Smoke in the Air
BY
BENJAMIN BENEDICT
Copyright,
© 2006 by
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
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Date: 26 Feb 2003
When was the 'Mesolithic' Age?
Whenever it was, we were making forest fires to create open spaces where next
year animals such as bison, moose and deer would graze, and we would kill them.
We lived in the same place for three or four generations. We loved each
other, we killed each other, we did everything the Testaments talked about.
The good old days! Can't wait to get back there.
Date: 02 March 2003
Comment on comments after the Franco/German veto on The War on Iraq
'Mon brave qui s'appelle Cuthie I'll vien a La Belle France, d'accheter un
Maison pres de Provence, je pense.
My friend, Cuthie is off to France to buy a house in Provence, I think.
Il connais rein de votre intellegence.
He won't have heard your news.
Peut etre Les Francais et Les Alemangnes sont le plus evolve de tous les Nations
de
Perhaps the French and Germans are the most evolved of all the World's Nations.
La Monde. Et peut etre Ils sont les pleusiers stupide.
And perhaps, they are the most stupid.
Je ne sais pas. C'est un question overt com le question de la reality de la
morte ou
I don't know. It's an open question, like the question of the reality of death
comme ca excrement il y a dans La Monde entier.
Or how much shit there is in the entire World.
Date: 25 March 2003
The Baghdad Bell
The 'Black Watch', one of the UK's most famous Regiments captured the 'Baghdad
Bell (no doubt at a great loss of life) in 1917.
One of their soldiers was the first UK soldier to die in combat this time
around.
It's a tradition.
"Oh you are British!" The Iraqi's say. "We know you. If you say
so, then it is, then it must be. It must be because it has always been as you
have said...but then ...but then... but then...but who are these people you have
with you, these 'Americans'?"
Date: 27 March 2003
About eight million years ago............
......... a very long time before Noah's twelve thousand year old flood,
Forest covered the World.
Then the land mass of what is India collided (at the pace of the nail growing on
your finger) with the land mass of what is Asia.
The impact of this crush created great ruptures, which in the fullness of time
(maybe three million years) produced the Himalayas.
This massive range of mountains changed climatic dynamics and lead to Indian
monsoons on the one hand, and Africa's dryer savannas, on the other. Now the
simians living in these African savannas had previously been living in forest
and now had to adapt to the long grass and become more efficient 'team players'
to survive.
Hence they stood on two legs and here we are today.
Jesus, Mohamed, Buddha, Leonardo ad Vinci Moses, Einstein, Elvis Presley,
Picasso, Marylyn Monroe, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mao, Joan of
Arc, didn't know that. Some of them may have guessed that, but the actual
knowledge defines who you are and that's who we are: People who know that.
Now, if you know that about yourself, where do you go from there?
Wherever you want, I'd say: If you've got the head for it. Which is what worries
me about you lot (by which I mean the rest of the human race).
Have you got 'the head' for it?
Or are you happy to stay as you are?
You can't stay the same, whatever you do. Make this your day, or you'll be back
on all fours in a year or two.
Date: 18 May 2003
I stood there tonight.............
................looked around the kitchen and said to myself, 'Yes, this is Me,
Me at my best.'
Of course it wasn't true because tomorrows Me is going to be infinitesimally
better than I can ever conceive.
Breathe deep and believe.
Date: 22 Aug 2000. Revision:1 June 2003
The moral to this story
Bert Trautman was a German POW imprisoned in England at the end of the Second
World War.
His entire family in Germany had been killed by the bombing (Dresden, I think)
and when he was released, he was one of the few (I think it was 'few') who
decided to stay on this Island of ours, and not go back Home.
He was sporty and played football and blow me down, if he didn't end up being
Goalkeeper for a top English team. Believe it or not, his team made it to the
Cup Final.
Near the end of the game, Bert saved a goal and injured his neck (his neck was
partially broken). In extraordinary pain, he dramatically made another save,
just as the final whistle blew.
The next day, with Burt in a neck-brace, the Team were paraded on top of a
double-decked bus down the main street of Birmingham. It was Birmingham, I think
- or maybe that's who they played against - and when they arrived at the steps
of the Town Hall and all you could hear was the chant, "Trautman, Trautman,
Trautman, Trautman........."
His eyes didn't glaze, his arm didn't raise.
No sign of the Fascist Nero.
He was a true British Hero.
Date: 01 June 2003
Weapons of Mass Destruction
It's nice to know that we live in a World where 'WMD' s arn't found if
they're not there.
Even if they were found no one would believe it, so let's move on to new
frontiers.
Date: 04 June 2003
The Simpson Case
Mr Simpson lives in New Zealand. He is building a jet propelled, guided missile
with a radius of sixty miles for a cost of £3,000 Sterling,
$4,500 US. He is also publishing the technology on the internet.
His idea is that this will wake us up to the destructive power of available
hardware.
Well, Mr Simpson you might be right but misguided people (often called 'evil')
mostly don't see what is in front of their face unless it is pointed out to
them.
Mr Simpson has a technical disposition. He knows what he knows, but has no
voice. He has no choice but to go public.
And so came Armageddon.
The Human Race: a hundred thousand years in place.
Now simply known as 'The Simpson
Case'.
Date: 09 July 2003
What is where
Bob Geldorf, ('Sir' Bob) is interviewed on TV about his continuing
involvement with Africa, his views on Clinton, Bush and the present level of
American aid to Africa and the sincerity of it.
He is sitting alongside an African spokesman in London and they are linked to a
former Bush foreign policy chief, sitting in a Washington DC studio.
