# is there anything more dull than the leaden ringing sound of a church bell in grassy unpleasant old endland marking glacially slow hollow hours spent waiting waiting for realer life to occur a sound signifying ultimate all natural cosmic order or so everyone else is constantly informed whether they want to be or not other than of course the monthly accompanying church newsletter and whoever's charged with adding a new health and safety paragraph to the back pages regarding the crossing of one's legs in the bell ringing tower see if church going bell ringers sit waiting around the edge of the bell ringer's ropes with ir legs sticking out there's a small chance they might get caught in the loops thereby pulling them up into the rafters not that this isn't a potentially dangerously bell ringing realty to be considered with serious intent or that it wouldn't make a spontaneously and unintentionally funny local news item in the church newsletter how misses stinkerton smithe head of the local mobile christian book lending library association was discovered bouncing up and down screaming in ir oversized 60's knickers but rather to note how existentially dehydrated and terminally boring the whole sad mess is how oldies inna endland seem to do absolutely nothing except waffle on endlessly about old crap like religion churches bell ringing about new officially mandated health and safety legislation and all associated public documentation it's not that the past most ancient and noble didn't happen and has no influence on the present but the terrible and depressing degree to which almost nothing but the past appears to truly matter for these desperately old fnart baskets they live alone and oh so contented in ir stale neurocultural bubble of mummified history and proudly inform those in the present how warm and wonderful it all is one's favorite imaginary friend the church bell ringing and parish newsletters take a certain father for instance eighty two and as still as much of a spry smug basket as they probably ever were who possesses nearly all ir marbles yet will at the drop of the hat go into an hour long reminiscence based ramble about old dead stuff about old uncle bernard in yorkshire and auntie mary in south shields busting out ancient phone pictures of ir darn favorite nephew graduating from a phd in pharmaceutical biochemistry researcher robert what: i just can't give a tinker's flying cuss about that any of that jive and every time ey starts ir ever more long winded ramble about terminally boring andor time mummified nothing i start to internally weep and roll my eyes painfully i've no choice but to make an excuse to leave the room before i perish from terminal boredom the alternative is having to sit there taking in ir long overbaked and tasteless memory crud pie the fact i also feel i have to unceasingly deliver a nice impressed smile to everything ey says even if ir's too often smug condescension and tiresome man o' science vanity makes my jaw ache it's like being caught in the existential time wake of an impossibly ancient dusty archive of useless information there's little to no sense that this person is even remotely aware of the fantastical living possibilities and active flowing biocosmic energies of the present the true vitality of now for i realize that here is an old man with nothing but the dead past to hold ir together who with wormy time worn memories and ancient inherently crusty and conservative reactionary opinions is patiently unable and perfectly unwilling to change who imagines they already know all that's worth knowing who arrives in a present so thoroughly stuffed with knowledge that why would ey try to consider anything anew right the almost violet incuriosity with which they approaches all subjects not immediately within the hugely circumscribed confines of taohe: the area of ir expertise is an amazing thing to witness ey asks no questions of others or of the world but rather given any opportunity will instantly hold court over taohe a perpetual mansplaining bore not that ey doesn't actually have an expert's level of knowledge but good grief is that ever all ey knows thing is ey doesn't even appear to even know what ey knows that is the limitations of knowledge and scientific knowing per se ir's so scientifically literalist reductionist so mired in ideological scientism that any and all information stuffed into ir cobwebbed skull might as well be made of brittle hard microplastic there's zero elf aware sense of facts and knowledge as anything other than facts and knowledge ir apparent immutable unchangeability ir contextless perfection ir totalizing concreteness which is itself an anti scientific view but there's permanent irony gland removal for you combine that with ir patently false belief in god church endland and everything in it's white place and the result is a soulless husk of dead data now facing the inherent mortality and unliving antinature of dead scientific knowledge all that exists inside now is dead desiccated memory and the associated bluffy smug confidence arising from having amassed apparently everything worth knowing / everything knowable yet no sense of being fully attuned to and fully conscious of the timeless mysteries of consciousness andor nature the dynamic energy of the living world and ultimate non scientific realty / zen on top of that the old sod was incredibly rude and ignorant about videographic playstate programmers fellow creative artists they said this as to directly indirectly berate me by association the only question i have for myself is why do i put up with this tiresome old stick year after unceasing year // republic of bob