World Fatigue

I haven't posted an article for over three weeks, yet this blog has been on my mind. It's not that I have been suffering from writer's block because actually there are so many - too many - posts I want to write! It's more a case of having become world-weary. I think it's been progressive but it has crept up over the American presidential election, a fascinating case in point. And then the weariness exacerbated over the French presidential election which, still, I only followed from afar. The glaring reality has been staring at me in the face that the system is rigged on a worldwide scale and reality has been manufactured for us the populace for decades - maybe centuries.

Melania, more than a pretty face... (pict source)

As much as I come across as happy-go-lucky and I am an idealist, I could not allow myself to be sceptical anymore, deny facts that were pointing at a different truth, a truth that the media is portraying as fake, as conspiracist, as anti-constitutional. Pardon my French fries, but... what the duck! NGOs for the most part are a sham, as state missionaries pushing a political agenda. Socialism is NOT for the people. Climate change was brought to us as an evidence by a salesman (Gore) who jets around the world to tell us to be frugal with our car journeys. We are sold one consumed lie after another, that we buy because the media and the governing elites have us believe the thoughts they program into us.

Being a nationalist, a patriot, used to be valued. Today it is derided and mocked and associated with being a racist. Full employment used to be a nation's forte. Not anymore. They took our jobs away, shipped them over to China and replaced them with imported open-border migration. Wealth has been depleted and replaced with communitarianism no-speak lingo. Anything goes. Anything goes as a family these days, as long as it does not resemble a married man-woman couple with two kids. 

Chaos theory is Obama's Bible... (pict source)

What used to be truth is now considered wrong; what used to be wrong is now considered truth. History is being simplified. Once you have no past and can't see the future, and transience has blurred the lines between past, present and future, you find yourself in a permanent present state. You don't know your origins anymore, in fact if you are white and christian, chance is you're a white supremacist. In France, kids spend more time learning about the workings of the EU and the 'goodness' of Agenda 21 in their history classes than they do about Napoléon, Joan of Arc, Clovis or Vercingétorix. Meanwhile stateside, confederate monuments are dismantled to make way for a rewritten history under the political correctness paradigm, the biggest sham of all, that was created in order to silence free speech. If you don't know who you are and where you come from, you have no idea where you're going.

I am weary because I have been writing this blog for almost 8 years and have not even been able to build up a following. God, if I had been writing about push-up bras and the latest stilettoes and my favourite S'Mores, it would be a different story. I'd be monetising through social media and a YouTube channel: Hot or Not, Lancôme's latest highlighter. You bet: what the duck... Sometimes you should just be pretty and shut up.

Transience, Pillar of Modern Society (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this essay, we established that theoretically speaking whoever strives to defy time would be able to make a claim for immortality. Thus whoever claims to be immortal has transcended the timely restrictions imposed upon their life as a human. The notion of immortality takes us back to the catchy aliteration of the timeless timeline of Time. Timelessness evokes magnitude, amplitude, uninterrupted vastness in space and time. It expresses continuity, cohesion and stability.

The Ouroboros symbolises eternity. (Pict source)

Transience, on the other hand, sits precariously on the opposite end of the spectrum. Transience implies a notion of time that is fleeting, brief, truncated, interrupted, non-lasting, whimsical and ultimately unreliable and inefficient. This is about discontinuity. There is a sense of disturbance to it like an underwater current. Beware the underlying chaos!

Now referring to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the noun transience is defined as 'the quality or state of being transient.' Synonyms: Ephemerality, evanescence, impermanence, momentariness. Antonyms: Endurance, permanence.

The adjective transient is defined as 'passing especially quickly into and out of existence: transitory. [...] Passing through or by a place with only a brief stay or sojourn.'

Bearing in mind the immediate adversity imposed upon us by entropy and mortality, the human prerogative aims to make the most effective use of time within a competitive production model. For should it not to be the case, the process would ultimately lead to doom.

Detail of the Vault, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna, Italy

However it appears that our production model has redefined efficiency under a new paradigm. Efficiency used to involve durability under a long-lasting good or service. This as a mission statement had a vision to it, to serve not only the present but the future too. Transience does not and cannot sustain durability. It does not build upon an impetus, it interrupts it. A society whose production model is built upon transience is akin to a transient (casual) friendship that you cultivate with somebody: it does not grow roots or leaves, it does not evolve and deepen because there is no commitment to it, no fire, no bond, no guarantee. It is a stunted affair that remains so until the transient element is corrected.

