Phone Art with Fake Craig 6

Shizukana Ketsui

Regression to the Mien:The Content of a Compelling Lure

Though seemingly opposites, pride and insecurity are flip sides of the same coin of narcissism. Mirror, mirror on the wall is usually there to serve as ego crutch, but what happens when that glass is not there to look into darkly?
  The blenching blatherskite demands the world to be that mirror. Not to necessarily reflect what kind of person they are inside — that would take too much introspection. Their self-image is literally a visual image as a five-year-old might self-describe: their colour, their pee-pee, and other physical characteristics considered immutable. (‘Mutable’ connotes potential self-improvement, which is just too much to ask.)
  So a whim-catering world bends over backwards (some say forwards) to accommodate these Haughty Betters and their hunger for external validation. Everything is figurally painted over to pander to crybabies to the point where the importance of the façade outweighs the actual essence. (And the Powers That Be assume the sheeple will swallow this, or at least tolerate collective delusions.)
  Everything in one’s visual diet becomes suspect, as every cognitive foot in the door turns into a clickbait-and-switch in real life. And as the meatspace equivalent of click-throughs lead to even more content-less effluvia, the public grows wise, weary, and wary.
  At one time, the Allure of Compelling Content drew engagement, insight, and the healthy exchange of information. In today’s Clown World, the alluring veneer itself is the meat & marrow rather than what’s inside. To paraphrase McLuhan, “The mummery is the message.”
  Public skepticism and disengagement are to be expected when the actual Content of a Compelling Lure turns out to be, all too often, shite.

The Terror of Not-So-Hidden Skeletonsand the Wrath of the Mazhory

“I’m an ally!” shouted Magister Albus from his spacious atelier. “I try to cultivate an enlightened perspective!” A dribble of sweat trickled down his temple as he eyed the scribe taking down his every word.

“I’m an ally!” bellowed Conviviator Eustacius from the spotlit stage. “I try to cultivate an enlightened perspective!” The two-meter-tall showman hoped his imposing stature would sway the Пу́сси Ра́йот apparatchiki in the audience.

  To the uninitiated, these statements sound like basic — if not shallow — lip service to current-day socio-political issues.
  To those in the know, it’s a 180-degree face-saving performative act, and goes beyond shallowness to outright hypocrisy.
  For years, one of the above fellows openly relished his reputation as “sexist jerk” in both word and verse, as well as his penchant for rough ‘relations,’ so to speak. The other fellow fathered an illegitimate child, for which he has shown no acknowledgment. It matters not which fellow did what. What happened, happened.
  It’s one thing to denounce one’s own past sins when in contrition. But shame plus cowardice often results in projection and finger-pointing without admission of those sins. It’s the easier way out and it makes you look like the Good Guy in the eyes of Big Entertainment’s nomenklatura.
  This is so blatantly obvious that even schoolkids have a rhyme for it, which the sage social analyst L.L. Carter reminds us: “He who smelt it, dealt it; and he who denied it, supplied it.”

Phone Art with Fake Craig 5

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

Menko 23: Kurutta Shufu

Cues for the Visions: Papal Street Cottage Assortment

Stratum XVII:

  • A ‘century plant’ (alas, not agave) stands in the window overlooking the old gaol whilst constables star jump in unison. Meanwhile, a purloined phototron and CO2 canister go to work in the dirt-floor cellar.
  • The Condor makes a social call for Michelle and Sasha, fribbling whilst the Alfa Romeo idles in the drive.
  • In between classes, Benoit and Ian ‘cop a wig’ and carb-load as Jarrett’s wall-eyed gaze takes in the scene.

Stratum XIX:
  • Aural thundersteps plod as cetaceans churn. Nigel does ‘the bicycle’ as Nicky wanders southward.
  • Outgoing audio warns against Shalimar (‘You don’t ee-ven want to go there’).
  • Tai-chi warm-ups before the basilisk exhibition. At a rooftop after-event, the Peeper takes a hapless step off the eaves; folks chill on the rebound tumbler.

Stratum XXI:
  In respite between hell-raising activities, the parlour sits in silence. A baby Chelydra stares from a terrarium. Two lone VCR cassettes lay atop a rarely used television — one, a movie about an egg salad recipe search; the other, a third-generation dub of UK racing mishaps with ‘Havok’ in the title.
  A quiet breeze drifts in from the arched doorway. And behind that door: the Fluid Shrine of the Haze staining the wood and plaster.

  Chapters close; Benoit passes and the Falcon and Mr Dutch move on. Poach terraforms the koi pond and elephant ears into a crater. The cornstalk fence fails to materialise and the Citrullus vanishes before maturity. Under the catalpa tree the ill-fated rabbit hutch stands vacant. Ian decamps for Asylum Le Rixe.

Cue for the Visions: C’est Mon Sentiment

  Les signaux pour les visions — do they conjure from other realms?
  A mirage, mise-en-scène, emerges an image
  Phantasms of what-if’s, or a bird’s eye view from Dementia VI?

  “Point your finger at the sky...” and on high spies that camera for posterity — elsewhere, elsewhen, a fly on heaven’s ceiling, drawing close on the feeling
  Iéna had lured from afar, and now on that bridge the both of you are
  Damp grey concrete under skies cold blue; tension, pathos, and presque vu
  And still, love is carried on a breeze, fleeting, yet permanent, as the camera pulls away
  Into the ether the moments freeze, et c’est trop demander

Phone Art with Fake Craig 4