How much is a sixty-year-old woman worth?

Ma is looking for a job at the moment.
If anyone would like to pay her a little more than her current offers from Jules, Therapist, Nadler and Death, you know where to find her.

99.9% of the conversations you'll ever have

Hunga Munga

Went to the Hunga Munga festival today.

Much inspired by Nad's recent foray into jewellery-making, I decided to create my own line of cheap and cheerless necklaces made from cardboard and poster paint.





Note that these pieces look good on wo/man and dog alike.

I've lived with heartaches and I've roomed with fears

[Soundtrack] [Click on image to enlarge]

Somebody kill me please

[Soundtrack]

"We both know that love will die at last, turn tepid and perfunctory, decline into mere companionship and affection, if there is not cruelty in it. Not physical harm or violence, but cruelty. The cruelty of loss. Of dread. Of jealousy. Whatever the counselling professions tell us about trust, where we are not jealous, we are not in love at all. Othello was within his rights, though it is not fashionable to say so, to claim he loved too well. His mistake was not to see that suffocating his wife was not the best way to express it. Inviting Cassio to his bed would have been the infinitely preferable option for all parties."

(Howard Jacobson, The Act Of Love, p285)

Just like a guy whose feet are too big for his bed

[Soundtrack]

Makes a fool think he's wise

[Soundtrack/soundsnack]

See how you fade

[Soundtrack]

Home

[Soundtrack]

Thanks to everyone who came to the housewarming.

Things As They Are vs. Things As I'd Like Them To Be

[Soundtrack - not just a video to knock one out to, but truly, I believe, an existential cry for help]

And can you see the means without the end, in the random, frantic action that we take?

[Soundtrack: cooked & raw] [Click on image to enlarge]

And mostly I can't even tell what I'm running from

[Soundtrack]

20 years asleep before we sleep...forever

[Soundtrack]

Yesterday, Cowboydog and I went shopping for coffins.

Just slip on a banana peel, the world's at your feet

[Soundtrack/visual food for thought -the splayed, headless mannequin says it all]

Let's get married, Gordon!

[Soundtrack]

I think I've finally understood the notion of 'buying votes' in exchange for tax breaks.

As a wavering Labour-man, not particularly wowed by the dour, at times beige Scot that is Mr Brown (albeit respecting his impeccable intellectual credentials), I suddenly find myself getting wood whenever he appears on the box and will most certainly be selecting him and his party in the next election.

Might this have something to do with the fact that I am just about to buy a property and that Gordo has knocked £1,500 off my purchase price?

There is no easy way down

[Soundtrack]

But you like it, because you feel special that way

[Soundtrack]

Partially inspired by this.

Who needs the perfect girl or boy?

[Soundtrack]

"We possess, as it seems, a certain amount of capacity for love -what we call libido...directed towards our own ego. Later, though still at a very early time, this libido is diverted from the ego onto objects, which are thus in a sense taken into our ego. If the objects are destroyed or if they are lost to us, our capacity for love (our libido) is once more liberated....But why is it that this detachment of libido from it objects should be such a painful process is a mystery to us....We only see that libido clings to its objects and will not renounce those that are lost....Such then is mourning."

(Freud, On Transience, 1915)

Blessed are the holidaymakers

Jules and Jim are back from Turkey tomorrow.

Lord, can you hear me now?

[Soundtrack]

Happy

Visited The Museum of Hopeless Expectations yesterday. This was my favourite exhibit.

[Soundtrack]

Let's have bizarre celebrations, let's forget who forget what forget where

[Soundtrack]

Oranges Are Not the Only Frute

Will you never rest, fighting the battle of who could care less?

