the number of the beast

neither John of Padmos, R.A. Heinlein or Iron Maiden would flip over this

According to the visionary John of Padmos, a nasty clown if ever there was one, in the Bible's "Revelation" there is some reference to the number of the beast marking those who are allowed to trade and those not. The number is reckoned at 666.

What if we've been reading it wrong all along?

what ubiquitous 666isms are there in our trade-frenzied world?

The film Naked suggests that the three spaces on the omnipresent bar codes are the equivalent.

I suggest that it is something else altogether.

$9.99 - only upside down.

Nothing is ever what is appears to be. What could be more devillish, demonic, and beastial than pernicious, deliberate smoke and mirrors?

$10 is never ten dollars. It's $9.99, keeping the rivers of "copper" pennies flowing. Or there's some level of tax or other that shifts the price beyond the innocent price tag suggesting $10.

999 - the number of the beast - pay at your peril.

--Not Jack

a little cackle for your crack

put a smile in your cheeks.

not all of us are evil clowns from one moment to the next, but between us all, there is a never-ending cavalcade of evil clownishness.

a story a mischeivous mite told humblest PentWhistle this very afternoon:

"I wear my bike helmet when I go to visit my friend downtown [in a corporate tower]. People in the elevator think I'm a bike courier and ask about my helmet. I tell them that it's my elevator helmet [knocks it with a knuckle], because, you know, elevators..."

the rest of the trip is spent in uncomfortable silence.

Blessed are the makers of all dairy products.

--PentWhistle

the "I'd"s of March

I'd a this and I'd a that - the impotence of past-pluto-perfect

verb tension

I'm sure George Orwell, a Haughty Harlequin, Acerbic Acrobat, Verbal Vermillion, would agree.
things don't mean what they meant.

torture no longer includes certain acts of torture in its definition.

democracy no longer includes rule by the common people (if it ever did).

freedom includes the removal of freedoms, and rights.

united (as in states) doesn't include the notion of togetherness.

terrorism excludes huge acts of terrorism (such as state-sponsored militarism).

I don't which way is up.

--PentWhistle

vernal vernacular

tis clowning season, well and truly now

does anyone remember the groundhog? Remember that little rascal, sitting up and not seeing his shadow - the day itself poised midway between the Longest Night and the tipping of the balance towards the light.

if this mark's the beginning of Spring, the day of the Fool merely a fortnight away, then what was the Groundhog all about?

the shadow.

the Groundhog is the beast of the underworld, looking out of its hole. If the Sun is at its zenith in Summer at the Solstice, and Nadir is at night in the Winter, on the Solstice, then the Groundhog is looking toward's Winter if it sees its shadow, and towards Spring if it doesn't.

festival of the sundial, and the shadowgazing gopher.

I mean, if you're going to observe a holiday, we may as well observe it right. There are huge gatherings on this day at the Mayan pyramids in the Yucatan, to watch the serpent's slithering shadow slide up the steps to its home at the apex.

Yet here, it is a day as any other. Many celebrations happened this past weekend, to account for the work week.

This is our day of balance, weighed against the Autumnal equivalent, poised above our swing into the year's night. And so, once again we've emerged from the darkness, to visit the light. And with it renewed energy.

and with it - war - maybe tomorrow, on Tiw's day, in March while the Sun is in Aries.
Or on the 28th, around the time of elections overseas.

And so, with the emergence of our collective spirits from the winter of our discontent, we wake to the chinese year of the fire dog, arise into the first step aground after a three month journey through the Abyss of Winter's long, cold nights - as if anything else united Canadians in spirit - ready to regain our legs.

and jump for Joy.

Spring is Fool season. Look to springs, in Jacks-in-their-boxes, holding bulbous eyes to novelty glasses, in sticks-a-po-go, and coils of festive streamers. Such harlequinry is all about the distraction. You know the drill, "nothing to see here. Ooh, shiny."

This, as all other days that fall upon all people, the Solstices, the Equinoxes, the risings and settings of celestial bodies, are deserving of a holiday, or a week say.

For the Equinoxes and Solstices and their midpoints - that's eight more holidays a year. make them two days to acknowledge the end of season and the beginning of season.

