crackdown - to  me it suggests grinding one's knuckles - grinding not punching - into the face of someone already prostrate.

or the sound of the executioner's knuckles (again) being loosened, warmed up (cracked, in fact)  a dry sound, insignificant in itself - in the torture chamber.

there is a procedure. that way no one is confused. things will be better. after this.

sacrifices must be made. there is a procedure.

and then, after this. the future. after this.

what's this about all this "crackdown" shit? every week we are invited to contribute our joyous squeals to a "crackdown" on something or other.

that's someone else tied to the post, invited to give their last testament (to be sold in the tabloids- gallows confessionals)  and then immolated.

punitive society or what?

i have to quote myself: 

"the ritual is performed unconsciously everywhere.  then  we are simply left with the appetite, to do it again and again and again.
the ritual without consciousness has no efficacy. it channels the appetite without satisfying it.  capital has to stimulate and channel appetite without satisfying it, or consumption would cease."

the gallows confessional http://www.folkworld.de/28/e/gallows.html (here mayhew's comment, which is always worth noting-despite the class prejudice..the working classes always providing an appetite for this etc........) will always involve a confession of guilt. the (sacrificial) victim must nod it's head to give consent. leading to such expedients as scattering water or milk between the ears (if it's a cow) or even tickling......

someone like maxine carr for instancehttp://www.cps.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/121_04.html suffered from not admitting her guilt to the murder of those unfortunate girls. however, she could plead guilty to "lying on her cv" and claiming to not live with her partner (what doley does? it cuts housing benefit by 1/3, thus making it impossible to rent anywhere as a couple) so that's what she did, and got prosecuted. although virually no one  else does for the same misdemeanour. for fuck's sake- if we were all liable for prosecution on the strength of claims we make in the cv. which of us would be at liberty now? or would even have a job.

 

it was required that she plead guilty to something - anything- so that balance was restored to the cosmos.

no foundation stone that is not soaked in blood. there is a procedure. that way no one is confused.

THE PHARMAKOS (again)

without consciousness (of what is being performed)  the ritual has no value.  if it is performed consciously, the violence is limited to a particular place; otherwise, the ritual is performed unconsciously everywhere.  then  we are simply left with the appetite, to do it again and again and again.
the ritual without consciousness has no efficacy. it channels the appetite without satisfying it.  capital has to stimulate and channel appetite without satisfying it, or consumption would cease.

the mechanism  involves expulsion (damnation), and traffic with the excess or contagion of the supernatural which is celebrity.  glamour, in it's old sense, meant  magic spell

the drive to fame of the wanabe celebrities, is the drive to "be yourself" and nothing else, above all else. is the truly demonic drive  underlying late capital ..... this is apparently what they (and we) all want. to be famous for anything specific other than this would only get in the way. to have a job other than that would mean a link to relations of production, and this is something the "pure" transcendant self would be sullied by. the gods never had proper jobs, they just were.

 

contemporary sleb culture relies on people "famous for being famous" to use the cliche. they transform themselves into images. one one level quite literally - photographs in heat magazine etc. because an image has an outline, a clarity (or simplicity) that a "real" person doesn't have.

look at someone mega famous: elvis or diana the clothes horse. or jesus, for that matter.they become atemporal through their images: baby images (in the case of jesus) coexist with his las vegas phase, and that of him as a young man, or just before the marriage to prince charles walking down a street in kensington about to get into a mini. these images coexist and in each one the subject is instantly recognisable.

 

The Rite of the Pharmakos

 

"This rite is celebrated before the festival proper. If possible, it should be conducted at the seashore, or on the banks of running water that will carry away the ashes, ultimately to the sea. Otherwise, the burning of the Pharmakos should occur in such as way that the ashes can be gathered and transported to the seashore or a great river.

It must not take place in a temenos, as it involves all the impurities of which we wish to dispose.

In ancient times, in Athens the Pharmakos was a real human being, or sometimes two: a man and a woman. It is suggested that they were criminals already condemned to death and chosen for their ugliness. In other places there is evidence that a simalacrum of some sort was used. There is evidence for a straw figure used in similar rites, and so we have chosen that option. Ideally, we have two Pharmakoi, a male and female, but in difficult years we make use of one, a Unisex Pharmakos.