The faceless banking corporations and multinationals that govern us have cleverly refashioned efficiency since the industrial heyday - and have accelerated its process with the coming of age of mass-consumerism. We mostly have one person to thank for this, Public Relations spin doctor and business insider Edward Bernays - Simon Freud's nephew - and a top influencer in the world of advertising and consumer psychology. He used consumer profiling to serve private interests, using strong-arm tactics to influence purchasing decision. He is indeed the father of customer trickery.

Another representation of eternity. (Pict source)

Bernays was also a trendsetter who wrapped both corporations and consumers tightly around his little finger. He for instance encouraged women to take up smoking by glamourising the cigarette in post-WWI New York City by way of savvy advertising campaigns that centered around personal gratification and desire, concepts that still ring true to this day in advertising. He also engineered water fluoridation PR campaigns to get public trust. Apart from getting us into bad habits, Bernays also wrote a few influential books, including Propaganda, a PR treatise whose most fervent reader was Joseph Goebbels, that's right, Hitler's henchman and future Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Germany's Third Reich.

When efficiency used to be defined by the clever use of time in order to accomplish a task and deliver a good or service via a process that would bring a lasting effect in terms of quality (to stand the test of time according to our human proclivities), this is no longer applicable. In the third and final part of this essay, we will see how vested interests have corrupted the production model under a socio-political ideology in order to reframe and rephrase efficiency, with transience at the core. I will describe the areas which I have identified as being of a transient nature, under the remodelled paradigm of efficiency. (to be continued)

_________

Transience, Pillar of Modern Society is a 3-part series:  Part 1  |  Part 2  |  Part 3

The Gumball Theory

In light of political events currently unfolding in the West, there is no more à propos video than the one I am sharing here right now, and which I describe as The Gumball Theory. Let's stay smart here: I invite you to watch it with an open mind and from start to finish (it only takes 6 minutes!) before casting judgement. From the outset, if viewing numbers are to go by, the video's 4 million views since its release in September 2010, proves this is a hot topic!

Baker Wardlaw's Vending Machine, via Designboom

Please do pay attention to the rationale and follow the logical process put forward by NumbersUSA founder, author and lecturer Roy Beck, through his ingenious and creative illustration of why full-scale, deregulated, open-door immigration (regardless of faith and ideology), promulgated on the basis of humanitarianism does not serve the humanitarian purpose. Put simply, it does not work for either the welcoming state or the state of origin. In fact none of the socio-economic problems (poverty, unemployment) at either end are solved, and no benefits are gained, contrary to what is being purported by the progressist (i.e. liberal) agenda.

This is no fantasist partisan presentation. Mr Beck's research is professional and factual, based upon data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Census Bureau, Population Reference Bureau and The World Bank. The presentation is not anti-immigration. It does however demonstrate that only sustainable levels of immigration - that is legal, controlled and managed - are to benefit both the new country of residence and the country of origin.



As a light-hearted note, you will never look at (or chew!) gumballs the same way after this!

P.S: NumbersUSA is an Education & Research Foundation, founded by Roy Beck and an advocate of lower immigration levels. It works in partnership with Moderates, Conservatives and Liberals. NumbersUSA describes itself as "a non-profit, non-partisan organization that favors an environmentally sustainable and economically just America and seeks to educate the public about the effects of high levels of immigration on U.S. overpopulation, the environment, jobs, and wages. We use government data to conduct research on the impacts of U.S. population growth, consumption, sprawl, and current levels of immigration and educate the public, opinion leaders and policy makers on the results of those and other studies."

P.P.S: Read the full PDF version (362 pages) of Roy Beck's acclaimed book, The Case Against Immigration, The moral, economic, social and environmental reasons for reducing U.S. immigration back to traditional levels, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1996.

Some Fishy April Fool's Day!

April Fool's Day is traditionally a day of jolly hoaxes and pranks. It is related to a change in attribution of New Year's Day to 1st January in line with the Gregorian calendar (introduced in 1582), which resulted in quid pro quo amongst the populations of Europe. 'The motivation for the reform was to bring the date for the celebration of Easter to the time of the year in which the First Council of Nicaea had agreed upon in 325. Because the celebration of Easter was tied to the Spring equinox, the Roman Catholic Church considered this steady drift in the date of Easter undesirable. The reform was adopted initially by the Catholic countries of Europe. Protestants and Eastern Orthodox countries continued to use the traditional Julian calendar and adopted the Gregorian reform after a time, for the sake of convenience in international trade. The last European country to adopt the reform was Greece, in 1923.' (Wikipedia).

