Collected Notes - by Anthony Steyning novelist, essayist, playwright, critic.

(They won't let me click you right thru, so just copy and paste before going to YouTube yourself. Sorry, but well worth it!)

Uhuru, indeed! Five black men, attire, instruments, and names historically not their own. Their dignity and identity stolen at one point, but rising to the fruit of stunning intellect while still looked down upon by those only able to destroy: humbly I salute thee, Tony Williams, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Miles Davis!

(many of these jottings, particularly the political ones, have been transferred to www.steyning.wordpress.com)

Yes, call it a kitchen. The place where a serious writer starts, first collecting hardy and by themselves anodine ingredients then conjuring up a literary feast. Here a series of Steyning's Rough and Incidental Wisdoms, showing where some of all that creativity originates. Spontaneous stuff, called ejaculations by a friend of mine. Of a lucid canon, or at least a well worked mind. I myself describe them as mind squalls, or else braindrops that often go back some but in 'distilled' form end up in my properly completed work. Some of them even falling under my real name: G. Quiorselfe, the Quiorselves an ancient Viking tribe, originally named the Kjorselbs. On my mother's side Gofa an Iroquoi given name, thus many admirers, under partial breath, apt to mutter: Damn, there he goes again! Hey, Gofa... Quiorselfe!!

I LOOKED IT UP, PANSEXUALITY IS EXHIBITING A FATAL ATTRACTION TO POTS & PANS; HANDLES INCLUDED

Carpaccio was an Italian painter of the Venetian School before he invented the shredded beef salad my pitoune claimed, trying to impress Claude Balloun at Else's not far from Wilensky's on Montreal's Plateau. You look so dépanneur she also complimented him, but meant to say debonair...

Argentinians run their country the way they dance, legs intertwined: amazing to watch but it won't get them to the nearest bus stop

An acquaintance of mine in Toronto speaks with a heavy German accent pronouncing Breakfast with Boris Becker as Prickfest with Porous Pecker. He also constantly says For Kott's Sake which sounds every bit like...

The 'God' drug: 1 pill and we become incidental zombies for weeks; fearless, merciless, mass murderers! The Nazis and now ISIS have proven that they work. So what are morals? Also mere chemicals?

In some societies they never collect enough imagined shame to satisfy their lust for honour

Many reputations are stolen or else infections caused by unprotected media sneezing and other spreading of unsafe opinions

(Should narrow-thinking, reactionary old fogies take the UK out of the EU the itching next generation will put it straight back in; this hopefully well before they too become stupid old fogies)

Amsterdam Mad-House quotes overheard by sometime visitor, the astonished Claude Balloun who found la Sauce Hollandaise in abundance, but la Pensée Hollandaise in short supply

En waar volgens de criticus Cornelis Lootzak Nietzsche helemaal Noppezsche is!

'Ik zei tegen Ravel krijg nou de Bolero, daar zit Carmen van Bizet met haar vieze Choise!'

Plus waar het nationale symbool van Frankrijk niet Marianne of Jeanne d'Arc is maar La Vache Qui Rit, de ware Koe d'Etat!'

And then there are purely interpretive or perception wars, not really based on territory, freedom, religion, oppression or for that matter real facts, but on simple jealousy and envy. (Though still masked and sold as struggles for 'Independence', 'National Revolutions', 'The Preservation of Historical Rights', '1000 Year Empires Ordered by Destiny or by God' etc etc). For these are the antagonisms orchestrated and waged by those who think very highly of themselves, but for lack of balls, energy and integrity have been left behind, become marginal, frustrated and poorer than the upper crust by quite a lot. Consequently these the conflicts of a purely criminal nature, fought under the false pretense that a people or class conveniently deemed weak and inferior wrongly ended up with the goodies and the shop. Revenge in so many words; then again a born out-and-out killer or thief will always claim he was robbed and wronged in life in order to justify baseness and lies while promising you glory on your side. The eternal brutalism vs. accomplishment argument, if you can call it this given the dismal, even perverse reasoning that leads up to it.

Between Sturgeon and Salmond there's an awful lot of fish, or is it a lot of awful fish hanging round the Scottish Parliament

Obstinacy and truculence is an attempt to project strength, but only delivers highly dubious, short-term victory

(No wonder Trump admires the Russian way of doing business: same ilk, same primitive reasoning!)