Our Pharmakos is a combustible straw figure with a necklace of figs: white figs for the male, black figs for the female. If there is only one Pharmakos, then both kinds of figs should be strung into the necklace.

In Ancient times the Pharmakos was led all the way around the City. .......... The Pharmakos is carried around the outside of the circle, clockwise, and each person 'puts upon' the Pharmakos all those things which he or she considers bad and which she or he wants out of his or her life, and out of the life of the Tribe. This 'putting upon' may occur in many ways. The thing to be disposed of may be written down, and the paper shoved into the body of the Pharmakos, or it may be addressed in words to the Pharmakos, either silently or out loud.

This is a rite in which the emotions of anger or hatred are perfectly appropriate, because this is the time for being rid of them. Rage directed at the Pharmakos, as personification of all the bad things in life, is rage to be exorcised. Hitting the Pharmakos is perfectly correct. Spitting on the damned thing is fine too. This is where all the bad stuff goes!

When the Pharmakos has been led around and abused it is then strangled and burned.

If this seems a primitive and barbaric rite: it probably is. But keep in mind that its purpose is to rid the People of the primitive and barbaric realities of their lives, and to prevent those things from doing damage during the rest of the year. When a society provides no real and personal release of the pressures which it puts upon its constituents, there will be explosions, and the toll will be terrible.

We repeat: this is where the bad stuff goes. --On to the Pharmakos, where it is destroyed, burnt to ashes, then strewn upon the ultimately purifying waters.

If the Pharmakos is burnt away from the waters, then the next day the ashes should be taken to the waters for dispersal.

At the end of this rite it is appropriate for their to be a special khernips, or handwashing, before any other thing is set to be done. Having touched an impure thing, the Pharmakos, one would not wish to handle any sacred thing until purified."

source is a wierd site here's the link http://home.pon.net/rhinoceroslodge/14thargelia.htm  the italics are mine. was thinking about david blaine next to the river in his box again, and also big brother (of course!). don't know if pharmakos is the same as pharmakon, which is both the word for poison and cure, i think.

i might actually post that on the big brother site. there have been a few threads pondering why there is so much anger and hatred on the message boards, directed at one or another of the housemates; but also between posters sometimes against gays, asylum seekers, or racists homophobes and misogynists, and which housemate exemplifies which group.

the pharmakos, when it's not a person is an image.......or a celebrity, who is a person as an image.

interesting article about political scapegoating here http://www.talesofcoppercity.com/talesofcoppercity/2004/week12/

of course, i am drunk......been dumped (yet again) today by my girlfriend. am getting pissed off with this routine.

starting to think what single life would be like- of course would have more time to devote to big brother!

i have to decide whether to go into work tomorrow, because i work for her, as well.

i can tell myself that if i don't turn up, then she will start to appreciate what i do, and this is true, as far as the business is concerned. but for once, this break up has nothing to do with the business, and she has unequivically told me that i can keep my job, if i like. of course, that's because i am useful there.

i put so much of me into this. insofar as i know what "me" is. well, there; if she don't want it, she don't want it.

the question is more do i need the job? given that it will be around her? being a personal assistant when there is nothing personal there. of course, she's the talent and i just answer phones, do paperwork, research, take photographs, make deals,write press releases.

the point is, that i was doing all this for us. we were building something for us, i thought.

we discussed my role a while ago, and i think that we agreed that she would not employ me (with what she calls my attitude) if i was not her boyfriend, and i would not work for her (with what is definitely her attitude) if she was not my girlfriend. but she still wants me to work for her- she would, i am both cheap and talented.

at the moment, i feel that it would only be worth my while as things are if i get more money/kudos. i don't know what i could do with the kudos. it's not like fashion means a hell of a lot to me.

but- she has done this before. i can't take it another time, maybe. i've said this to people before, but this is the closest i've come to a "career" type job. this is the closest i've ever come (at the risk of sounding pretentious and adolescent) to the straight world.

she has also changed her mind before. and if she did, i don't know what i'd do.

at the moment, i don't see how i could continue working for her. but that's probably just tonight. i might end up getting the bus tomorrow morning. find myself on hackney road waiting for the number 26......because i don't know what else to do. and i love her, and don't want to give up. and rent has to be payed. and this is the nearest to a career i'm likely to have.