Fish Platter by Andrew Ludick Ceramics

Now if you are not acquainted with French, Belgian, French Canadian, French Swiss or Italian traditions around April Fool's Day, you may not be aware that we like it fishy! Children (and the young at heart) attach handmade paper fishes in the back of unsuspecting relatives, friends, co-workers (yes!) and passers-by. The fish has some religious (Catholic) connotation attached to it, but whether you are a devout or not is totally irrelevant. What matters is to bring a smile to someone's face.

These days though, instead of sticking fishes in people's backs, I'd rather stick a fish dish on a loved one's table as a present! Those featured here are by Irish ceramicist Andrew Ludick and they bring together the decorative and the practical. His dishy Handpainted Ocean Life Platters are available to purchase from Crate & Barrel.

Fish Bowls by Andrew Ludick Ceramics

Handpainted Ocean Life Platters by Andrew Ludick Ceramics

Andrew's latest Fish Bowls

Napoléon the Great Fascinator

On 1st March 1815, having sailed back to the southern coast of France from his exile on the Italian island of Elba, Napoléon set foot on the beach of Golfe-Juan. He took to the road heading north, with an army of loyals and associates, and made a triumphant return to Paris. To reconquer a nation that was being divided by the drawn-out Napoleonic campaigns and the power struggles between empire, aristocracy and bourgeoisie was a wild card for the emperor. He had 100 days to prove himself, until the fated Waterloo defeat against England (18th June 1815), resulting in his capitulation and forced exile to the British island of Saint-Helena, the ultimate insult to a man who had been the world over feared, envied and lauded in equal measures.

French lawyer Frank Samson plays Napoléon (Corse-Matin, 02/03/2015)

As controversial as admiration may be regarding warriors, Napoléon remains the greatest man borne out of France. He was born in 1769 in Corsica, one year after the island became French, making his arrival a timely - almost tactical, one might think - affair in favour of France, for should he have been borne one year earlier, his genius would have served Italy instead! He was 20 years old when the French Revolution broke out, then again a timely occurence for any ambitious, educated, self-disciplined young man working on an ideal.

Napoléon was a genius in many intersected ways: a gifted visionary, thinker, strategist, tactician, modernist, social reformer and re-organiser, high-calibre administrator and educator. He was a pacificator of France and a staunch patriot. He also happened to be a European, way before the EU, and acted as an Illuminati inspiration for New World nations! He left a legacy that is still relevant today: Code Civil (French Civil Law), Code Napoléon, Conseil d'Etat, Code du Commerce (Trade Law), Cour des Comptes (Finance Court), Pension system for army veterans, Légion d'Honneur (merit award distinction medal), Metric System (a rationalised measurement system), Baccalauréat (academic qualification leading to University studies), to name but a few of his achievements in Civil Life, not to mention that he was surrounded by a winning team of skilled supporters, including the discoverer and the decipherer of the Rosetta stone that brought quantum leaps into Egyptology. Moreover his reign delivered a sober and classic style in architecture, furniture design and fashion, that makes it incredibly fresh and contemporary. He also championed civil engineering programmes, Université Impériale and Concordat.

Napoléon Auction Sales Catalogue by Osenat (16/11/2014)

Meanwhile his military tactics are still applied today and studied in high places like the US Military Academy at West Point.Undeniably, to depict such an emblematic character of encyclopedic proportions in a blogpost will not do him the justice he deserves and I can only apologise to the Napoléon purists out there.

Napoléon's archenemies Nelson and Wellington respected him and praised his tactical approach. Whenever I have discussed Napoléon with Brits, their immediate description of him has been 'dictator' (their obligatory label) before lowering their voice to express their personal admiration for the man. What I find ironically admirable is that when you visit the Waterloo battle site, Napoléon is treated as the victor rather than the vanquished.

What fascinates me though is that beyond the grave, Napoléon has enjoyed enduring popularity. He is the historical character who has inspired the highest number of documentaries, fiction films, biographies and studies the whole world! No matter how little educated or historically-inclined Joe Bloggs is, they will have heard of him.