There was a time that Paris, London and Washington through the integrity of their Assemblée, Parliament and Congress had risen well above the likes of Rio, Rome, Caracas, Moscow, Belgrade, Barcelona and so many more. But right now Nietzsche proves his point again when saying that in individuals insanity is rare, but that in groups, political parties, entire nations and certain epochs it is the rule...

And here's something else making perfect sense! You’re an alien from a superior civilization and you discover a blue/green mainly lush planet called earth. So what do you as the all-knowing, clever-as-hell cosmic radiation and time mastering, gravity riding, oxygen tolerating one decide to do? Instead of checking out the Amazon basin, Yankee Stadium or the Rhine to see what this exciting new place is all about, you land in one of the ugliest and most inhospitable deserts that you can find which also happens to be a hostile military base…. No then the Virgin Mary is a lot smarter, you’ll never catch her in Alaska, anywhere on permafrost or attempting to appear in Mecca where she would get shot.

Nations go to war without calling a referendum. Also, this was not about something relatively trivial like approving the compulsary use of seatbelts by simple majority.

Cameron's folly was not the holding of a referendum as such, but one on an issue of utmost and all encompassing importance to the economic welfare of the entire nation by not basing its result on a mandatory 2/3 majority and a 70% voter turnout.

Lasting destructive civil unrest or worse result if a plebiscite gets pushed through when these rules are not met and what one gets when employing one only for partisan gain.

Is the psychiatrist a priest for the secular age, the only one left to offer salvation? A Druid for modern times? Be careful, psychiatry itself can be a disorder when practiced by the neurotic on the neurotic with neither of them deprived of material means probably what first caused the problem...

While I'm on the subject, the current Pope is a fabulist man-child, the Church both his 'Mami' and his umbrella. It's still not clear where he stood when thousands of bodies fell from Buenos Aires skies, not such a Good Air after all, but then again ecclesiastical leaders are masters at simultaneously locking in and blocking out

And remember, Ma’am, sitting down at dinner in your splendid gown adorned with your finest jewels, that the waiter's balls however-well-covered dangle only 23.5 cm from your face.

Carpaccio was an Italian painter of the Venetian School before he invented the salad

On Trump: If during the Twenties and Thirties in Munich and Berlin instead of applauding they'd ridiculed and laughed out loud or left the room every time that grotesque idiot spoke, it would have destroyed him. Something to consider with the bad, peroxide blonde Washington windbag!

On Brexit: If the world's a ship of fools then Britain takes the cake right now. My advice to the illustrious is: Don't let the Rubicon become your Suez

Did you see Putin highfive MBS, the joy of meeting a fellow murderer, that happy brotherhood of the heartless?

Dick Tuck is not a surgical procedure, but a Californian who when defeated in a U.S. State election said 'The People Spoke! The Bastards!' If his name is real and it turns out he is or was Jewish, I'd say predestinato, figlio mio!

There goes Anne, she's my wife. She runs a House of Correction, it's where I live..! All because I wanted to follow up on Milton Berle's advice and open a halfway house for girls who won't go all the way!

Did you notice how at the slightest pop of a drone the fearless military parade in front of Maduro fled the wrong way, not towards him and his spotlessly attired, well-fed companions on the dais? Protecting them all with the might of their heels....

Those who forcefully cling to the past always claim that they're fighting for our future

When I was a kid I asked Einstein if the universe is still expanding, in it galaxies constantly adrift, our own Milky Way and planetary system on the move and doing the exact same thing, on top of this the earth not only spinning around our sun but around its own axel, what is the speed of a cabin attendant walking fore to aft inside a large aircraft flying against daylight from say Tokyo to New York? Or better still, what is speed?

(Even so, it was only an act of relative gravitas as at this precise moment I managed to step back and he hung out the window of a speeding train, causing not only light and sound but his slap to stretch!)

