A brief ramble through disconnected ideas...

Well now, I didn't realise at the time of my last post in March, fresh from my hols, that it would be so long before I got round to posting again. I suppose it's been a combination of a heavy work schedule and just plain laziness that has prevented me from writing anything. It can't be indifference to what's happening in the world around me - I'm passionate about a lot of issues - so it has to be work, laziness, and indecisiveness, or should that be indecision? I know not. Many is the time when I've started writing something and then left it, never to return to it. I honestly don't know how those bloggers who blog nearly every day manage it. They always seem to have something to blog about and the time to do it in.

So, anyway, what's my topic for this post? Frankly, I don't have a clue! And with that, you will doubtless have guessed that this is all improvised and made up as I go along (now there's tautology for you!), hence the title. It could instead have been called a 'waffle' or a 'rabbit' but 'ramble' won the day, it's more lyrical or poetical or something of that sort. Some things are just right and others, well, not so right, more to the left of right... hehhe... oh dear, this is getting to sound like pure drivel now, which is worse than a ramble or a waffle or even a rabbit!



Pretty Colours

Perhaps the spectrum of pretty colours opposite will hold your attention for awhile if my reflections are failing to grip you. I see myself passing through it from darkness into the light - night into day, despair into hope - or, for the more ghoulish of us, the other way around, from light into darkness, day into night, something along the lines of Edgar Allan Poe's macabre tale, the Masque of the Red Death! There, the progression is through a series of rooms, from light to dark, culminating in a room wholly draped in black and with blood-red windows. And that's where Prince Prospero, played by the charismatic Vincent Price in the movie of that name, meets his ignominious end. The picture below shows the various incarnations of the Grim Reaper as they go forth into the world to spread plague and pestilence wherever they pass - a nice bunch, wouldn't you say? As if mankind weren't already doing enough to fuck up the world, they step in with a helping hand to add to the general misery and wretchedness. Oh the good life!

And talking of ignominious ends... are we now witnessing the end of Europe as we know it? Besieged on all sides by constant waves of impoverished migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, ravaged by economic recession, riven by social unrest, targeted by international Islamic terrorism, disrupted by strikes and demos, adrift in a sea of uncertainties and shifting moral values, threatened by new developing world powers, Europe seems to be faltering and failing in its economic, social and strategic aspirations. As the so-called BRIC countries and the rest of the developing world awaken from centuries of slumber, during which they underwent considerable exploitation, mainly by Europeans, it is now their turn to exploit Europe which seems to have lost its way and is slowly sinking into the mire of confusion and disorientation. Either that or I've misread the signs! 

I just can't help thinking that the world, as we have fashioned it to-date, is a mixed-up crazy place, with little if any rhyme or reason to it. Never has it been so hard to perceive the purpose of our own existence and our role and place in the scheme of things than today, I think. In cave-man times, things must have been a lot clearer, and as their time was wholly taken up with the struggle to survive and reproduce, there was little room left for cogitating on their place in the grand scheme of things even if they had the brain-power at the time to engage in such an elevated pursuit. Everything must have made complete sense in those days. Look at this little fellow below... he's evidently been on some hunting foray and by the looks of it the tables have been turned on him and he's running for his life now!

Today the world is an utterly confusing place, and it's all our fault of course, because the natural world continues in the same way it always has, with the occasional earthquake, volcanic eruption, flood, drought, hurricane, tsunami, and stuff like that, but essentially everything goes on in the same way it always has. And then we come along, the joker in the pack, throw a spanner in the works and start to complicate the way things are, with our so-called culture, religion and politics stirred in with technology and scientific invention, and... bingo!... the world turns into a confusing maelstrom of conflicting needs, demands and ambitions which completely screw us up and send us running to a shrink (who's just as screwed-up as we are) to try and make sense of things in general and of our own existence in particular. A quest doomed to failure from the outset!

Well, there it is, folks, all human analytical thought and logical deduction served up to you in the space of one blog post! And it's all free. What you do with it now is up to you. You can give it your consideration and become even more confused and fucked-up then you already are - no disrespect intended - or you can forget you ever read it and carry on regardless, by far the saner option. Getting on with life is always better than thinking about it. Too much reflection is bad for you, it allows you to perceive the laughable tragedy and lunacy of human existence and... well... sows the seeds of... confusion! Just take a look at the mad expression on the face of this modern-day troglodyte - he's probably located some porn online and thinks all his birthdays have come at once!

I will be back with more food for thought, sooner rather than later, I hope, and with more seering observations on the human psyche and its social ramifications - fascinating stuff and not to be missed!