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Torpedo the Ark: images from posts published on
13 December (2014-2023)
Apart from 2012, 2013, 2019, 2020, and 2022, I have published a post on this date on Torpedo the Ark in every year since its inception. And sometimes, it can be instructive to look back and see what one was thinking and how things may have changed since ...
Carry On Facesitting (13 Dec 2014)
This perfectly innocent post is, I discover, another now placed behind a sensitive content warning by the censor-morons who police things for Blogger (which has been owned and hosted by Google since 2003): is it something I said in the text, is it the accompanying image, or is it both?
I don't know. And Google will not say: they simply refer you to their community guidelines and then invite you to identify your own wrongdoing, rectify the situation, and then republish the post in the hope that, after an official review, you'll be allowed to keep it up and that it will be freely accessible to readers.
For the record: the post is fine as is and I do not intend to make any changes to it. It does not advocate facesitting, although, even if it did, this is not a criminal activity and harms no one.
Rather, the post simply reported on a good-natured and somewhat comical protest outside Parliament by sex workers, freedom-loving perverts, and
various interested and/or sympathetic parties against new
legislation that prohibits the depiction of certain kinky (but
nonetheless perfectly legal) acts between consenting adults.
It amazed me then and amazes me now, that the UK government might spend its time opposing activities such as facesitting - or regulating the size of dildos - on the (spurious) grounds of health and safety. As one of the organisers of the protest pointed out, the new laws are not only anti-queer, but also inherently sexist, as
many of the activities discriminated against are ones that afford
specifically female pleasure and empowerment.
On the Truth of Things (13 Dec 2015)
Whilst conceding that questions concerning politics and psychagogy are philosophically interesting and that one must invariably return to them at some point, for me, back in 2015 - in my object-oriented days - I was more enthralled by those entities
that make up an inhuman and non-human universe and encourage the posing of questions that do not always posit Man as the central subject or final
solution.
In other words - and I still think this now - the beauty and the truth of things is precisely that they exist mind independently and
it's a real joy to occasionally write about raindrops on roses and
whiskers on kittens (not to mention bright copper kettles and warm
woollen mittens), rather than just human ideas and human relations.
Reflections from a Sickbed (13 Dec 2016)
It strikes me that the depressing thing about a long-term health condition, is that it lowers your expectations of what constitutes a good life; one is suddenly pleased merely to experience a pain-free day.
On the other hand, convalescence is a vital phenomenon and so sometimes one welcomes being sick, so that one can, as Heidegger would say, return home to oneself and one's destiny - which of course is death (as all being is a being-towards death).
That being the case, it's not surprising that when ill in bed back on December 13th, 2016 my thoughts should turn to the question of how best to dispose of that most accursed of all objects, one's own corpse. After considering several of the main methods, including cremation, inhumation, and immurement, I decided that a Tibetan sky burial - in which one is literally fed to the vultures - was the most attractive option.
Kissing Hitler 1: Some Like It Hot / Kissing Hitler 2: Notes on the Führer's Love Life (13 Dec 2017)
Not one, but two posts on the theme of kissing Hitler published on the same day back in 2017 - what was I thinking, indeed! Perhaps there's some truth in Godwin's law after all ...
Although, as a matter of fact, the first post - 'Some Like It Hot' - was more about Tony Curtis (and what it was like to share an on-screen smooch with Marilyn Monroe), than about Hitler as a recipient of amorous affection.
The second post, however, did look somewhat deeper into Hitler's love life - something that has long been subject to critical and clinical analysis, as well as sensational speculation and obscene rumour. I arrived at the conclusion that, ultimately, it was a pity that Hitler wasn't more of a libertine and less of a Nazi; it's always better to make love rather than war, no matter how perversely one may choose to do so.
The case of the young American poet Ailey O'Toole - which caused a bit of fuss in certain literary circles - still interests me and I still feel that Ms. O'Toole has nothing to apologise for or feel ashamed about and that she was treated poorly by moralists defending bourgeois (and untenable) notions of intellectual property.
For the fact remains, very few poets invent neologisms; and even fewer have original thoughts or feelings. They essentially rearrange the words of a shared language and play with the ideas and emotions of the culture to which they belong. It's an art - and it can produce amazing results - but poetry is never a personal or private matter, no matter how idiosyncratic one's writing style.
As Roland Barthes would argue, the poem-as-text is neither representative of a non-linguistic reality, nor expressive of an author's unique being. It's explainable only through other words that are also drawn from a pre-given, internalised dictionary. Every poem is, in a sense, already a copy of a copy of a copy whose origin is forever lost and meaning infinitely deferred.
Wherever she is today - and whatever she's doing - I send Ms. O'Toole kind regards and warm wishes.
Michel Tournier was the writer I loved reading most in the winter of 2020-21 and I wrote over twenty posts inspired by (or referencing) his work in this period.
This includes the above post, in which I offered a series of notes on a collection of stories originally published in French under the title Le Coq de Bruyère (1978) and which offered a queer and often disconcerting dip into the world of the sordid supernatural (to borrow the author's own description).
Those who enjoy philosophically-informed fiction that explores the porno-mythic
imagination and accelerates what Jonathan Dollimore terms the perverse
dynamic, will like this book - and like it a lot. Other readers, who don't enjoy such fiction, probably won't like it so much (but then, such people probably aren't spending time on this blog either).
The Day of the Golden Jackal (13 Dec 2021)
I love felines: but I'm not so keen on canids.
That said, I was happy to discover back in December 2021 that the number of golden jackals - small wolf-like animals, about three times the size of a red fox - have been rapidly expanding in number and increasing their range in recent decades.
Apparently, you can now find jackals living, hunting, and howling in many parts of
Central and Northeastern Europe and it has been estimated by the IUCN that whilst there may be fewer than
17,000 wolves left in Europe, there are around 117,000 jackals - and the
more the merrier, I say, although, of course, all the usual suspects -
such as farmers - raise their familiar objections.
Sadly, therefore, these intelligent and sociable animals continue to be hunted in many countries; one can only invoke the great jackal-headed god Anubis to bite off the hands and tear out the throats of those who harm them (some think that capital punishment for deliberate cruelty to animals is a bit extreme, but I'm not one of them).
On the Haunting Beauty of Sue Lloyd (13 Dec 2023)
Finally, on December 13th last year, I discussed how, as I get older, my desire is increasingly tied to nostalgia and has effectively become a type of spectrophilia; i.e., sexual attraction to ghosts, or, as in my case, the haunting images of dead actresses from the 1960s and '70s.
This includes Sue Lloyd, who guest starred in many much loved English TV shows during this period, but is perhaps best remembered today for her long-running role as as Barbara
Hunter (née Brady) in the British soap opera Crossroads.
A former dancer and model, Miss Lloyd also appeared in a number of films; performing alongside Michael Caine in The Ipcress File (1965) and Joan Collins in The Stud (1978), for example.
But what I like most about Miss Lloyd is not her acting credentials, but the fact she exuded the kind of dazzling beauty and sexual sophistication of the older woman which excited me as an adolescent and continues to work its magic some 50 years later.