Nuestro planeta navega por el espacio a 30 kilometros por segundo; las galaxias se devoran unas y otras con una voracidad inexorable; los minerales instalados en nuestro cuerpo se crearon en una estrella a miles de años luz y llegaron a este planeta a causa de una formidable explosion cuando esa estrella se convertio en una super-nova; este perro mundo es un grano de polvo perdido en la Via Lactea poblado de idiotas que dicen usted sabe con quien est hablando; dentro de los neutrones y protones que componen el nucleo del atomo estan los quartz y debajo de los quartz, tal vez, habita la nada, donde podria anidar el pajaro de la vida.

Este vertigo cosmico ya se ha instalado en la conciencia humana. Es tambien una forma de volar. A caballo de esta realidad la tecnologia gilipolla moderna que obliga a la historia a devorarse cada mañana a si misma, como si esta en la pista de un circo.

Non obstante la vida y la humanidad estan sometida neuroticamente a una doble velocidad: Mientras la Tiera gira a 30 kilometros por segundo, en cualquier mezquita, sinagoga o iglesia hay lideres espirituales que imparten todavia doctrinas fosilizadas desde la Edad Media que son planetarias; y un hacker en Nueva Zelandia puede meterse en el sistema bancaria y fianciera y desestabilizar la Bolsa de Nueva York, comiendo su pan Bimbo.

Ante esto vertigo cosmico y planetario que pintan dos politicos discutiendo cara a cara y prometiendo cosas, si ignoran que todo se puede reventar bajo sus pies mañana?

The other day I read about some public religious nut case stating he often disagrees with the Lord... How touching, but what a poor bastard! Inventing a Deity, making his own words and especially hopes come out of His mouth, then picking a fight with Him. Is this guy mad or what?

It's easier to understand Robinson Crusoe who after the 4 year disappearance of his parrot on his island heard him say: Poor Robin, Robin Crusoe! How did you come here? Where have you been? Why are you here? But one who concluded that those laments at one point had to have come from his own mouth, not from the sky.

Unless it was the Parrot playing with hìm.... Our eternal, our holy Parrot who art in Heaven.... Yes, that one!

(Montaigne's XVI century neuroticism avant-la-lettre, saying When I play with my cat, how do I know it's not playing with me? Ça va pas, mon petit?)

Trump's Waffle House on Pennsylvania Avenue had nothing to do with Kim's turnaround. For the first time an erratic radical in office in Washington, the latter was given an ultimatum by Xi after his secret train trip to Bejing. China doesn't want to see an 'accidental' American victory in the Koreas and a pro-West united powerhouse nextdoor. This way peace and status quo on the peninsula remain balanced in China's favour, all the rest of it pure theatre. Xi is a very astute chess master, take my word for it.

*************

On Nationalism & Sectarianism

Only primitives and bloody fools think hatred empowers, even though history proves it always destroys! Out-hating is a national sport in some miserable societies where anger is manly, ostensibly boosting the ego of the endemically frustrated and other losers. But false pride is the stupid way forward and the tool of schemers selling 'glory' and 'meaning' while insideously indoctrinating children with historical distortion favouring the 'cause'. With none of this coming from romantic conviction, but from banal ambition to reach and retain the top.

DIU means Declaracion de Independencia Unilateral, which in English does not but should perhaps translate into DUI

(Driving Under the Influence)

Nationalism implies Dictatorship

The reason the Venezuelan military is not intervening is that this is the birth of a military dictatorship headed by one fat, useful idiot. They saw how their Cuban counterparts lived happily for over 50 years and said screw the people, this is for us! Yes, 5000 narco generals, compared to the US with only 900 highly principled ones working their ass off.... Un Trou D'Etat, as my friend Claude Balloun likes to call that country!

Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Slovakia, Czech Republic lived for 50 or more years under cruel totalitarian oppression and are finally free in liberal Europe, yet incomprehensibly they all voted in ultra-right, authoritarian, xenophobic governments recently! The world used to talk about the ugly American, but what about the ugly Pole, the ugly Hungarian, the ugly.... And now their neighbour Austria as well! Must be something in the water!!!

My new reality show: The End of Scratching

A sequel to Carol Burnett's The End of Wetness

I thought I'd tell you that the French TUtoyer does not translate into YOUrinate.

(Pleased to meet you! Do you mind if we yourinate, it's so much more informal...)