(Wounded Eagle Flag Post, 1804, auctioned by Osenat, image via Nouvel Observateur, 16/11/2014)

Auction sales involving Napoléon and consorts are extremely sought after and prices reach astronomical heights! Last November, the prestigious collection of Napoléon artefacts put up for sale by Prince Albert of Monaco through Osenat delivered results beyond every expectation! As the most striking example, Napoléon's famous hat, the 'Bicorne' model fetched 1.5 million Euros! We find out from the detailed description by Osenat that from 1800 to 1815, Napoléon wore a total of 120 Bicorne hats. He constantly had 12 of those hats on the go, each of those made to last 3 years, and 4 replaced yearly.

Entombed in granite and marble, Napoléon still reigns. He leads armies of worldwide supporters and troops of re-enacters who don the costumes and get muddy down the battlefields, or tactically advance scores of lead soldiers across maps, while consulting their reference books. He is a commonality as an inspiration, a fascination, an adulation even, and certainly a leveller that transcends nationality, age group, class and every affiliation under the sun. My better half, who is American, is a Napoléon expert and admirer, and his admiration can only make me prouder to be French.

(Wikipedia)

P.S: The Bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo will be commemorated on 18th June 2015 on a grand scale, with no less than 5,000 re-enacters, 300 horses, and 100 canons. Find out more here.

Google Me, Google You! (Part 2)

I fancied a French moniker for my blog, with a touch of vintage. I was going through a bit of a 1950s phase at the time and La Baguette Magique (literally: 'The Magic Wand') conjured up images to me from the Bewitched TV series (which wasn't even from the 50s by the way!). Meanwhile I was also looking for a play on words (I should have known better!) with a loose connection to the culinary world as I was still contemplating my blog to be food-orientated. La Baguette was an obvious connection to the French bread stick, as the word is universally understood as such. I was OK with people relating La Baguette Magique to something like 'Magical French Bread Stick'... Why not?

The problem was never going to arise from English speakers, but rather from French-speaking countries (especially France and Belgium), where I found out - only recently - that La Baguette Magique is slang for something down there... Now I'm getting you guessing and reaching out for Google... Anyway I was not impressed, to say the least. Then again my blog is unequivocal, there is nothing from down there on show up here, so let's all rest assured! I might one day decide to change the blog name (countless fellow bloggers have done it for one reason or another), but for now I'll just lay to rest any unfounded suspicions: 'La Baguette Magique' as a Magic Wand, with connected imagery to Bewitched (although their noses acted as magic wands I know, I know...), with 'La Baguette' as a reference to the bread stick, and 'Magique', well, as in 'Magic! Superb! Wonderful!'

Now guys, back to our search engine exercise, some of us (I guess most of us!) have used the wonders of the web to support some personal yet perfectly innocent detective work, to trace long-lost contacts, pals, colleagues, school friends, relatives, acquaintances, former neighbours etc. Who needs Friends Reunited when Google provides you with all the clues! Social media platforms like Facebook, MySpace, Wayn, Plaxo or LinkedIn deliver the results too.

Casting a spell on us while fixing things in a twitch! Image source

Down that journey, I went on a mission to recall names of long-lost friends from primary or secondary school, but the findings weren't as promising as anticipated. Class of '86 maybe wasn't a good vintage year, I'm not sure. The only two people I managed to trace back (although didn't contact them) was a girl who now runs her dad's estate agents office (she was an only child and back in the day we all knew that she would end up taking over the family business, despite the fact she didn't show an interest in property nor did she have good school marks, but eh that might prove yet to be another nail in property agents reputation coffin?).

The second person was some guy from secondary school, a bit of a whippersnapper who - I never forgot - told the class one day that he ambitioned to work for General Motors (not in some European backwaters off-shoot but in the US of A headquarters, that went without saying)... Maybe it's a good thing for him that he never made it to GM (might be without a job as we speak!), but instead he became a food technology lecturer in a Midwest university, settled into mariage and parenthood as the perfect American family man (it's amazing the information you can glean just off the web, I'm telling you!). Which takes me to the next part of our article: your creative material and information about yourself.

The 'magique' is in the 'baguette'!

In my little detective work via Google (some people really have nothing better to do with their time it seems!), I found extracts of my blog that had been changed, randomly copied and pasted completely out of context (even featured on some totally unrelated Dita Von Teese tribute site, go try understand...). Some of my blog posts come up through the most random search sites (sure the words La Baguette Magique don't help the cause, as we found out earlier)...

You guys will have probably experienced similar situations I'm sure, with copyrights bent right, left and centre, watermarks airbrushed, photos under 'new' (i.e. unauthorised) ownership, missing credits, your artistic portfolios passed down as someone else's, and your creative licence tweaked at leisure... (to be continued)