk
Date:  Sat Feb 2, 2002  6:29 am
Subject:  Leonardo's Heraclitean Vision
Leonardo: 'Everything proceeds from everything
else and everything becomes everything else and
everything can be turned into everything else.'
[If you look for long enough, everything might be seen in
a young woman's smile ... or an old man's frown.]
From:  philtal_uk
Date:  Wed Feb 6, 2002  4:29 am
Subject:  Re: Leonardo's Heraclitean Vision
Leonardo: '... The artist can call into being the
essences of animals of all kinds, of plants, fruits,
landscapes, rolling plains, crumbling mountains, fearful and
terrible places which strike terror into the spectator;
and again pleasant places, sweet and delightful with
meadows of many-coloured flowers bent by the gentle
motion of the wind, which turns back to look at them as
it floats on; and then rivers falling from high
mountains and the force of great floods, ruins which drive
down with them up-rooted plants mixed with rocks,
roots, earth, and foam and wash away to its ruins all
that comes in their path; and then the stormy sea,
striving and wrestling with the winds which fight against
it, raising itself up in superb waves, which fall in
ruins as the wind strikes at their roots.'
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Wed May 8, 2002  12:27 pm
Subject:  Re: The Society of Heraclitus
Beatrice Kombo, farmer, Kenya, explains:
'When my trees became diseased it was the last straw. They were
producing so few nuts. I didn't know how I was going to feed my
family.
...
Today, my trees have recovered and they are sagging under the weight
of the nuts - I'm expecting 15 times more than before.
...
There are 350 of us involved and by working together we can make
sure we get a fair price for out produce.'
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Wed May 8, 2002  12:33 pm
Subject:  Names
Dot Golightly, writer, England, explains:
'In the 17th Century Laygate was farm land - known as Lay farm - and
a country lane ran through where Frederick St, Palmerston St and
South Eldon St still stand today - there it met with garden Lane. Now
in this lane was the Garden Gate pub, so - Laygate. Anyway it's one
theory.'
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Wed May 8, 2002  12:38 pm
Subject:  The Hunger Problem
Approximate volume to be filled = 4/3 xyy
where x = 'I am starving'
y = 'the shops are overflowing with goods but I am still
starving'
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue May 7, 2002  11:45 am
Subject:  peek-a-boo
'...
The human-interest stories of the penny newspapers had a timeless
quality; their power to engage lay not so much in their currency as
in their transcendence. Nor did all newspapers occupy themselves with
such content. For the most part, the information they provided was
not only local but largely functional - tied to the probelms and
decisions readers had to address in order to manage their personal
and community affairs.
The telegraph changed all that.
...
The telegraph may have made the country into "one neighbourhood", but
it was a neighbourhood populated by strangers who knew nothing but
the most superficial facts about each other.
...
... this ensemble of electronic techniques called into being a new
world - a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into
view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is a world without much
coherence or sense; a world that does not ask us, indeed, does not
permit us to do anything; a world that is, like the child's game of
peek-a-boo, entirely self-contained. But like peek-a-boo, it is also
endlessly entertaining.
Of course there is nothing wrong with playing peek-a-boo. And there
is nothing wrong with entertainment. ... we all build castles in the
air. The problems come when we try to live in them.
...'
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death [?]

+++++

Continuations ...
+++++
Re: Journey of the marginal magi.  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/10/02 3:56 pm
It can seem foolish to speculate at random about the narrowest and widest matters ... but what else can you do? 
+++++
New address as from mid-March:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/heraclitussociety
+++++
Goethean Intrusions/Inclusions ...
Re: New Member  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  3/9/02 8:27 pm
To 'Walkingondiamond'
...Thanks for the reply ... and you've summed up the English (though I prefer the British) very nicely ... we are paradoxical ...
Say more or less anything about us ... and it is true ... but the opposite is true also ...
We are a mixed up mess of a people ... and that is our (open) secret ... for better or worse ...
Regards Philip. 
Re: New Member  walkingondiamond
(30/M/Michigan State University)  3/3/02 1:13 am
I was just contemplating today a nation such as England. It seems very paradoxical in essence. It is really the home of capitalism, but at the same time probably the most social progressive as well in the history of the world in terms of intellectual and social movements . It is rather humanistic and at the same time a history of exploitation.
America seems really more exploitative than humanistic, considering the force with which capitalism weighs, environmentally and socially. We really don't have a problem with slave labor or environmental destruction if it maintains the appetites of greed.
"Man and Machine"
'Man invented the machine
and now the machine has invented man.
God the father is the dynamo
and God the Son the talking radio
and the Holy Ghost is gas that keeps it all going.
And men have perforce to be little dynamos
and little talking radios
and the human spirit is so much gas, to keep it all going.
Man invented the machine
so now the machine has invented man.'
DH Lawrence
 