THE CATALANS VOTED FOR IN-DEEP-END-ANCE

Catalunya Expaña? I don't think so!

But even if successful history proves that those who provoke a rebellion are not qualified to lead a nation, ending up destroying it by their ignorance

Given all that violent chaos in the cosmos, a peaceful totally motionless windstill morning on a comfortably sunny beach is in itself the miracle, only then.... us!

Where I live the 2017 total eclipse happened at night, so I couldn't see it

New Film: Harvey Weinstein slept here!

The Current Whitehouse Is A Dignity Free Zone

With the NRA's twisted logic let's hand all citizens, new legal immigrants and even tourists upon arrival at their hotel a loaded AK-47 and supposedly we'll all see the end of crime...

(or perhaps the end of time?)

Segregation was the prohibition of human decency

Populism occurs when the positioned placate the uninformed

The slowest common denominator

In the city of Utrecht, The Netherlands, in a busy shopping street, there's a zebra crossing for homosexuals. But no one has ever seen one using it. Homosexuals? No, Zebras!

To kill is to exhibit a tragic lack of creativity. Djihadism has nothing to do with someone's God, it's lunatic, defeatist, hang-dog, messianic fatalism, an organised deathwish with the added bait of promised glory. Too bad fanatics are this dumb and sincere, dreamed up revenge with violence all that they possess; empathy, what's that?! And it started with the early assassination of curiosity, the initial creed one of exclusion of free thought, of investigation, of exploration, the outright denial of everything... No truth, no facts, no joy, no wit, no humour, no love, just lifeless vacuum!

HEADLINE: UNDER THE MORAL LEADERSHIP OF DONALD TRUMP AND BILL COSBY THE U.S. IN URGENT NEED OF OPEN HEART SURGERY!

Hey! The Doc'z dizz way, ztupid....

Trump is not a thinker but a reactor and intimidator, in boxing terms known as a counter fighter never a master of his own punch, incapable of doing anything on his own

America, a nation in search of a rudder, a new FDR, too often led by brazen, myopic opportunists armed only with plattitudes. Yes, there's been something unspeakably juvenile in many recent U.S. presidents. Then again other world leaders have been far worse, with no philosopher kings waiting in the wings! Poor... us all!

I don't think you can vote for the right thing for the wrong reason, anymore than that you can vote for the wrong thing for the right reason. But you can definitely vote for the wrong thing for the wrong reason, besides of course voting for the right thing for the right reason, still something unattainable for some

Places where 'prayer' is the only pastime, the other choice is to hang oneself ! (Kamel Daoud, happily and courageously, given his Algerian Society, one of the few there not using religion as public transportation!)

Places where they still don't get it that prayer is the fastest road not to heaven, but to certain hell, areas where they'll still kill you if you don't kneel down and bend five times a day! Folks there unable to comprehend that not 'transfering out' all day, but to be uncessingly productive is a far holier way to please their Lord!

- To the lady with her glasses on the tip of her nose: Is this how you wear your bra?

- Tyrannosaurus, Brontosaurus, Kritosaurus & the tall, the terrifying Thesaurus, devouring short syllables and juicy synonyms: live!!!

-OBESITY: Climate change is the result of the ridiculous body weight of the average American bearing down on his continent, tilting the planet, changing its axis and orbit around the sun, leading to global warming. Nothing to do with carbon dioxide emissions and all those wild theories. Just go to any U.S. airport and start looking at the fattest travellers in the world.

- Breaking News: An official Russian trade delegation has arrived in Australia to negotiate the export of 10.000 Kangaroos, to be employed in their criminal court system.

- Even though life is the same, same thing, many times over, most still don't get it.

- Creating differing human species, is another one of nature's cruel little jokes

- You may be alive, but once you cease creating memory, your life has long stopped

- Faith in Globalism: 15 million Bibles a year produced in China, for worldwide sales. Also clucifixes, with oh without Chlist!

- The Joy of Slaughter: To savagely destroy another human to express-order your front seat in the afterlife, essentially rejecting all earthly life, including your own, so swindling your very Creator. And you say this is not absurd thinking? But then, how dare you cry, wheep, wail, bemoan your own, which we see you do, while you send your sons to take down people none of you knew, and whose only crime it was to buy food at an outdoor market?