Dec 21 - Jan 1
Solstice and New Year's - we get the whole twelve nights off.
Festival of the Abysmal

Feb 2 - day of the Shadowgazing Gopher
pair this with Chinese New Year and the days in between and that could be a fortnight of celebration

Mar 20 - Equinox
day of the balance tipping upward
Feast of the Fertile

May 1 - midspring
Feast of the Fertile

June 21 - Solstice
midharvest

Aug 1 - mid summer
Feast of Fire

Oct 31 - Nov 2
Days of Souls

Add to this July 3 to Aug 11 as the Dog Days of Summer, owing to the timing of the heliacal rising of the dog star, Sirius. And that gives us a year with something to celebrate, instead of moments when our monies are traded for things other than the usual.

Welcome to Spring. The season of the Fool, and the playground for the Evilest of Clowns, who resemble Fools in many respects, but one.

They don't like the same kind of fun.

Leave your old ways of thinking in the blackest Abyss of Winter, and be reborn to think anew, open to a different method of living, because to carry on the legacy of the lifestyles that have lead to our dependence on bloodshed is sheer and utter tomfoolery.

--PentWhistle

Symptoms of Evil Clownishness

telltale signs if you've got intentions divine or just a naughty mind.

evil clown symptom #23: they spoil the ending to every story.

Usually by giving away the murderer after one is well and truly committed to sleuthing it out for oneself, for example.
the rotten rascally roustabouts.

evil clown symptom #401b: they won't play along.

Proof again against magic of all sorts, the evil clown refuses to pick a card, any card, throw the juggling club gently or surrender the stage.
characteristically churlish clowns.

evil clown symptom #2: they point out the very centre of denial without fail.

Usual with an innocent (but who's kidding who?) affectation, along the lines of, "aspartame gives you brain disease," to the diet soft drink sipping sycophant.
selective sinister seducer.

evil clown symptom #5: they always get the last laugh.

More of a melodramatically mad mouahahahahahahahahahaha with lots of the wringing of the big, white gloves.

toot toot

-- PentWhistle

whatever happened to opportunistic hippies?

how the "me" generation fled to "de" generation

The Dirty Hippies.

Not all of the hippies are dirty. And not all of the hippies who happen to be dirty are Dirty Hippies. The dirty hippies to whom I refer as "The Dirty Hippies" are those who rode the swell of sincere interest of ending the wars overseas purely out of self-interest.

The Dirty Hippies are those who followed the trend, took advantage of the free love and punch of available intoxicants, and living in the then most prosperous nation on earth, were catered to since before they were born by television which began advertising diapers very soon after the war.

And so on, through "30 Something" and Phil Collins and a wash of atrocity dumped upon our poor unsuspecting pates on the way past the decadence of the 1970s, or the degeneracy of the 1980s into the darkness of the 1990s to the unbridled calamity of the 2000s.

The Dirty Hippies have traded in the possibility of Greatness for the disappointment of cultural navel-gazing, superficial dilution of our narratives, and rush to hubristic fulfilment of fleeting fickle interest regardless of the cost

to others.

hence with the incarceration, torture, bloodshed.

thanks for nothing.

--PentWhistle

p.s. Phil Collins? I mean, really, what the hell's the deal?

do you theenk I'm keedink?

just in case you thought I was j-j-joking

Despot George II of NC of America, had some of these words for his nation on September 11th 2001. The importance of the dollar, and our economic enslavement laid bare...

read on,

if you dare.

"The victims were in airplanes, or in their offices; secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers; moms and dads, friends and neighbors."

"...we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity..."

" The functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington which had to be evacuated today are reopening for essential personnel tonight, and will be open for business tomorrow. Our financial institutions remain strong, and the American economy will be open for business, as well."

It wasn't a long speech.

businessmen and women and their secretaries riding the same breath as military, federal workers, moms dads friends and neighbours. such special distinction.