New Member  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/26/02 6:19 pm
Hi ... from Philip ... hoping for a Goethe-sort of future.

Re: A Goethe quote?  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/26/02 6:17 pm
I share your hope in philosophy and art (plus in science, I also hope) ... but I am not sure that the capitalist fury is taking over the world.
Philip. 
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Sat Mar 9, 2002  5:46 pm
Subject:  ...migration...

ADVERTISEMENT
... who decided to migrate? ... or was it decided for us? ...
it seems to me that liberties have been taken without
consultation ... which is not the basis for free and frank
discussion ...
... plus there have been posts lost in the the transition ... which
looks a bit like censorship to me ...
... change ... yes ... but with free will ... or it is just fucking
imposition ...
+++++
'Look Back' Space[s]-[+/-]Time[s]...
Northern Skies ... etc ...
Stars and Planets Of The Galaxy
All Astronomy lover's are welcome Category: Astronomy
Type: Listed 
Re: Greetings from a nNorthern Skies   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 8:25 am
I'm a clumsy fool and pressed the post message button before the message was complete (but what message ever is complete?) - and before I'd deleted the extra n in the subject bar.
Anyway ...
Greetings from a northern sky watcher who has been a member of this club for some time, but does not think he has posted here before.
It is daytime and it is a little cloudy but it is quite pleasant for February in the northern parts of England, and occasionally it is good to observe some normality, which is wonderful enough in its small way.
I would like to get a look at southern skies someday. A view of the Magellanic Clouds would be good, we've a shortage of naked eye galactic pleasures in the north. Magellan sailed around the world (some say he only got half way, and others had to finish the voyage for him, but he had more or less done the other half in earlier voyages) and got two galaxies named after him. As a person however he seems to have left much to be desired (something similar could be said of all of us I suppose) and was not very respectful towards other human beings. Hopefully future generations of explorers heading out perhaps even as far as those Magellan clouds and beyond will carry more humane value systems with them.
The clouds have opened up in one place into a kind of eye shape gap. So simple but so complex. There are no end to wonders to be found in the sky. But the earth is seemingly limitless in variety too. And northerners miss out on much of it (though we've got wonders aplenty to share with you southerners too). The mammal type animals of South America and Australia, for instance. Isolation of sorts sometimes results in interesting variations on themes. And of course most importantly there's the people. When I was younger there was the Brandt Commission report, which was a plan to bring the northern and the southern worlds closer together in a variety of respects (including mutual respect perhaps most importantly). Not enough seems to have come of that. (The road to hell is paved with good intentions ... and all that).
Take care.
I will maybe post again soon, if I have time.
Love Philip.
 
Re: The Temptations of Blue Peter  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/14/02 5:52 pm
... and when they were all laughing at some crude bit of nonsense that was quite funny actually, the Welsh puritan, who looked a bit Irish and must have had some Scot and English and all sorts of other bits in her, and who liked a laugh in other circumstances, said she really didn't find the joke very funny and was really quite offended by it ... and the likely lad said: 'She's the moral minority' ... and they all laughed at her ... but the joke wasn't funny any more, because laughter was now separating rather than bringing together ... and in her discomfort she carried the secret discomfort of them all, which was that they didn't want to live in a world in which the decent moral people were sometimes apparently in the minority ... and while there is much to be said for levity, including the coarse seeming kind ... the anti-comical voice is not an unnecessary one ...
 
