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A graph of the first day of my little poll investigation of astrological elements... the proportions of deviants in these is here...




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Sometimes things seem to have a sad inevitabillity... His daughter refused to go to the wedding because she saw what Heather Mills was like... her ex-husband in Canada said any man should regret the day he met the nightmare woman... he was a rich older man, obvious prey for gold-diggers, who should have his eyes wide open... and yet, maybe on the rebound form a wonderful wife who had passed away, somehow or other he put on the blinkers and headed for the start.

He married her.

Four years later they are separated and she has $50million (and the whole world thinks she's mad and bad, but hell when did bad publicity stop people bouncing back?). It will be hard for her to get a charity to put her on their sponsors list now I guess! Though when the judge pointed out there was no evidence in her tax return of all this charity she's meant to have given, she said it was only her accountant not ticking the right box (and we've all filled in tax returns, so we have to give her that).

So why do we do it?

The world and his great-aunt are saying "don't do it". Even a little part of your head is saying "mmm this might be something you should think about". Your enemies are openly gloating and smiling at each other and whispering "you know what, the idiot is actually going ahead!" Your nicer foes are even quietly wishing you would stop, because they wouldn't wish such a fate on their worst enemy.

And yet you do it. You ignore everyone, all the evidence, and you go right on ahead.

And a few years later your name is dragged through the mud, (though you get out looking fairly clean as most people see it's kinda obvious she's a serial fantasist); you have lost millions, probably gone through hell, had your family life disrupted, and you have to see your little daughter being brought up by a woman who wants to give her 24-7 bodyguards and will probably be whispering nasty lies against you to her at bed time for the next 10 years. Or that's what you expect anyway.

I've been there, I'm sure we all have. Those martyrs about to be burned at the stake, how many of them had a thought like "dammit, all I had to say was 'oh well yes maybe you're right' and I wouldn't be here now". Why do we sometimes see a slippery slope leading down to a horrible chasm, and with everyone shouting warnings and trying to grab us, we just jump right on it and slide to our doom?


OK maybe I can't get too worked up about the travails of a guy with so many homes you need two hands to count them, and a fortune somewhere around a billion dollars, a fabulous musical legacy, and a pretty universal image as a fairly nice guy with a successful articulate daughter making an independent name for herself in fashion, whose previous wife's vegetarian food range is still successful...

But can you imagine how awful it must have been living 4 years with a woman who, for example, poured a full jug of water on her husband's lawyer in court before going out to rant to the press that everyone including the judge was an idiot and she should have actually got $250million?

The following was my response to this recently.... am I right I wonder?

I could not agree less with this desire to define things as meaningless. art, god, life.. they all are what you make it these days. I find the definition of anything as "whatever you want it to mean" is definitively meaningless. skilful realization of intent and the potential to enhance or inform perception are two essential elements of art. standing on a production line making rubber battery cases is not art. a photo with a nice idea that is not very skilfully realized and executed is not art, it represents an attempt to achieve art. to devalue art by saying that every attempt at it definitively succeeds is ultimately as pointless as saying "god made everything".

I get interested in something

so I delve into it and practise and learn

then I get good

then I get bored

then I get experimental

then I get lazy

then I don't prepare enough

then I get mediocre

then I stop doing it for a while

then I look back and see I was good sometimes

then I start all over again

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The London Olympic logo got such a slating when it came out, and I have to say after the first couple of minutes (when I did hate it!) I got it and from then on I have liked it a lot. It has energy, it's flexible, it's new and unfamiliar (which is why some people seem to prefer the old style logos like you get on airlines), it feels international and could be japanese as well as european, it can be animated and coloured, that slight challenge when you first see it at least wakes you up!...

Right.

That's it.

Back to work.







and by the way...

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A naked girl cleaned my bath today. When she bent over, her delightful breasts were like delicate fragile warm fruits hanging from the bough. However, mysteriously, it was her gentle, enquiring nature that was most attractive.

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Anyway...

For Christmas, I suddenly understood that the world view of Physics is - so far - mainly limited to one aspect of what we call physical reality, even though it is clearly bound closely to conscious perception.

What we call emergent properties may actually not be emerging at all but may be fundamental. Like organizing fields, gods and souls (to be poetic).

So I allow for a soul, eternal life, and the possibility that eating plum pudding with brandy - and watching girls in lingerie - may be valid after all.

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