Yet, are they not the front lines of the warfare of business, or business of warfare? With an untenable lifestyle floated on a swelling ocean of credit turned to debt turned to abyss of driving endless walking-distances, can there be a question?

business as usual - keep spending - keep counting money - keep shifting it around no matter the cost.

the cost.

keep shifting it around, because the way things works, all moving money gets skimmed, whether a tax, fee, tariff, levee, charge, surcharge, gratuity, interest or profit.

moving money ends up in the same inverted funnel, like an upside-down tornado, sucking all of the financial tokens of the majority up, away into the inaccessible stratosphere, where it is exchanged for opulence.

business as usual is the rallying cry of the war effort at home. Except that there's no war going on, no declarations, just an invasion, hostilities, and bloodshed. Call it war if you will, it's all in the name of lethargy and disinterest.

--PentWhistle

$top making $en$e

To the declining doll heir: you're oh, so much newer replacement bourests onto the [ob]scene

$

such a simple symbol, no?

so eloquent, familiar, and ubiquitous. Yet, what the hell does it mean?

It may be the combination of U and S - it may be a combination of P and S (from the peso) - or it could be derived from the number 8 or it's the pillars of hercules.

US - PS - 8 - I I - $

The double-stroke dollar sign (with two lines - damned ascii - can't find it anywhere) - the two-line dollar sign is, of course

Snakes and Ladders

the adrenalyne pumping highs, the suicidal lows, the soaring and the plunging, the climb up the corporate ladder, and the precipitous slide down the throat of the snake, the belly of the beast.

what, then, exactly, is the economic dynamic represented by this snake, and this ladder?

is the snake the devil of eden? Is the ladder the tree of knowledge? If these potent christian symbols are the foundation of the economic system - the Fall from Grace - the why is it so surprising that economics are the demon to which we sacrifice all of our better nature?

$ - most jobs involving counting someone else's money

$ - there are no secular holidays that require all businesses to close (outside of emergencies)

$ - you get what you pay for [terrifying, considering]

finish these cliches appropriately:

a penny saved is...

pennywise,,,

now at the low low price of...

money makes the world...

$ - try living a day, a single, solitary, lonely day, from dawn until dusk (or rise until collapse), without spending one, single, solitary cent - without talking about money, without referring to money, without cutting a cheque, paying a bill, looking at a receipt - $

$ - how many days have you passed without thinking for a single solitary moment about the Sun, or the Moon, or the stars, or the back of your head, or how to love your heart as it keeps the beat - $

--PentWhi$tle

evil clowns abide...

how to get laughs from a tough room

revile clowns:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/howardluken/AngstotheClown.html

business leaders in times of war

how to butter-up dough-boys

from Reuters:
"Tim Hortons is heading into a war zone to serve the country's troops a taste of home."

referring specifically to Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

this is the beauty of it - Tim Horton's, long-standing institution throughout most of Canada, now dropped like a red brick bomb on the unsuspecting conquered... uh, citizens of Afghanistan, who can now line up to get a double-double coffee and doughnut for what amounts to a few months salary, provided your means of living hasn't been incinerated.

and just think of the calories! A Boston creme doughnut (will it be renamed the Kabuli Creme?) is just the thing for the civilian on the run.

mmmmm, doughnuts.

who'd'a thought that Canadian imperialism would manifest itself as a chain of doughnut stores in the wake of coalition bloodshed. When do the Iraqui, Iranian, Syrian, Palestinian, Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and North Korean franchise open up?

how many are there in the US?

--PentWhistle

calling for a real state funeral

end to boreders

I say...

let's have a real state funeral, bury the state,
say a little eulogy, like, "it's been nice..."
and then throw the dirt over it, dust to dust and so forth.

we will stop listening to pernicious despotism then?

--PentWhistle

state funerals are the ultimate comedy

or, how to gift a horse-mouth in the look

Toronto officers stage emotional tribute to police horse killed while on duty

lest we show any emotion for the dozens of people intimidated, pushed, corralled or injured by the horse, or its teary-eyed rider.

sniff sniff.

I laugh at this. I say let's all celebrate with authentic steak tartare - raw horse meat for all policemen, as I'm guessing it's already a staple.

no sympathy? no, never, not while police dogs and horses are part of the brotherhood of police, for whom the rest of us are simply outsiders. Doubt my assertion? 1000 cops showed up to bury a horse.

how many show up to funerals for victims killed as a result of police action/inaction?

take a wild guess.

and keep on laughing.