The difference between religion and a sect or a cult is that the latter punish those who want to get out. As such they have criminal underpinnings because they hold down believers as prisoners, even though some of the indoctrinated may think they're free, Stockholm Syndrome style...

The problem starts when religions become huge cults, because they operate like one.

THEY'RE FLEEING, INSISTING ON BRINGING ALONG ALL THE BELIEFS AND TRADITIONS THAT CAUSED THEIR UNSPEAKABLE SUFFERING... YOU SEE, THIS IS THEIR SACRED RIGHT!

INSTEAD OF TRACING THE HUMAN GENOME, IT IS PATHETIC HUMAN THINKING NEEDING TO BE TRACKED, MAPPED AND CURED...

- The new radical Swiss party, the Muesli Brotherhood, a bunch of cereal killers

- I met two girls from Hong Kong who work in the same garment factory. They told me they are loom mates.

-Worldwide arms industries and the American National Rifle Association are all to be commended for their contributions towards planetary population control. Their motto: What Aids, Malaria and Cancer can't get, We will!

-The famous Steyning Diet: Have a full, healthy dinner in the morning, a snack in the afternoon, and breakfast not too late at night. You'll end up looking like me....

-My friend Alf thinks Heidegger's Time and Being (Zeit und Sein) is last call at the Viennese deli on the corner of 2d and 35th

- One clochard looking at the other, saying he didn't realise what devastating effect it had on the country after he stopped spending

-What to make of a disturbed elephant made up fatally, to look like a nightingale

-The shroud of Turin originally came from Belgium, which is famous for its Brussels shrouds.

- The 'Moe' character good for comedy. Extremely busy... acting busy, talking rushed about non-events as if he can hardly cope with what's going on, but we all know he's done dick in years and sponging off family, doing nothing of substance but talk

- Or the essentially humourless man. When in mixed company always checking if his wife laughs first, before loudly bursting out himself. A camera would catch him. Uncanny team laughter, but some times awkward when their synchronization gets screwed up.

- Another one the 'Jake' character, the inability to enjoy more than one friendship, to embrace more than one set of loyalties, the distinct narrowness of character, well developed otherwise. All others kept away with polite indifference.

- A prisoner constantly asked what day it is, but what time it is, as if he had to go somewhere and driving his cell mate literally up the wall

Dave lost his hearing in an accident, but after years was finally able to get an ear drum transplant. The problem, his surgeon messing up, placing the incus between the wrong cheeks…. !! Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture nothing, nothing compared to…. poor, poor bastard.... night and day… summer, winter: KABOOOOMM

-It has been called the love of the faceless: it takes an evolved mind to feel a complete stranger's pain. Hence, goodness is awareness

-Crude little Stalin said gratefulness is for dogs, always putting down his loyalists

-Talented, mostly nasty, horny dwarfs with oversized heads: Kant, Mahler, Koestler, Camus, Konigsberg, Polanski, Bernstein and loads more

-Bangkok sounds like a motel, she said. She should know, her motto: all's well that hangs well.

-A friend of mine thinks a Caribou is someone from Trinidad, Jamaica, or the Bahamas

-When I was young I got some guacamole all over my ukulele, it was horrible, horrible

- A friend of mine's a gynecologist. Or as he's known in the trade Doctor Clitoris Causa

-Swans sing before they die, though in certain instances it would be preferable they died before they sang.

- And speaking of lip service: Empress Wu Hu of the Tang dynasty insisted her dignitaries, including all foreign ambassadors pay her and her fertility homage by performing respectful cunnilingus on her as she placed her exposed genitals on a special wooden elevation, set up for the occasion in the Imperial lobby. Ambassador number 22 one afternoon, from a country that shall go unnamed, and more of a cunning linguist than anything else, not surprisingly became unwell. He was forced to resign, receiving a discharge, though clearly not from her.

-My horse, an effete snob if ever there was one, constantly refers to his Oat Cuisine. As he is no camel, I named him Humphry. And if injured, I shall certainly not take him to New Humpshire

- My other horse, a stallion named Christopher, got a little horny the other day. So I took him to the Redlight District, where he found himself a nightmare

-My dog's a bachelor. He's also a felon, recently acquitted under a flea bargain arrangement

-The dinosaur population dwindled precipitously 75 millions years ago, after they started taking flying lessons

-Coitus Interruptus: Coitus, you bastard, you do this again, and I'll smack you one!