Re: What does Blue Peter have to do?  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 8:32 am
He doesn't have to do anything - he has free will (to some extent at least).
...ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp...
What he would like to do is to share some of his eccentric, perhaps unworldly, but not entirely lunatic visions

Re: What does Blue Peter have to do?  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 8:58 am
The short-sighted archaeologist went to Crete, or there or thereabouts. It was partly a holiday and partly a working expedition. He lost some important things there, but that seems to happen wherever you go. But he picked up some trinkets and brought them home with him. And he also took a few snapshots. Some of important people. Some of important things. And his odd vision (which seemed to vary a bit, but was quite stable - take the spectacles off and it looks one way, put them back on again and it looks another) seemed to transform the small trinkets into wider wonders.
Funnily enough this more of less mirrored what an earlier short-sighted archaeologist had done about a century earlier - and the later one never claimed to be very original, and did his best to acknowledge his sources.
Mr Evans (who came from an earlier age when first name familiarity was not encouraged, and who might or might not have had Welsh origins) went in search of tiny trinkets (which his eyes transformed into huge wonders) and found an almost forgotten ancient seafaring civilisation.
And it seemed to have been rather a good one, relatively stable and peaceful, and with women seeming to enjoy fairly equal rights with men. And they had skilled technicians and wonderful artists working side by side it seems. And they liked a good time too ... at the bull-leaping festivals (you don't have to kill animals for sport) which seem to have been a ritualised representation of the taming of the worst male instincts ... and in return, though Mr Evans might not put it quite like this, the lasses got their tits out for the lads on a regular walkaround basis.
All good things come to an end, and it looks like this Cretan society was finished off by a combination of volcanic activity and violent attacks by unfriendly neighbours (maybe societies can become too soft - but if the whole world were more peaceful, that might not be such a big problem). It ended, but traces remained (which seems to be the general case) for Mr Evans to find.
The past is a wonderfilled place, which creates the present and the future. But you can't live there, and lost golden ages were never in truth as golden as imagined.
Still, if anyone were to be looking for models for a decent and slightly different modern civilization, they might do well to pick up elements from the short-sighted trinket searcher's diggings. He might even help them out if asked. 
The New Life  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 9:01 am
The new life begins with each new instant, which, with a bit of self control, can be expanded
...
or contracted
.
and is always something
more
not nothing.
 
Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 9:17 am
My chief political correspondent shows some little malice apparently, and claims a scalp. Which is something of a relief really, because I had worried about her being too nice to be believed.
The story concerns one Jo Moore (who is a full woman despite her male sounding name), until yesterday a senior news spin doctor (or press officer ... or hired liar ... or ...) working for the British government. On September 11 last year, shortly after the terrorist attacks on that day, Jo wrote an 'infamous' email in which she apparently suggested that it was a 'very good day' for the government to bury bad news about itself. Then, apparently, this week she was at it again: suggesting that the death of Princess Margaret was another headline grabbling event that gave the government the opportunity to slip out bad news unnotied. It has to be said that the evidence against Jo is not clear-cut, and includes some dubious seeming stuff, including a 'small white envelope .. addressed in scruffy handwriting'. Whatever the evidence, yesterday Jo resigned - or was sacked (there's always an ambiguity about that isn't there?). Yesterday also just happened to be the day of Princess Margaret's funeral - which Jo might or might not have suggested was a good day for the government to bury bad news about itself.
I have to admit that up to yesterday, my only relection on the long-running Jo Moore saga had been to note with passing lonely male gazes that she was another good-looking mid-life woman who looked very attractive in a pair of trousers. But the sacking and the little bit of edge in my chief political correspondent's dispatch alerted me to wider matters: 'Observers say the already slim Moore .. has lost weight, a sign of how the problems have affected her.' 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 9:28 am
The things they say about each other.
In a crowded office building, the young gauche Geordie boy was lucky enough to sit opposite a young blooming English rose who had a habit of wearing loose-fitting tops, which fell down at irregular intervals as she sat working to reveal a plump fleshy sometimes slightly perspiring (though imagination might have added that) shoulder. It would fall to the right and she'd hitch it up and it woud fall to the right again and she would hitch it up and it would fall to the left and ...
A young blooming Scottish rose visited the office on training business and stood talking to the Geordie boy for a while about serious matters of professional concern. Then she slipped the important bit to him in passing: 'How do you manage to concentrate on your work with THAT sitting opposite you?' (At just that moment the top fell from the shoulder once more). He mumbled something incomprehensible in reply, which the passing of time has transformed into: 'I manage not to concentrate.'
And when the young blooming Welsh rose said to him of his young blooming Irish rose girlfriend 'She's lovely isn't she?' did she really mean it?

Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 9:45 am
So Jo resigned or was sacked just for doing her job of trying to present the government in the best possible light (as some would have it). And she was buried metaphorically on the day another British rose was laid to rest more literally. The order I have just put it in is the reverse order of the order of things in one (and probably more) of today's newspapers. That's the essence of news spinning. It is not a black art.
In the missed of life we are in the mist of death ... and in trivial seeming stuff there is much serious matter.
And death is always serious. I am not a royalist and I did not feel close to her, but I felt a touch of sadness, for perhaps an instant or two, when I heard of Princess Margaret's death - all deaths are sad. And then the touch of sadness went. And that is the way it is with the news. It comes and it goes without having much emotional impact on us most of the time.
Jo's 'infamy' was something we are all guilty of -being psychologically distanced from other people. We don't feel others' pain enough most of the time, and we don't feel others' pleasure enough most of the time either. whatever her official job title was, Jo was part of the government's public information service and maybe she has, wittingly or unwittingly, done a public service in illustrating some aspects of how it works - and of how we work.
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 10:37 am
My parents sat in bomb shelters during world war two and they and others have told me some things about what it was like (and in some sense I, like everyone else alive at this moment, have survived many bombing raids). You sit and listen to the bombs falling and you hope they fall on someone else. That is not to say you wish others dead, it is just that if the bombs have to fall on someone, you don't want it to be on you and your closest loved ones.
The lads who wandered out into no man's land in the first world war collectively composed a song that seems to say it:
'... I don't want to be a soldier ...
... send out my mother, my sister and my brother
but for god's sake don't send me ...'
But the lads went out anyway ... and their fathers went with them ... as did bits of their mothers ... and bits of their sisters ... and bits of their brothers ...
In times of war there are always countries that remain more or less neutral, and they have their uses. They do diplomacy. They keep the idea of peaceful living alive. And they preserve gene stocks. While British genes (which are more or less limitless in their worldwide reference points - which justifies my use of the term British genes: genes do not observe human national boundaries, despite the efforts of the nazis of many nations, including my own) were being bombed in world war, two our Irish cousins, even those who seemed to despise us, were doing a favour for us by keeping a pool of very similar genes safe for us. But all too many of us from both sides of the Irish sea waterway have been killed fighting each other and fighting common causes.
 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 10:51 am
When the suicidal terrorists made flying bombs of civilian airplanes, most of us probably thought-felt something like: ... that's terrible, thank god I wasn't too near to any of that ...
(Perhaps a more honest represention would be: 'FUCKING HELL')
... and then we sat back to watch the show of spectacular images from a safe distance (the lust of the eye for the spectacular) ... and felt the full range of emotions between us ... but individually we could not quite get it ... we couldn't quite take it in ... we couldn't quite feel enough ... and couldn't find the words to say it ...
In such circumstances switching off the emotions and being quite coldly rational is the normal response for some people, myself included.
There are limits to fellow feeling in a world of 6 billion or so people. You can't love everyone. and you can't grieve properly for every death. If you gave a full emotional response to each of the tragic events, you'd spend you whole life grieving, and that's no way to live. You have to cut yourself off occasionally, and feel only for your nearest and dearest.
On September 11, Jo Moore seems to have cut off her emotions from what was happening, and got on with her job. Mid-lifer Jo, a vicar's daughter according to reports, made a terrible seeming error of judgement apparently because she was just too professionally detached from other people's human realities. Indifferent reason can be just as monstrous seeming as violent emotion. 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 11:03 am
You can't love them all, and you can't grieve for them all, but you can always pause from your own preoccupations for a while to reflect on other people's points of view - and give them a few moments thought and feeling.
...

