Category Archives: Culture

A Tree of Life (2021)

By L. Philip Balfour

This sculpture, shape like a tree, was made to celebrate a 50-year birthday, it incorporates, as the trunk, a beer bottle with the recipient’s identity on it, this was actually the invitation to the birthday party, postponed due to Covid-19, as is proper.

Using the bottle as the core, the sculpture is then fortified with several branches and 50 sub-branches or leaves, representing the fifty years of the recipient’s life, the branches and leaves are use silver and gold as primary colours, symbolizing the nobility of recipient’s life. The bottle itself is partially enveloped in silver and gold thread, symbolizing strengthening relations.

Under the branches, well hidden, are four spirals, representing the continued growth of the four children the recipient continues to be, in various degrees thanks to the modern family structures, a father figure or outright a father. One in gold, to represent the firstborn, three in silver.

The base, shaped in clay, both to act as a base for stability and to represent the roots of the tree, embedded in the front, beneath the label carrying the name, is a 1971 Hudson Bay Company commemorative coin, celebrating the 1670 establishment of said company.

To cap of the tree, there is a Red Star recovered from a 1974 Soviet commemorative medal’s bar, the remained of the medal remains hanging from the branches within, this cap represents relationships, copper is added beneath, representing the appropriate alchemical symbology.

Scattered around the branches, hangs coins, badges and medals, all from around 1971, this includes a full Danish coin set, several additional Danish low denomination coins from the period, a 5-cent US piece, a commemorative badge from the Russian Ivanovo celebrating its centenary of receiving city status (1871) and several other items, all themed from either 1971 or 50. Two Goteborg commemorative coins also hang from the branches.

The tree is specifically named as “a tree of life” and not “The Tree of Life”, this tree is specifically designed, built, shaped and assembled to the life of a single person, however, every single person could have a tree like this produced, the concept itself is not unique, the person who celebrated their birthday shaped in the contents and the symbols.

The sculpture remains in the hands of the recipient.

Today, I’ll write about art

Amber Coal is obviously a complete lunatic, sadly, that’s absolutely nothing special at all. With the Internet being a giant echo chamber of idiocy, lunatics and maniacs have an awesome time on it. I mean, who’s going to notice yet another mad hatter in an ocean of silly hats.

It’s neither unusual or peculiar.

And doesn’t actually matter, Lunatics often produced some brilliant stuff, the border between genius and madness is pretty often shattered, so no worries!

Let’s just barrel into whatever games Amber has managed to vomit forth upon us all.

IwhatA Game of Cat and Mouse for example, isn’t a game, but is absolutely performance art, interactive performance art, but not a game, it sadly lacks an active objective for the player to actually do, it’s message about entropy isn’t really anything spectacular, if I needed a remind about the terminal heat death of the universe, I’d go watch Nicki Minaj videos.

And burn out my own optical nerves, just to manage the pain you see.

Still, should probably try another one of the creatures deranged games:

UFOHNO, yeah.

UFONO

Yes, we get it, you’re trying to tell us something. But the message “Not everything is what you see” is so old, that I’ve encountered them reading my way through roman graffiti on the walls of Pompeii, it’s old news sweetie, you’re not suprising anyone.

So what if I use a mind control ray to force owls to land on the ground, and then be devoured by violently agreesive rabbits?

Well done, I get the message, it’s all about control and doing crazy shit, well done, now go play Bioshock instead, it tells pretty much the same message, just wrapped in a really good game.

Or play Spec Ops: The Line, which messes around with halucinations to get the same effect, while also being incredibly good.

Or I could look at shitty pixel games with simple messages, choices, choices, so many choices.

Fortunately, they belong to me, not to you.

The many kinds of Healthcare

Affordable-Health-Care-Plans

So yeah, there are more than one alternative to handle Healthcare in a country, and most of them have a bunch of hybrid solution that blends elements of them all.

So let’s run through the three “pure” ways of handling healthcare in a nation:

Universal government owned healthcare:

This is the one the American Republicans would call “Socialist”, it’s fairly straightforward, the state has every citizen in a giant database, you show up at your local hospital through either a doctor, an accident or the emergency room.

You get treated, it costs you absolutely nothing, it’s paid collectively through the taxes everyone pays. Fairly straightforward, this is the basic model used in the Scandinavian countries and to a degree Great Britain through the NHS.

It does carry a fairly large bill and depending on the nature of the system, a potential waiting list and inefficiency.