--PentWhistle

Squallor, Squallid, Squall, the Winds...

a rant a day keeps everyone at a safe distance, at the very least

on a ramble about the backstreets late last evening, I noticed that the cherry blossoms have already speckled the gnarly branches to which they cling before their ultimate leap into the gentle descent like so much pink snow.

they started in February.

This is the earliest sign of spring in this place. the pink snow that counters the frozen hexagonally symmetrical crystals, in their cascade from the clouds, gifts of heaven cut out of folded vapor, and sent to earth as a sign that the divine likes us, and has a very strange sense of humour.

hence, send in the clowns.

didn't you know? clowns are a religious order. you'll hear passionate denials to the contrary, from clowns, and evil clowns alike. Maybe not crunkers.

the uniform, though varied, and multifaced, as the diamond argyle of the troubadour, is recognizable - colourful gendreless comically exaggerated perversions of the ruling class - they are truly the fools that have chased the moneylenders out of the temple. The moneylenders, bankers and insurancers, spend much of their time indoors, in offices, automobiles and homes.

they have been chased out of the temple.

the fool, the hobo hero, wanders the tracks under the wide skies of the great outdoors, and remains in a temple of divine construction, not of divine inspiration.

and with that, the fool travels far and wide, and brings with them stories - and at the heart of every one of those stories is hope.

now the evil clown, that's a whole other tale. Ironic twists into cruelty and subjugation, playing with the material as if it were symbolic, and the immaterial as if it were paramount. This can be comical, in the tragi-comical sense, when so much blood and so many bones go into telling their stories.

and the evil evil clown, is a clown of a different pallor. More aware that the religion of clownishness is neither redemptive nor sacrificial. It is a mystery, hidden in the deepest darkest abyss, and ironically, comically, ridiculously, that very abyss, the ineffable, unnamable, unspeakable void, inhabits each and every one of our souls.

a shard of the abyss sits within us all, and we can explore it internally beyond our heart's content, beyond the duration of two lifetimes. and it has depths that can swallow a person whole, yet it is contained within.

what strange antinomy. Is that what is meant by Shiva's dance?

guess I'll cut in and ask.

in the meanwhile, seek ye the laughably ridiculous - because the sincerely ridiculous have taken over.

the best thing about the abyss is that nothing's better.

--PentWhistle

Professional Prophecy

or, how to get paid for guesswork

to profess has associated meanings: taking a vow, declare or acknowledge something openly or publicly

professionals are a group of people avowed to a common purpose.

what if that vow is to money and greed, and naught else? What would that look like, do you imagine, an avowal to the god of money?

Pluto, according to our Roman ancestry, is the god of money, who also happens to rule over everything else under the earth, incuding seeds and roots, fungi, and for three months out of the year, the goddess of fertility, his chosen (read "abducted") bride, Porsiphina (Persephone is Greek, lest we mix our metaphors).

Then, to what have money-avowed professionals, those seeking ever-increasing recompense, also bound themselves? (Bankers call them "bonds" for a reason, no?)

We could consider the evidence, if such is the case, particularly in the land of the greed, the Calamitous Empire sandwiched between the Great White North space above, and the land of Tomorrow to the South.

Wherein around and about the 1929, October 24th to 29th, ending with the announcement by the Calamitous Empire's ruler on July 2nd, 1932, there was a crash into economic devastation.

Close to half of the 25, 000 banks in the Fallen Empire had failed by 1933.

As if this wasn't making matters bad enough, millions of agricultural acres of dried up and blew away in the Dust Bowl of 1930 to 1941. Too much wheat and not enough bison was at the heart of the matter.

With the introduction of World War II, the Calamitous Empire recovered from its financial folly, and developed the means to end the war, in Japan at least, much to its benefit. For the World War had brought the world together, to be bound by trade.

With a global market upon which to prey - uh, play, the Calamitous Empire grew in its recovery, a little arms trading and war profiteering nonwithstanding, until the end of its twentieth century, 1999, when it marked the longest uninterrupted profit in recorded history.

Interesting, no? Then, a recap:

1929 - stock market crash
1930 - Pluto Discovered - Dust Bowl
1932 - New Deal announced
1941 - Pearl Harbour
1945 - Plutonium bombs
1979 - Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit to come closer to Earth
1999 - Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit to return to further orbit
and the end of the Calamitous' Empire's economic streak.