And the catty comments always seem to have a fresh twist to them.
Flabby female weight watchers, who always had in the back of their minds the neverending question of how to stop piling on the pounds, and who did things that harmed them, such as smoking, and crash diets, just to keep the weight down, looked at Jo and noticed that the already slim Jo has lost weight recently. And they sense the cause without being able to vocalise perhaps at first. And although they are angry at her for some things (and normally a bit envious of her because she is thinner than she is), they feel for her, because she is showing signs of withering. And although her weight is mostly discussed in catty sounding ways, they are concerned for her. And they carry some of her pounds of flesh for her.
And when a bomb falls on anyone anywhere in the world, the rest of us have experienced a near miss, and we all pick up a small bit of the guilt.
 

+++++
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 10:37 am
My parents sat in bomb shelters during world war two and they and others have told me some things about what it was like (and in some sense I, like everyone else alive at this moment, have survived many bombing raids). You sit and listen to the bombs falling and you hope they fall on someone else. That is not to say you wish others dead, it is just that if the bombs have to fall on someone, you don't want it to be on you and your closest loved ones.
The lads who wandered out into no man's land in the first world war collectively composed a song that seems to say it:
'... I don't want to be a soldier ...
... send out my mother, my sister and my brother
but for god's sake don't send me ...'
But the lads went out anyway ... and their fathers went with them ... as did bits of their mothers ... and bits of their sisters ... and bits of their brothers ...
In times of war there are always countries that remain more or less neutral, and they have their uses. They do diplomacy. They keep the idea of peaceful living alive. And they preserve gene stocks. While British genes (which are more or less limitless in their worldwide reference points - which justifies my use of the term British genes: genes do not observe human national boundaries, despite the efforts of the nazis of many nations, including my own) were being bombed in world war, two our Irish cousins, even those who seemed to despise us, were doing a favour for us by keeping a pool of very similar genes safe for us. But all too many of us from both sides of the Irish sea waterway have been killed fighting each other and fighting common causes.
 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 10:51 am
When the suicidal terrorists made flying bombs of civilian airplanes, most of us probably thought-felt something like: ... that's terrible, thank god I wasn't too near to any of that ...
(Perhaps a more honest represention would be: 'FUCKING HELL')
... and then we sat back to watch the show of spectacular images from a safe distance (the lust of the eye for the spectacular) ... and felt the full range of emotions between us ... but individually we could not quite get it ... we couldn't quite take it in ... we couldn't quite feel enough ... and couldn't find the words to say it ...
In such circumstances switching off the emotions and being quite coldly rational is the normal response for some people, myself included.
There are limits to fellow feeling in a world of 6 billion or so people. You can't love everyone. and you can't grieve properly for every death. If you gave a full emotional response to each of the tragic events, you'd spend you whole life grieving, and that's no way to live. You have to cut yourself off occasionally, and feel only for your nearest and dearest.
On September 11, Jo Moore seems to have cut off her emotions from what was happening, and got on with her job. Mid-lifer Jo, a vicar's daughter according to reports, made a terrible seeming error of judgement apparently because she was just too professionally detached from other people's human realities. Indifferent reason can be just as monstrous seeming as violent emotion. 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 11:03 am
You can't love them all, and you can't grieve for them all, but you can always pause from your own preoccupations for a while to reflect on other people's points of view - and give them a few moments thought and feeling.
...

And the catty comments always seem to have a fresh twist to them.
Flabby female weight watchers, who always had in the back of their minds the neverending question of how to stop piling on the pounds, and who did things that harmed them, such as smoking, and crash diets, just to keep the weight down, looked at Jo and noticed that the already slim Jo has lost weight recently. And they sense the cause without being able to vocalise perhaps at first. And although they are angry at her for some things (and normally a bit envious of her because she is thinner than she is), they feel for her, because she is showing signs of withering. And although her weight is mostly discussed in catty sounding ways, they are concerned for her. And they carry some of her pounds of flesh for her.
And when a bomb falls on anyone anywhere in the world, the rest of us have experienced a near miss, and we all pick up a small bit of the guilt.
 
+++++