Early in the discussion, Sir Bob verifies certain key statements made by both
the African and American parties.
The discussion becomes based on a reasonable amount of shared and tacitly
accepted information.
An extremely unguarded interchange of views follows between unofficial but
highly placed individuals, on National Television.
One thing is clear.
Basically, they all agree
Not what to do,
But what is where.
Date: 23 Aug 2003
A Moth
I picked a moth up
And let it go free.
I'm God to that moth
As the moth is to me.
Date: 26 Aug 2003
The Athletic World Games
They make a new rule that the second person who false-starts goes out of the
race. It's ok to false start the first time. Anyone can do that. So, why not do
it if you think you have great control over your starts and that one of the top
runners might false start second time out, and you who false started in the
first place and set this situation up, will end up in their place at the end of
the race?
Besides, it is in the very deepest sense 'unsporting' to tell someone, "Oh,
you were the second false-starter, "Yes, you qualified, but unlike the guy
who false-started first, you can't run."
In motor racing, they give time penalties. In athletics, why not say. "For
each false start, you will be docked 1/0th of a second - or whatever the
appropriate length of time it is agreed to be. They could then all run, they
could all then compete. An empty lane, what is that? It is a symptom of the
empty headed, empty hearted, fart-arsed, bureaucrat bastards who run the
Olympics, World Athletics and World Soccer. They are all a heap of crap and they
should be got rid of and replaced by real, committed sports people who are
swifter not just in the body, but more open in the mind.
Date: 19 Sept 2003
In Memoriam
I will miss the funeral and catch the 'apres' affair.
Why pray for a man
Who saw something so clear?
Now, with me
You can pray as hard as can be.
I see nothing at all, I swear.
Date: 27 Sept 2003
Smart 1 - Limitless Travel
There is a rocket taking off, from I think French Guiana. It will contemporise
almost all science fiction that's ever been written in the sense that from this
day on, given the time, we have the means to be anywhere .
Smart 1 is going around the Moon, taking a look, then deciding whether the Moon
was once part of the Earth or not. Then Smart 1 will move on. And so on, and so
on. Once up there, Smart one, powered by the Sun is the first space machine
capable of limitless travel. It, of course has great powers of assessment and
evaluation.
Smart 1 is actually the start of the creation of our physical map of the
Universe. Not just distances, but a rough idea of the physical characteristics
of each and every part of what is out there. Always remembering of course, that
nothing stays the same and time is only relative to what you wear. There will be
millions more Smart 1's in the next few years.
Smart 1 means that given time, both we and our machines can go anywhere and that
maybe in a few million years one Smart 1 might just run into another - or maybe
into some other guy's Smart 1. Now, there's an idea!
Date 30 Sept 2003
Smart 1 - MD's (Metal Detectors)
Like a primeval species, MD's have crawled up from the beaches and are swarming
everywhere. In insectille headsets and proboscis probing gear, they have come
all the way from the wrist-watch in the sand to finding sites with ancient
treasure there.
Have you seen the ornaments of Irish Gold or the Tyne-side Shield and Spear?
They speak of who we are and were. The danger is that MD's may make treasure
hoards like these, simply disappear.
Smart1 should keep an eye on these MD's. The Moon could wait a year.
Date: 16 Oct 2003
Warren Zevon
A diary of events,
Their cause and consequence.
His 'Fucked-up shit' is 'Shakespeareist'
In it's fatalist despair.
'Accidentally like a Martyr', a sonata
Of a younger year.
I'd say more
But Warren's out the door,
In the Stratosphere.
"Life's a sod!" he says.
"Go with God,
If God is there."
In death, as in life, the prospect of God may be unclear.
And Zevon’s game may be much the same as it was when he was here.
Date: 17 Oct 2003
The Bitch We All Live With.
Put it this way. Just say you die and that you find you
are still conscious of yourself in some way.
But say that in being dead you have no more clue as to who God is or if God
actually exists than you ever did.
Life after death, but no God. Or at least no more sign of God than there is now.
It is all over in the blink of an eye - maybe more like a wink.
But it is over, and that seems to be a fundamental requirement of reality.
What's the good of a light switch if you never use it?
They say with some certainty that there are parallel universes and that you can
travel through time.
It's almost as if, when you forget about religion you find more, not less to
suggest that 'it's' out there.
But it would sure be nice if we could float up in the sky waving goodbye, not
fall in a heap somewhere.
I don't want to die and I don't want you to die, but I think we must, and all
our friends must by and by.
And if it was you who had died, what would you have said to us down here?
Nothing at all. We'd have been ditched. You'd have split and left us hanging
there!
You're just like the rest. You don't know or care! No thought for those
you've left.
Yes, death's a dirty bitch dear.
Date: 23 Nov 2003
Elephants and Whales
It is about ten years since the Cold War ceased and the Berlin Wall came down.
Rebels took hostages then, and as far as bombs went, only the IRA knew what that
meant .
Things have changed dramatically and suicide bombers have taken center stage
since the invasion of Iraq.
It surely comes down to this: Should we all have a say and be treated fairly and
squarely, or not?
Of course we should. Give us a shot.
Suicide describes a rigid (you could say 'frigid') point of view.
Those with more open eyes, broader sky's, can see better where they're off to.
Freedom must come true
And it's no damn good
If some tiny stone age camp somewhere
Doesn't have it too.
The process has begun.
It's all for one.
In the century to come
Elephants and whales and a certain type of snail
Will be sitting at the table too.
But dolphins and chimps aren't there.
They'll be off having fun as they have always done,
Trusting the snail more than anyone
To handle their affairs.