been on the big brother forum all afternoon, it seems......this just gets sadder and sadder! (i'm watching it now, there are some people sleeping, and one person shaving)

there were some people who were discussing the panopticon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon idea though, which makes a change from the usual. i observe that the logo for big brother is a big bloated eye - i read this as a big bloated i.

this puts me in mind of david blaine last year, who voluntarily subjected himself to exposure. in a glass box, suspended from a crane, for however long it was. there was a combination there of isolation and visibility. this is something about celebrity. on a crane, as near as possible to running water. he was, apparently unprepared for the consequences of this. he created a new centre to the city, a lightning conductor. people's (general) hostility was directed towards him, and he thought people would mostly applaud. but this isn't america. he had made himself radically visible and blatantly set himself apart, over running water as well. (this is something to do with carrying sins away). he was asking for it.

victor, the man who has been branded a thug in the tabloids this week- when he was having his set-to with emma, the big brother house retard (now departed), repeatedly yelled "do you know who i am?" into her face. stuart, the house pretty boy, whilst restraining him, responded with "who are you?" repeatedly.

people's yardie/gangsta fantasies are being played out upon victor, but he put himself in the box, if there is no running water, there is live streaming.

i am reminded of achmed's statement on entering the house "i feel invisible, i want people to acknowledge my existence".

so there was a huge fight on big brother.........i saw it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. a lot of the british media professed to be shocked and disgusted by it, but this was really why everyone was watching. well, everyone who wasn't watching it to see them all having a good time (i went on the channel 4 big brother forums to ask any fuckwits who didn't like it why they wanted to see the housemates happy and disporting themselves in the sun, but i didn't get any replies.)

i have concluded that the unspoken attraction of the show is power - not just the power of big brother, but the power that the housemates use on each other, or refuse to. the violence, or threatened violence, in the fight was a manifestation of that power. the two who were most overtly violent, victor and jason, were trying to regain control over the group and this was their last resort. in fact big brother sent in security guards, again as a last resort. more subtle forms of coercion are generally the ones that prove popular.

i seem to remember ian hamilton finlay saying something like the contemporary taboo is power, the thing that we will never talk about, but which fascinates us. the possibility of watching a televised shag is just a camouflage, it's the power that keeps us coming back to watch. and of course the exercise of power to punish or reward that comes with voting, for the viewers.

hello- back again.......been to germany last weekend to see my girlfriend's family. it was very clean, and of course the trains ran on time.  those are cliches, and true, and also the exact opposite of here, which is why i mentioned them. it was right down in the south, near stuttgart. i felt, as i do at my grandmother's, that i was back in some very comfy corner of the 1950's. everyone was white and middle class. they all dressed from H+M. there isn't the plague of branding (on everything) that we have here. at first i thought that it was as if the 60's never happened, then i realised it wasn't the 60's that was the issue; it was the 80's. that was when we all really got screwed. from the miners strike to the end of the cold war and the poll tax, that was when it happened. that was when we started to get used to the branding, the mobile phones, the feral capitalism. and it continues now. for all i know, the feral capitalism might be rampaging there i suppose, but being there so short a time, i only went on surface details. shop fronts, lack of people bellowing into minature plastic microwaves at any opportunity, clothes and food. and the calm look on people's faces.

we went to a wine festival, because  this was a wine producing region. there had been drinking all day, yet there were no fights, no vomit and no police in sight. there was a tent with long benches and lanterns and a brass band, with a lot of older people singing along to songs that to me could have been that one from the beer garden scene in cabaret.

there were a couple, two at the most, pieces of fascist graffiti. my girlfriend's dad explained the code otherwise i would not have known what they were. 88 stands for the eighth letter of the alphabet twice HH=heil hitler. and 18 stands for AH=adolf hitler. my girlfriend explained that this use of code was because any overt support for the third reich in public was seriously illegal. but to be honest, looking at that place, i'd imagine that there's nearly a death penalty (then counselling) for graffiti anyway. so it struck me as very funny that the graffitists(?) would scruple about making blatant references to the nazi party when the act alone of writing anything on walls was so frowned on. somehow i found this very telling. not the nazi sympathies which i think are held by a tiny minority, but the care not to break any more laws than strictly necessary.

i liked it there, the parent thing was a bit stressful, but on the whole it was good to be away. it would probably drive me mad after a while, my girlfriend, who grew up there, says it does which is why she had to get away.