But people don’t die in the streets, or at home, generally.

Government owned, mandated or heavily legislated Healthcare insurance.

This is the method used in German and Japan, among others, it’s also fairly simple. It’s a system based on private or public hospitals, who get paid through either government run health insurance companies or private companies that often operate in a sort of cooperative method, i.e. mostly non-profit or mandated not to produce larger profits than some legislative limit.

It generally works, in Germany your job actually pays to private non-profit companies, and if you lose your job? Off to the government subsidy, so people, you know, don’t die in the gutter and other such uncivilized stuff.

I gave an example on the Japanese system in yesterdays update, it does seem to have some problems actually paying enough to the healthcare companies and doctors.

The anarchy model, no control, limited or no government intervention.

Note, that I refrain from using laissez faire, because this model sucks. This is the model most commonly used in dirt poor African and Asian nations, it’s absolutely horrible and mandates that the poor have to make use of local clinics, often funded by who knows what, and old traditional methods.

It’s also the American model, just with an actual healthcare system present, completely run through the medium of private for-profit virtually unregulated healthcare insurance companies, which is why the most common reason for bankruptcy in America, is medical bills.

It, as we have seen in the US, doesn’t work at all, even with the American patchwork programs of Medicare and Medicaid, who are only directed towards those below or just above some Federal Poverty limit, which is a problem when lots of people lose their jobs, and thus their healthcare insurance, and for when the profiteering companies decided to go “Ha ha, fuck you” and dump you for the old insurance “Act of God” bullshit.

Hybrids?

Shit, there’s tons of hybrid solutions, the Universal Government Healthcare often has possibilities for the rich and resource wealthy to simply skip the entire public waiting list and emergency room and just check into one of the many private hospitals and recently, in Denmark at least, some companies hand out private insurance as a little additional to their crucial employees, insures that they get them back to work faster and more efficiently, it’s also often used to just everyone, to draw people to the company.

Not in these days with crisis of course.

The second option is really a hybrid already.

Now for the American/Dirt poor country method? Perhaps some sort of Government Non-profit Health Insurance company to provide some proper competition to large Insurance companies who really only benefit people with a job or their shareholders or their CEOs.

Or perhaps a shift into the second model, and regulated the shit out of an area that always should have been heavily legislated.

The Uncertaincy of the future

Do any of us really know what’s going on anymore? Of couse we don’t. The news media of today is a confusing and overwhelming mess of contradictionary information and pointless cat pictures. We spend more time looking at cute animals, than we spend on actually caring what’s going on around us, and not just physically within our immediate surroundings.

Which means, essentially, that nothing is stopping anyone, from doing anything. The Judicial system has been under attack for decades, in the Western Civilizations, by the media tycoons, by clueless politicians, by angry internet groups, by a total lack of common sense, by millions of voices demanding satisfaction. Not a single, not even one, of these factors, actually care about even a semblence of justice.

The Media tycoons and their petty empires, wish for nothing, but power and control. They want to set the agenda, they want the News, to be THEIR news, rather than the actual news.

The politicians? They are buried under spin, under information overflow, over pandering to special interests. I really wish some politician would just outright tell the journalists “This is fucking irrellevant, ask me about stuff that actually matters, not this garbage.” But that’s what happens, when rather than electing out best and brighest to positions of power, we elect the shiniest apples on the three. We elect the people with the best media-designed, spin-doctorized and polished message, not a message of a bright and awesome future, but just fear, hate and more fear.

Don’t elect these people, people who are trained to be politicians, and always rememeber, that “good old guy” over there, that Bush-clone, never forget, he has more spin doctors than anyone else.

The Internet? The Internet is a massive hissing hive of idiocy, on the internet you can say anything you want, ANYTHING! And someone will agree with you, and no matter how many that disagree, someone will agree.

No matter how idiotic it all ends up being.

It seems that today, common sense, isn’t worth anything anymore, common sense has become a sort of vaguely defined pipe-dream, maintained only by a desperate few poor sods, crying out against the completely baffling lack of any sense, by anyone.

Of course Franch exploded, what the hell did anyone expect? When you treat the younger generations like criminals? When young people are send into jail, to be radicalized? Of couse they end up hating everyone, becoming easy targets for older demagogues and ideologists, who desire nothing less, than total control. For the world itself, to bend to their whims.

So yes, we don’t know what’s going on anymore, because we elected idiots to power, because we allowed the media to become centralized under singular regime, because we gave up on our common sense, because we refuse to listen.