[Soundtrack]

Hugs

Maybe, someone's gonna save me; my heart is made of gravy, and the laps I swim from lunatics don't count

[Click on image to enlarge] [Soundtrack]

Bring on the major leagues

[Soundtrack]

"The infant needs to be able to discover his/her capacity to light up the mother's face - for here is to be found the fundamental basis of self-image and self-esteem."
(Casement, p93)

Counterfeit vouchers

"Accepting one's personal death means facing a number of other unpalatable truths, each of which has its own force-field of anxiety: that one is finite; that one's life really comes to an end; that the world will persist nonetheless; that one is one of many - no more, no less; that the universe does not acknowledge one's specialness; that all our lives we have carried counterfeit vouchers; and, finally, certain stark immutable dimensions of existence are beyond one's influence. In fact, what one wishes has absolutely nothing to do with it."
(Yalom, p120)

[Click on vouchers to download. The perfect birthday, Christmas or anniversary gift. All vouchers underwritten by Death and Disappointment.]

The Hora of Unhappiness

The Hora: possibly the naffest dance ever to grace a festive occasion.

Turkeys

J&J are off to Turkey for the summer. Bon voyage, my friends.

And I can't help but think, sitting in this tent, that I must above all things hate myself

[Soundtrack]

All the recent chat about vaginas and other passageways has brought to mind a scene from this film; also a passage from a book I'm reading at the moment:

"For the Romans, a porta fenestella was a special opening that allowed Fortune to enter. The Greek poros, which is a passageway for ships but also any passageway, including one through the skin, that is a pore. Poroi are all the passages that allow fluids to flow in and out of the body. A pore, a portal, a doorway, a nick in time, a gap in the screen, a looseness in the weave - these are all opportunities in the ancient sense." (p46)

Men's Toilets, Psychology Faculty, 11:30am

Proving, if proof were needed, that:
a) most men are barbarians
b) education doesn't improve matters

Psychologically shave me, I've got faith in you

[Soundtrack]

What's wrong with the world, mama? People livin' like they ain't got no mamas

[Soundtrack]

Only connect

[Click on image to enlarge]

Homage to Mr O.

My fans

Thought catching

"Automatic thoughts, as the name implies, are those interpretations/ideas/thoughts that seem to come automatically to mind; they are our pop-up thoughts. They are the immediate, consciously available thoughts, require little or no effort and seem plausible. They are not arrived at through reflective reasoning.


In depression they are often self-evaluative and future directed. Automatic thoughts are not necessarily in clear/syntactic language and can be poorly formulated, using fragments of grammar. Also, it is common for them to occur in images or inner scenes, daydreams or fantasies (Gilbert, 1992; Hackman, 1997).

....

For example, what goes through a person's mind when their lover promises to phone at a specific time but does not phone as promised? For a moment just close your eyes and image such an event; you have a lover who you are expecting to phone you tonight. You are looking forward to the phone call. As the time goes by and the phone does not ring what goes through your mind?

In real life this type of event may lead us to fantasize about the possibility that the lover has lost interest, or does not care enough to remember, or is out with someone else....Sometimes we may not be fully aware of our automatic thoughts but experience only emotions. For example, when the telephone does not ring we may find ourselves becoming anxious, sad or irritated, but our awareness of our thinking may be hazy or poorly recognized.

Hence, the depressed person may need to train themselves to attend to their automatic thoughts so as to sharpen their focus and make them subject to more detailed analysis, communication and challenge. The client can be taught to say to themselves: 'Okay I am feeling sad or angry about this so how am I actually seeing it; what am I saying to myself?'

This is called thought catching."

(Paul Gilbert, Counselling for Depression, p51)

The Descent from the Cross

To find out what this painting means, click here.

Mu

"So, then, make you whole body a mass of doubt, and with your three hundred sixty bones and joints and eighty-four thousand hair follicles, concentrate on this one word, Mu. Day and night, keep digging into it. Don't consider it to be nothingness. Don't think in terms of "has" or "has not." It is like swallowing a red hot iron ball. You try to vomit it out, but you can't."

[From Wu-Men's comment on the Chao-Chou's Dog Koan.]

Or if you'd prefer that in musical form, click here.

Is nothing enough? Sometimes it has to be.

The more you ignore me, the closer I get

I always used to think this song was about an embittered ex, stalking his former lover. But I now realise that it has a wider remit: death, disappointment, the ego stalked by a hungry, braying demented id(iot).

The squalor of the mind.