Stories, Rhymes and Brain fallout.

  Break out, lie do wn, take a nap, Many of us have ‘holidays’ in the summer (or winter) periods, one, two or (the lucky ones) three or more weeks, not thinking of work or the day-to-day struggle of life. We swim, walk, ski, lie back, read, talk, travel, dance and generally seek a level of enjoyment we don’t have on a day-to-day level because of our hectic lives.   The hectic days in the rest of the year are filled with work from which the finances come to pay for the Holidays.   So, let’s get this straight, we work ourselves into burnouts, stress-related illnesses and such so that we can rejuvenate and heal ourselves during holidays to get us through the next months of work, work, work. Sounds like a vicious circle to me.   What if we micro-manage? What I mean by this is not to look at life in years but in days. A year has twelve months, a day has 24 hours.   24 hours minus 8 for a good night's rest leaves 16 hours. Minus, say, 8 hours of work and another 1.5 h...

  Bad Investment. It's nearing the end of the Holiday period, and business is gradually restarting at 'God and the Universe- Inc.' After two or three millennia of well-earned rest.  The board of Directors, Owner, and CEO God Almighty are sitting around the Table at headquarters, to discuss the last million-year reports and the checks and balances.  (God) "So, welcome back, everyone. I hope you all had a great vacation, but it's time to get back to work." "Any big news?" (The accountant) "Well, about the universe, generally things are going as planned, and we are, in fact, expanding as we had intended" (God) "Great news, it seems like we can just sit back and relax".  (The Accountant) There is one hitch, tiny but worth looking at. I don't know if you remember, but we started that experiment with one of the planets in that quiet corner of the Milky Way. On one of its distant arms, we called the planet 'Earth', remember? ...

  Here we are on holiday in Canada, Newfoundland- to be more precise in the community of Freshwater near Carbonear. The deck of the house we rent looks out over a bay in the north Atlantic. As I write it is 27 degrees (centrigrade)… and that “Ain’t right” according to the born and bred Newfies I talk to. There are Wildfires burning acres of forest just 15 km up the coast, my cell phone ‘pings’ with evacuation warnings every hour, but I’m sat here in the sun, enjoying the view. Listeniing to the Gulls (do they ever shhut up?) Every so often there is a bit of fisticuffs- or whatever Gulls would call it, between the different types of Gull, a fisherman has just thrown his scraps into the water causing the fight, everyone wants a free lunch right? Here we are far away from the hustle and bustle of the city life back home. I haven’t really followed the news for three weeks almost, I occasionaly get one or two headlines on the radio when I’m in the car, out for a spin. Not much chan...

  Less is more. I just can’t see how we’re going to turn back the tide, I really can’t. Even where woke/conscious people gather at music festivals the shit we leave behind for others to clean up is enormous.   I-phones need Cobalt, women and children are mining that shit in primitive conditions poisoning themselves and their surrounding areas, we don’t see that so we don’t give a f*** about it. We buy, we use we throw away, without thinking what effect that has on us and our planet, we are conditioned to consume consume consume.   Order, use, throw away, order, use, throw away ad infinitum. And one day the whole system will collapse, when it does collapse we’ll be there to take pictures of it to put on our socials. But we can’t say we weren’t warned of the coming apocalypse.   Extreme temperatures, storms, floods and forest fires all over the world and we carry on like nothing is happening. We are all Nero now, playing around while the world around us burns, floods a...

  I heard a rumour that all the really ‘cool’ people will be at the protest, the protest where you had to be, it was in a square with that nice looking little coffee bar, full of laptop warriors and baristas with art school backgrounds. The protest went well, we all shouted what the problem was with that ‘thing’ it was about, then we rounded it off with a fair trade Latté served by a spotted minimum wager, in the bar where the wifi is perfect.   The anarchists had a good turn-out I felt, some old commie with hammer and sickle badge was selling ‘class war’ coasters, the gays were out in numbers, there was some tensions between the Trans and the Feminists, but   generally all stayed peaceful. On the way home I was feeling ecstatic I treated myself to a new T-shirt the guy with the stall was selling, a percentage of the profit was going to a project in Africa, where ironically the T-shirt will be heading soon in some landfill. I shouldn’t wear T-shirts with slogans at my age...

  Probably you are okay. Maybe we are all searching too much, I mean the internet and podcast spheres are full of self-help advice, as if we all are missing something.   Maybe we are all ok as we are, ok there will be always people who are trying hard to rid themselves of traumas that have an effect on how they live their lives, but that isn’t the majority.   Maybe it’s ok that some of us are introverts, some of us are extroverts, some are hyper active some are happy to just sit their lives out, Maybe it’s ok not to be motivated, not to have plans or goals, maybe your goal is to work less and sit more in the garden and read a book, what’s wrong with that?   All this ‘achieve your goals’ shit makes people feel insufficient in some way, always thinking that in some aspect of our lives we are just not good enough, maybe ‘the way we are is the way we should be’, we are not some performing dolphins that have to keep jumping through the hoops to please others.   We ar...

  Review, review, review. I never saw myself as an expert on anything. I mean, I know my job. Still, I would never call myself an expert. At best, all I know is how it works for me. Yet every day I open my email, and there they are, the mails, asking me to review whatever I have bought or signed up for that particular day or week. “Nigel, how would you rate our performance in delivering the parcel you ordered?” How am I supposed to answer that? Did the truck driver have a bad day? Was he encountering highwaymen keen on stealing my parcel? Did he have to fight them off? What is the usual way parcels are delivered? I ordered it and a few days later it arrived at my house. That’s it, end of contract. How do I ‘rate’ that? Is it 0-5 stars? I’d say 5, but I don’t know the whole story. The driver might have had a long lunch, which caused at least a half-hour delay. I need to know the details. If you want me to ‘rate’ your performance, please give me the whole story.  “Nigel, you rec...

  What The F**k is going on?  Is the world going crazy ? No, but the people are, at least the people in the ‘first-world countries’ (a highly debatable term).  It seems that problems arise when there is less and less trust in traditional politicians and political parties , it is then that we start electing politicians to office who claim to be against conventional politics and ‘the ruling elite’ (the fact that they are usually wealthy and have been sitting in the shadows of traditional politics for years doesn’t seem to deter us from voting for them).  So it seems we live in times when we have become increasingly childlike. Despite all our education and knowledge, we want the people in charge to ‘get on with it!’ without bothering us with their checks and balances and ‘painful facts’. “Do your job! “Solve MY immediate problems and get it done whatever way you think best. “This becomes the shortcut for ‘oligarchs’, ‘strongmen’, and ‘petty dictators’. Is it too much ...