People who say that politics doesn’t matter anymore? Why would you say that! You morons! You’re basically surrendering everything that makes you an individual, to the media frenzy, to the useless ocean of information. Just give up eveything, let them control the future.

And the best bit, there is no “them”, there is no grand conspiracy that desires to rule the world, there’s no aliens in Area 51, the Illuminati isn’t real, the Freemasons are just old men with big meals.

It’s all our own fault, we stopped caring about the world, and started watching kittens playing with toys. We stopped trying to achive a better world, and just went off to watch Two and a Half men.

We just don’t care anymore. And thus, two centuries from the French Revolution, the last ember of free thought and free people, just vanish.

And we all just let it happen.

Oh dear me.

Awesome

What the hell is wrong with you? Yes, you, the insignificant waste of air, that have miraculously manged to type in the URL into the address bar. But wait, you haven’t typed in any URL, you’ve just went to and vomited forth some pseudo-relevant search parameter into your favourite internet “browser” Google.

Your power of internet research, is truly an awesome sight, indeed.

Oh Champion of Bollocks and papier-mache! Oh Commander of vague bestiality and furry webcomics! Oh Padishah of the way, way, way to long incomprehensible insults.

Moving on, or at the very least away from that, we never really move on, we only move slightly to the left, and then we move to a parking garage in the hidden city of Submerged Lincoln.

Does that make sense? Of course not, it is not supposed to, confusion, creature, is the order of the day. And you little maggots will just have to suffer, you read me? SUFFER!

Because? Because? Your suffering? It’ll make yu stronger. The world isn’t some Twilight-esque dreamworld, and you do not look handsome, beautiful or presentable.

At best, you look fat or awkward. And there aren’t any vampires out there, and even if there was, why would they want to have anything to do with some butter encrusted landwhale of a far-arse. Only maniacs have an interested in impulse-weak land-bags. Now go eat a donut, to sate your depression.

And again, off on a tangent, a tangent way off the track. What track?

Oh.

Whoops.

In the dreaming city

In the dreaming city, beyond the unfathomable realms, rest the sprawling pit of never-ending despair.

From this pit, beyond comprehension, an eternal dirge, devastating, beautiful, spews forth, without pause, relentless, eternal, dreadful, enchanting.

Those who hear, see nothing, those who see, die. Those who refuse that which cannot be denied, suffer.

Suffer, pain, madness and dreams.

Dreams of slithering, twisting, writing, corrupting, endless, void-bound horror.

To hear, to see, to voice, is to lament forevermore.

Prayer for the mad and the free

Blessed be those.
Those who struggle.
Those who suffer.
Those who silence.

Blessed be those.
Those who turn.
Those who till.
Those who torture.

Blessed be she.
She who laments
She who let’s.
She who looks.

Blessed be he.
He who murder.
He who miss.
He who mystify.

Blessed be those.
Those who search.
Those who scream.
Those who submit.

Wasted House of Terror

The House of Terror, 60 Andrássy Street, Budapest, land of useless victimized nationalism: Hungary. A Giant House, framed in black steel, effective and shocking way to show a museums location.

To bad it’s a bloody mess. The museum has a vast amount of plaques with quotes, from famous Hungarians, on Hungarian! Hungarian, a language of the Ugric group, spoken only by the some 15 million Hungarians worldwide, and only comprehensible by the fellows in Finland and Estonia, and by fellows, I mean fellow incomprehensible languages. There’s virtually no translations of any of the plaques, only a few ragtag subtitles on a few running movies, and the history texts scattered around the places.

The entire house is designed as a giant symbol of the secret Hungarian government apparatus, both the fascist 1944-45 and communist governments. The problem is, that this symbolism, drowns out the facts.

Combined, all these elements ensures the museums part failure, at educating its visitors in the horrors of the dictatorial governments, that dominated Hungary from 1944 to 1989. It also fails completely, at mentioning the simple glowing fact, that Hungary wasn’t the only country this happened to, every single eastern European country, suffered from secret police and government terror.

The artistic value of the museum is well-worth mentioning, but the artistic value is ill-placed, considering this is suppose to be a museum of absolutely awful government sanctioned actions. We don’t need all the symbols, we just need the truth, dictatorial governments are bad, democracy is good. Not some pop-culture party, of annoying music, retarded symbols and pointless design.

A failure, drowned in the sea of Hungarian selfishness and vanished in symbolic obscurity.