-The dyslexic Lone Ranger: Ho Hi, Sliver! Very literate though, reading Darles Chickens

-The Tannhäuser they built around it, will be completed next year-I get the finger you don't like me

-And speaking of stiff upper lips, actually this cliché is dead wrong. Upper class twits in England speak with a stiff lower lip, producing that Malcolm Muggeridge square mouth and when placing an upright toothpick in it the unmistakeable sound of ghastly gasp speak

-There was a hold-up on 32d St. The Police asked a Jehovah's Witness what happened, but he said he hadn't seen anything

-Sainthood is Rome's Hall of Fame, but without the batting averages and the stolen bases

-The actor Seymon Staynes will play agent 007, his publicist Victoria Feltham announced

-My neighbour is a girl dating a dentistry student who practices on her cavities

-Sharks are primal and stupid. Dolphins are affectionate, evolved and smart. Mammals returned to water with social intelligence. Sharks should watch & listen, have a salt drink with them.

-Some people are Sharks who are convinced the way to succeed is through hate at all cost. And sometimes they do win though they tend not to have friends or die old and by sleeping in.

-Preposterous and irrelevant: an organization calling a same gender union 'evil', while for generations criminally protecting its own representatives feasting on defenseless young boys and girls

-St. Thomas Aquino's 5 proofs are very, very far removed from being proof the proofs are proof.

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MOST OF MY PURELY POLITICAL ASSESSMENTS HAVE BEEN TRANSFERRED TO MY BLOG www.steyning.wordpress.com , CHECK THEM OUT! A CONTEMPORARY CITIZEN'S VOICE!

Ultimately we all commit suicide, even when for a while the only thing that keeps us going is the fear of dying, not the fear of death. In the end pointlessness taking over, the having nothing left worth seeing, worth wanting to hear, doing, looking forward to or waiting for. Beauty gone, mystery gone, shutting down when there still is nothing really wrong with us. No particular illness, no pain, no mal-functioning, just a profound and solitary feeling of ennui, even when not alone, but likely surrounded by some sailing the same ship. The rendering, the submission of it, exhausted by fight, conquered by inevitability, nothing mattering much any more, it was how he felt that morning, how he had been feeling for months, running on empty, a flame dying in the middle of the fire. So what, he thought, the forest will grow! He was a healthy ninety-four.

-He said he came from a country named for a salami. Lower-Bolonia a salamic republic by all accounts. But I soon found out he was a phoney Baloney, born in my mind not long ago.

-My hero a fellow by the name of Sir Anthony Foutnoat. One of history's famous Foutnoats, which is more than I can say for myself.

Human Endeavours: 4) 'Nothing' should not be elevated or aimed at. 5) Substance neither perverted nor organised.

-Most people I know project no energy, have no initiative, no ideas, no passion for much. They get up in the morning, planning how to do as little as possible each day. Hey, let's do lunch!

-The problem with the veil is that it robs people of their mystery. One instantly knows everything there is. And it ain't pretty.

- Or as the philosopher Steven Wright pointed out: It's easy making a painting of a sculpture, but try making a sculpture of a painting!!!!!!!!!!!

-Latin American legislators constantly shift policy in order to keep everything.... the same.

- I don't deal with people who do their nails on Wednesdays. Thursdays, maybe, I do have principles you know...

-He has two sets of reality. One with all of us in it, and one all his own

-She was as tidy with the skies, as she was with her life. After two months of wintery near-darkness, she closed her curtains when a pale sun finally broke through low hanging clouds, so the armchair near her window wouldn't discolor with light bright. She didn't walk, she scurried, her apartment a flat, square hole. She turned on the radio, it was a quarter to four. (read Short Story)

- I told my daughters March forward, and Wipe backwards, but never simultaneously! Avanti Popoli!

