Love and Live

Humanity’s greatest excesses lead to its everlasting successes!

 

The Great Inquisition did nothing for the Church, it led to Protestantism, to separation between Church and State and to a work ethic celebrating reconciliation and collaboration that became the precursor of modern western society and all its wealth.

 

Japan’s inflicting terrible horrors led not only to its inevitable defeat, but indirectly to its ultimate wealth.

 

Germany’s idiotic pre-war dreams about domination led not only directly to its defeat but to wealth attributable as much to production as to new tolerance.

 

It is time Islam dispatches its followers to the West, not to fight, but to learn about the values of individual and State tolerance.

 

From Pakistan to Syria, from Gaza to Libya let them learn and understand  how history dictates that it is impossible for a people to prosper, if the art of compromise and tolerance doesn’t enter a culture.

 

That in the end violence never, ever pays off!

 

Anthony Steyning’s new novel A Kiss By The Clowns is now available as an EBook on www.kindle.com and http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125336 for $2.99. It is a passionate story  about life in a world of shining Oldsmobiles and bold-look ties when Marilyn Monroe was still kicking…

 

Names Fall Mainly On The Plain, In Spain, In Spain

Quiet Sunday, Victory of the Angels, Joe Careers, Kings of the Moon, Lucy’s Frank, The Island’s Shellfish, Joe Louis Shoemaker, July Churches…

 

Placido Domingo, Victoria de los Ángeles, José Carreras, Reyes de Luna, Paco de Lucia, Camerón de la Isla, José Luis Zapatero, Julio Iglesias…

 

Unreal and I don’t know of many languages in which famous names, in translation, become so… surreal. Some claiming Gaudí even making it permanently into the English language for the wrong reason, as the adjective gaudy isn’t very complimentary, garish, tacky, to be precise. The modernist Catalan architect was certainly colourful with his use of curved structures covered with ceramics, stained glass, wrought irons, carpentry and trenadís, broken pottery pieces, all of it cemented into a building’s hide. But not gaudy, not tacky in the least, all of his work creating a landscape reminiscent of some magical fairytale even though the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia remains a monument fervently attached to this Catholic land, not some dreamy, faraway kingdom where Shrek lives.

 

Of course Barcelona has inspired more than only Gaudí as Picasso spent his formative artistic years here, having entered the world in Málaga to the south, subsequently reaching for the sky in France, not unlike Dalí, and even Miró, growing up a stone’s throw away on his Catalán-speaking Balearic Isles. All except Tàpies, whose works are beguiling and loaded with abstract symbolism, but who couldn’t and can’t handle colour, everything always mainly brown.

 

So that specifically Catalonia and in general Spain produce not only colourful names, but also profound colours, shapes and sounds.

 

Anthony Steyning’s new novel A Kiss By The Clowns is now available as an EBook on www.kindle.com and http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125336 for $2.99. It is a passionate story  about life in a world of shining Oldsmobiles and bold-look ties when Marilyn Monroe was still kicking…

 

 

Newt the Gnat

What seems to be missing in the good old USA is the notion of a loyal opposition. Very, very little gets done if 90% of time is spent on jockeying for power, on the defeat of one’s opponent at the next election, meaning that any good idea by a governing party getting torpedoed no matter what, because accepting it would make it look good and possibly re-elected, and this must never happen. So to hell with the public, the state of the Nation, the well-being of ordinary folks, what matters is privilege and us, all of it wrapped in the deep voice of fake concern and reasonableness.

 

The other problem as seen from the outside is that the so called Left in USA is just as corporate as the Right, but topped off with budget-less, exorbitant spending, throwing the wrong bones to the wrong recipients. Whereas the so called Right is Christian only in name, blind, born-again Narcissistic by vocation, contemptuous of the unsuccessful, who, obviously, are all extremely lazy and therefore deserving of their fate.

 

But then again the USA does perhaps get what it deserves if it tolerates even five minutes on the scene of the glib, moral and deluded dwarfism of a self-appointed presidential candidate like, say, Mr Gingrich.

 

My new novel A Kiss By The Clowns is now available as an EBook on www.kindle.com and on             

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125336  for only $ 2.99, it is about arsenic and black lace around whiter than white thighs and much, much else. A passionate story about life in a world of shining Oldsmobiles and bold-look ties when Marilyn Monroe was still kicking sensuously. The years following WWII serving up a story that unfolds through loaded encounters in London and New York, but by fateful circumstance ends in murderous Paris…

 

 

 

 

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Breaking News

NORTH KOREA FIRES 3 SHORT-RANGE  MISSILES

 

Well, of course!

 

They should never have worked there to begin with!

 

And do you know how tall North Koreans are?  So, what did you expect?

 

They are short-ranged by definition, long-deranged by description.

 

East Koreans much more efficient.

Bi-Polar Bear Disappearing

They said my white-furred, ursine friend Toby was spotted in Antarctica recently.

 

But it turned out this was false, as he was sitting right next to me ordering a seal, at an outdoor café in northern Kangiqsualujjuaq , Nunavik, Canada.

 

It was -40º

 

Dear Toby is definitely not bi-polar.

 

 

Hyper Realism

 

My friend Luigi knows nothing about painting.

 

He thinks Edward Hopper is a frog!

 

Bargain!

My son is a marketing wizard. He’s thought out a campaign for a store around the corner from us, that has fallen on hard times. Its owner is paying him big money for composing ads, printing flyers, doing radio spots, and creating a new website around an additional mail-order vehicle.

 

Their mark-up is modest, but the owners hope to make up in volume. They think they want to go national, but are trying it out locally for the New Year sales first. Franchises will become available.

 

There’s nothing like first testing a concept and you’ll agree little can go wrong here. The lead-in slogan is

 

2 SHOES FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

You can place your advance order through me, there’s a cut off moment!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Go Figure!

The American Right drools on Christian values, but in the name of ‘freedom’ rejects profoundly Christian social policy, calling it dangerous Socialism!

I think they mistake their religion for a hedge fund.

Making Merry

Ho, Ho, oh my…..

 

Oh, yeah… Ho,  Baby, Ho…!

 

And tonight Santa came, on a one-whore, open sleigh…..

 

Interminable Echos

Umberto Eco’s a bit of a kaleidoscopic nerd, overwhelming us with obscure facts and theories, but somehow forgetting to write a book. Editors seem afraid to edit, critics don’t want to be seen as ignorant. He’s got both academia and publishing by the balls, but won’t tell how he sculpted it all into a rolling stone.

 

The Name of the Rose was a non-novel, followed by a non-film with a non-actor, but hey, they were a wild success.

 

There’s no archaic semantic symbol I don’t know, he told me the other day.

 

Oh, don’t be such a semiot, I said!!!