Build Back Better

Zen fascists will control you ...

  

I. 

 

In an episode of The Inbetweeners, an increasingly frustrated Will ends up describing French exchange student Patrice as a 'fucking baguette eating dickhead frog'. When Simon points out the racist nature of the remark, Will replies: 'He's made me racist' [1], which is not merely an amusing but also a thought-provoking idea. 

 

Similarly, one can't help observing that the seemingly irrational actions of governments here and elsewhere in response to Covid-19 - such as massively curtailing freedom and deliberately wrecking the economy - have significantly contributed to public paranoia; that they have, if you like, made conspiracists of us all.       

Thus it is that previously reasonable individuals who once would have laughed at ideas of the Great Reset and the New World Order, are now beginning to wonder if there isn't some truth in them as they (desperately) try to make sense of what's going on. 

 

They want to know why it is, for example, that politicians the world over - across the political spectrum and including Boris Johnson and Joe Biden - have adopted the mantra Build Back Better and promise us a fairer, greener future with electric cars, social justice, and a universal basic income, whilst insisting we all wear masks and live online.   

II.

This holistic - or, if you prefer, totalitarian - concept of Building Back Better was first discussed at the UN in relation to the issue of disaster management and adopted by the General Assembly as an official programme in 2015. The main principle is to regard crises - including pandemics - as opportunities to create more resilient social structures and economic models than before.     

Prior to this, the phrase had been floating around for several years, used not only by politicians, economists, and members of think tanks, but by the sort of people involved in aid agencies and various NGOs who dream of a safer tomorrow for all the world's children - oh, and a global government run by a technocratic liberal elite who know what's best for everyone at all times.   

Today, key personnel at the IMF, WHO, WEF, and EU, seem to have miraculously arrived at some kind of ideological consensus re the need to Build Back Better. 

 

Of course, it's hardly a conspiracy - more like an open secret - when individuals like Klaus Schwab are unashamedly setting out their visions of a post-Covid utopia and declaring: "The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine and reset our world." [2] 

 

They call this the new normal. And they laugh at those who naively believe we'll soon return to the old ways once there's a vaccine ...

 

Notes

[1] See: The Inbetweeners, S2/E3, 'Will's Birthday', dir. Ben Palmer, written by Damon Beesley and Ian Morris, (original air date 16 April 2009).  

[2] Klaus Schwab (Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum), 'Now is the time for a "great reset"',  article on the WEF website (3 June 2020): click here.  

Maschalagnia: Brief Notes on Armpit Fetishism

Sammy-Lee Smith (aka Fruit Salad) 

Photo: Ben Hopper from the Natural Beauty series

Both sexes have scent glands in their underarm region. But women have a greater number and produce a more enticing aroma - or range of aromas - as far as the heterosexual male nose is concerned. 

One such nose belonged to the 19th-century French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans. He noted that brunettes and dark-haired girls have an audacious scent which, unfortunately, can sometimes prove fatiguing. Redheads, on the other hand, have a sharp, fierce smell; whilst in blondes, the armpits can be as heady as a sweet wine. 

Huysmans also tells us that - whatever their coloring - les femmes de Paris tend to have something acidic about them; something suggestive of ammonia or chlorine. In contrast, the bodies of honest country women aromatically convey something of wild duck cooked with olives and shallots. 

Whether this makes one hungry for love or simply hungry, I suppose depends on one's disposition. But there are certainly individuals who desire not only a hearty home-cooked meal, but to sniff, lick, kiss and ultimately fuck the armpits of their beloved (this latter activity is known as axillism).         

If some men prefer a smooth, hairless armpit (as they do a smooth, hairless pussy), the genuine devotee of this particular partialism always prefers an unshaven haven and a strong, pungent fragrance.

Thankfully, European women - in contrast to their Anglo-American sisters - have long understood that body hair and body odor play a powerful role within human sexuality at its filthiest and most inhuman. And they don't mind if you wipe it on the curtains.   


See: Joris-Karl Huysmans, 'The Armpit', in Parisian Sketches, trans. Brendan King, (Dedalus, 2004), pp. 126-28.

And see also the feature by Ellen Scott in the Metro (8 Aug 2017) on Ben Hopper's stunning Natural Beauty project which attempts to normalise the fact of female underarm hair: click here.