-Looking back over the ages after Jesus died for mankind, but must be quite pissed off with the waste of his gesture

-Majority rule is great provided the majority does its homework, not passively outsource its conscience

(Note to myself) In Quarter to Four, allude to French Writer Banier saying about his parents: They not only believed in nothing, they believed in nothing very, very strongly, on their merry road to nowhere nearly destroying me. Or if I'm to write a play about him, open up with him saying: " My parents had no children. I was twelve years old."

- Hitler was a vegetarian. Disliking meat he made up for it by feasting on vast amounts of flesh.

-Militant Nationalism has nothing to do with pride, everything with irrational fear. You never conquer with bombs, you conquer with noble intent, truly vanquishing and preserving with ideas and craft, not by bolting doors.

-Last 007 flick: Aging Bond against the only crook who isn't incontinent, the fearsome Goldbladder.

-Especially in the beginning, life gives one the illusion it's quite long, that one has loads of time. But in real terms it's ridiculously short, the body a plant starting to wither quite early.

-The US should have conducted Dale Carnegie style immersion courses in Baghdad, instilling Aristotelean, alleviating Blood pragmatism in hearts and minds down there

-On the environment: have cars run on poppy seeds, coca and tobacco leaves: it saves everything. Failing that, have them run on used toilet paper.

Add to Epitaph: Or "Scored to Death" (rather than the far less cavalier "Scared to Death")

-There can be no life without constant renewal and re-birth. There can be no re-birth without death and radical re-materialization.

-Childishly believing in the 'soul', is like believing in ghosts. The universe doesn't function in this fashion.

- Full circle. Make the most of what you have! Now is what we've got, and no more!

- Epitaph for Sale : What a ride, wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Though quite short, and in the end even tiring me out somewhat. Thus, also when relatively privileged, one of them enough. The best of moments? The laughter of a happy child, the love-of-my-life beside me, the incredible beauty of light, of rain, of forests and flowers, mountains and oceans, of creatures more useful than me or those rawest of breathtaking emotions, the witnessing of an epiphanic act of generosity by someone to a person completely unknown to him or her. Not for a moment forgetting music, humour, her high-heels, Bourbon and other fine company.

(After world political wars having to do with regime & territory and resources have finally been settled, what is next: weather wars, generation wars between the threatened elderly taking up arms against the very ambitious, very uncaring young?)

-Met the Whole family: Mr Whole, Mrs Whole and her little one. Unfortunately they're not doing too well. In fact the Wholes are in the hole.

So the damn fool says, but Anthony, why on earth carry an elephant all the way across the water. So I says, so his little feet won't get wet, you idiot!

- Sometimes I feel like a hamster, scuttling around in a cage that I own. All mine this beautiful contraption, but a cage nonetheless.

- He was dressed well but had the hands of a labourer. You can adorn yourself all you want, I thought, but your past will give you away. I remarked to him his hands are strong and worn, but his mind still young and under-used. Whereas my own hands are child-like, unmarked, smooth, and quite small but my mind strong, flexible, rough, tough. Exact opposites in other words, and the reason we love and hate each other to a fault. You should wear gloves I told him, your hands give you away. And you should wear a condom around your head, he said, you're great, but a danger... to others and yourself.

- Realities: My Canadian dentist told me about his daughter expecting her first child. And that the only problem with this was, that soon he would have to share his own bed.... with a grandmother!

- A guy I barely know is driving me crazy. Everything is uncredible and inbelievable, telling me he lives near door. Yesterday, he said he had to go out and buy some titpaste... Yes, distinctly from a different sidewalk!

- Unreal: I witnessed a bullfight on the beach at Puerto de Santa Maria (Cadiz), the matador in the surf, cape flowing just above the water, toro charging him through knee-high waves!

- Can you picture a fully dressed matador, with his cape doing a Veronica in front of a charging scarab or cockroach, larger than a bull?

- The orka, a mammal, treks thousands of kilometers to warmer water in order to mate. And I fully understand, swimming naked like that, no fur, no feathers... Even for a whale, would getting an erection in arctic waters not be a perfect Eurekan epiphany?

- Tell me it isn't true: A Chinese friend of mine in southern Spain wants to open a restaurant he threatens to call, the Wok of Gibraltar...

- Shouting "God is great!" and killing dozens of total innocents can only mean one of two things. Either God is crazy, or you are. I think it's you...