Ranting On

  Delicacy About Death

When I die,

I hope that nobody

is gonna refer to the event

as me ‘passing away’.

Euphemisms frost my arse.

Of course, when I’m dead

there’ll be fuckall I can do

to complain about it.

     It’s Probably Wrong, Anyway

The pretension of radio announcers

who read weather forecasts,

and of course that of the TV weather hair-dos,

of ostentatiously refusing to pronounce

the ‘th’ in ‘north’ and ‘south’

when combined with ‘east’ or ‘west’, as in:

(“a storm coming from the sou’west”

“wind from the nor’east”),

as if doing so automatically qualifies them

as old salts from a century ago

or something

would be pathetic

if it didn’t sound so irritatingly artificial

and self-satisfied.

     Control

The Forces of Evil

are out of control.

The Forces of Evil

are in control.

They’re in control

of the world’s

economic system

and its component parts,

except in Iceland,

but I’m not there,

and they’re making life harder

for most people

and other species,

while careering out of control.

The Forces of Evil

are in control

of almost every

political system

in the world,

except maybe Iceland’s,

but I’m not there,

and they’re ratcheting up

their domination and repression

almost everywhere,

careering out of control.

The Forces of Evil

are in control

of what most people

see and hear

and think about,

and how,

setting the agendas,

and striving continuously

to isolate and contain

information and thinkers

inconvenient to themselves,

while careering out of control.

The Forces of Evil

are in control

of the world’s major religions,

brainwashing people

from toddlerhood

to consider evil to be a virtue,

their hatreds being out of control.

The Forces of Evil

being in control

means that human societies

will have to become

enormously worse

before serious threats

to their control

materialise, but since

the Forces of Evil

are careering out of control

this will happen

someday.

Still, whoever replaces them

are certain to become

Forces of Evil

themselves

as long as control is still possible –

and it will be –

because people who crave control

are unable to control

their egotistically evil selves.

  I Suppose Somebody’s Gotta Do It

My major social function over the decades

has been as a receptacle

for cheap talk

and empty words.

Never a shortage, that I can recall.

                    Don’t Be Offensive!

Maybe we should have laws or something

to prevent people from saying and doing offensive shit.

After all, plenty of things offend me:

almost all TV commercials offend me, for one thing;

aggressive religiosity offends me;

Las Vegas-style entertainment offends me;

wearing peaked caps backwards for no reason

other than conformism offends me;

patriotic American hypernationalism offends me;

Vodafone’s so-called customer service offends me;

using euphemisms and writing ‘f*ck’ and ‘sh#t’

instead of ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ offends me;

everything about the Jeep brand offends me;

Benyamin Netanyahu offends me,

as do all other self-righteous, power-abusing bullies;

signalling right and then turning left offends me;

Good Friday being a public holiday offends me;

pseudoscientific quackery and elaborate superstitions offend me;

forcing pop music on me when I’m on hold offends me;

global capitalism offends me.

If people can’t respect my feelings enough

to desist from offending me,

and the law provides me with no recourse,

well, I suppose they deserve any retribution

that I can inflict on them.

Don’t you agree?

Too bad I can’t find a congenial cleric

to buy me a Kalashnikov,

not to mention some ammunition, eh?

And don’t tell me that any difference exists

between respect and arse-kissing, either.

      Personal Importance

I like to be on time,

and when people are late

and make me wait

without tipping me off

about what the story is

it makes me feel that they think their time,

and therefore their lives –

because time is the substance of our lives –

are more important than mine.

I wouldn’t argue with them.

Despite what others may think

one way or the other about it –

if at all –

when I’m just me

I’m nothing.

They can attach importance, of course,

to whatever they choose.

     Etiquette With The Harebrained

I know some people,

actually fairly nice people,

who are eager suckers

– to the extent that it consumes their lives –

for every harebrained superstition,

conspiracy theory, fad diet,

pseudoscience, and quick hustle

that pops up,

devoutly panicking about the dangers

of chemtrails, fluoridation, Agenda 21,

EMF radiation, aspartame, vaccines –

and indeed any scientifically sound medical practice –

and eagerly embracing

astrology, iridology, psychic readings, gluten-free paleo diets,

homeopathy, acupuncture, and alternate medicine in general –

all superstitions that I despise.

What to do, what to say, how to act

presents a problem for me,

as I hate getting into arguments,

especially pointless ones

with true believers,

whether I otherwise like them or not.

All I can do is endure and ignore those mania

that they throw in my face

and make myself scarce

as soon as possible.

                           P.E.G.

Six-twenty in the autumn pre-dawn.

A car rolled by where I was walking

up Boundary Road

toward the Five Crossroads roundabout.

I heard the snarl of a motor

coming rapidly up from behind me.

Another car, moving maybe twice as fast as the first,

zoomed up to within a metre or two

of its back bumper.

The first car slowed down

and then, several seconds later, stopped

at the roundabout

to let a couple of cars go by,

with the tailgater stopped behind him.

The tailgater hadn’t saved himself any time,

but he probably did achieve

his real objective,

which was almost certainly

obtaining some sick psychosexual ego gratification.

                       River Road

I live a block or so from River Road,

which is known for its upmarket real estate,

and although the houses are decorative

and the trees are big,

I avoid it as much as I can.

The problem is the drivers.

River Road is a more or less straight shot

with no cross streets

from its start at the railroad overpass

to the roundabout at the Fairfield Bridge,

and then again to the roundabout

at the Pukete Bridge,

so the generally upmarket drivers

treat it like a racetrack.

I avoided driving on it for years.

I don’t think it matters that much

that River Road residents have clout

and have managed to keep its speed limit at 50 kph.

Those big, expensive cars tailgate each other

even when they’re both going 80,

as well as when they’re behind people

who’d rather not get speeding tickets,

speeding tickets being affordable to the rich.

I rank tailgaters with taggers,

so I’ve even given up walking my dog

along the River Road footpaths

because the traffic is

just too ugly to see.

                 Mishpukha My Arse

Although I’m Jewish, for better or for worse,

or for neither,

I can feel no affinity

for the dick-headed stupidity

and self-righteous maleficence

of the psychopathic Israeli power elite,

nor kinship with those within it.

The members of my own family

who have admired them, aped them, and cheered them on

can give me the shivers.

              Is It Me?

Let me tell you

how much I dislike

being ignored.

Are you paying attention?

There’s no point in asking.

Like that young man

from SJS

who seemed to be listening

as I explained his instructions

for the job I hired him to do

and then ignored or disregarded –

or both ignored and disregarded –

every one of them.