What do war and money have in common? Well, again, turning to our literate latinates, Scorpio, that eye in the sky, is ruled by both Pluto and Mars - money and war.

Tuesday is the day named for the god of war (Tiw in Norse, Mars in French)
October 24 to 29th, the Sun is in Scorpio, ruled by Pluto and Mars.
and Plutonium has become the ultimate spear, beyond Dread and Fear.

And if this money, sacrificed with a crash,
and seed, sacrificed in a bowl,
and dead, sacrificed by suicide, starvation and war were appeasements to this displeased Pluto

and so much spilled blood and astronimic probings are our homage to Mars

then upon what, and whom, have we been warring since the First Deal was struck, back when Julius Caesar introduced Libra to the sky, stealing Scorpio's claws, and instituted the Republic, and its calendar?

to what else have we bound ourselves with the Second Deal, renegotiated as appropriate for an Empire, even a Calamitous one. The Romans were ever people of the land, and they knew the value of wheat, bread and circuses.

The month of February is derived from Februus, a festival of the underworld, life relegated to the wintry depths of the earth, and is the time of Pluto.

the Planet was discovered February 18 1930, and his orbit crossed Neptune's February 7th 1979 and February 11 1999.

what a big hmmm that all is, isn't it.

so what's with the chicken in every pot?

--PentWhistle

what's all the fighting about

a late night occurrance

I just had a thought,

is it the war on terror or the war on terra?

and why is it the long war?

words don't mean what i think they mean

--PentWhistle

Random Ramblings and Rambunctions unction

wherein all this seems to be pointing at one, big, nothing

if Prometheus were really "foreknowledge" or "forethought" would he really have brought man the fire of the Gods? Even with the Vulture ripping his liver out - hell of a way to mark the passing of the days - would he have delivered fire into our hands had he seen coke ovens and smelters, fat rendering plants, jet exhaust, automobile pollution-congestion-obsession?

and the great burning nuclear question: just when will we have had enough, and cease our progress towards... well, progress anyway.

If fire is a metaphor for will, for the rod, the phallic linear projection into the world from within - regardless of one' s gendre, trans-defined or what-have-you - then presumably we had existed previously without it.

without will, without linear movement, what were we? settled dwellers? Agrarian sloths? We never could have cooked a goose without fire. Nor smelted bronze, iron, and electronics, ploughed fields or drop the bomb.

where would we be without it, but with earth, air, water, spirit, or in the chinese system, metal, water, wood and earth?

body, mind, heart and soul without will. A satiety in comfortable circumstances, is my guess. Epithemeus, "afterthought" gave all of the survival tools to all of the animals, leaving people with, well, very few attributes, it was believed.

thus the theft of fire.

if fire was to give us the edge, then lo, what an edge! Genocide of entire species, willfully, and with unimaginable vigor. The dodo. The passenger pigeon. The great auk. The bison. Atlantic cod. Sperm whales.

what was Prometheus forethinking?

If the terms forethought and afterthought are interpreted differently, they may, indeed, refer to the front of the head and the back of the head, which in Qabbalistic systems represent the conscious and the subconscious.

Thus, Epithemius worked in the subconscious, from the back of the head, from the visual centre, and intuition; Prometheus worked in the conscious, the front of the head, the telencephalon, the Ego - the fiery lion. Herein, robbing fire from the gods takes on a new meaning.

the act was one of hubris, (hence the severity of the punishment), yet also appears to rob the gods of their part in our mind - they fell from their role in our forethoughts, and fell from illumination into the depths of our subconscious, where they have ever since been regarded as an afterthought.

--PentWhistle

What happens when one is no longer oneself?

or, down the rabbit, whole

Whilst regarding myself in a mirror of sorts, mine very own reflection shattered into countless pieces, each a shard of self, in hologramic imitation.

does self-"ish" refer to the state of being somelike like oneself? As in kitten"ish" or p"ish"ed.

If you can be self-ish in such a manner, does that necessarily mean that you're beside yourself?

is self-cannibalisation the only way to be truly full of yourself?

do bankers charge themselves self-interest?

are turtles and snails self-contained?

is anyone?

are all dinners for one for self-serving?

or is that about playing tennis against a wall?

i ask myself these questions because it's self-satisfying.

--PentWhistle