kharg island freakout blues

 'hi friends. it's day eleven of the imperialist war on iran and I'm still alive...'  - random facebook vid

if horsemouth has understood the situation correctly then trump has realised that iran borders on the strait of hormuz through which 20% of the world's oil flows. iran is thus in a position to close off that supply with drones, missiles, mines, or indeed a motorboats with a rocket launchers on the back. 

trump has invited the oil tankers and cargo ships to sail through (protected by the US) and he has invited other nations to send boats to protect those first boats (though what would protect these boats from attack is not clear). 

strangely nobody seems very keen. 

alternatively trump seems to have implied that he could destroy the kharg island oil terminal (from which much of iran's own oil is despatched) if the strait of hormuz is not opened. (thus further limiting the world's supply of oil). 

iran has argued the strait of hormuz is open - just not to iran's enemies. 

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yesterday horsemouth spent some time sitting out in the sun reading or listening to the radio. he then watched satan's sword  an earlier incarnation of the (anti)hero full-moon swordsman. 

he maintained his interest in utopias (and often the ruins of utopias)

he followed an LA review of books article to alice constance austin's llano del rio cooperative colony and then on to an overview article on it (with links to other utopian communes in southern california). 

'alice constance austin (the architect)...  proposed a city composed of courtyard houses of concrete construction, built in rows for a more equitable distribution of labor... each kitchenless house would be connected to a central kitchen through an underground network of tunnels. within the tunnels, railway cars would deliver food, necessities, laundry, and so on...'

aldous huxley lived there for a while (and indeed wrote about it).

interestingly what the article fails to mention is that, despite having its origins in the labour and socialist movements,  and in common with many housing developments in the US  of the time, llano del rio was whites only. 

there were similar african american communes at lanfair (dunbar). but still. 

'it rained a lot in lanfair in those years and in the spring, as far as you could see was beautiful golden poppies all over the valley. it was beautiful, a few other different wildflowers in the mix, but the predominant flowers were golden yellow poppies...'

it is the morning. horsemouth was just dreaming about being in a band rehearsal with pete and ross and the DAT machine (it was a dream of the type wrangling dream apparatus). 

horsemouth has his coffee. let him take a sip. 

as if it had never happened (disbelief)

'if one word could sum up the experience of 2020, it would be disbelief.' - adam tooze, $hutdown, introduction, first sentence. 

we are moving into the sixth anniversary of the COVID pandemic and lockdown. horsemouth has got adam tooze's $hutdown down from the racks (perhaps it has enough narrative drive to enable him to read it). 

boris johnson will not make his 'you must stay home' speech until march 23rd. 

the problem with the pandemic is that it changed nothing. it is an irruption rather than an event. some people get to work from home a few days a week (but then some people got to work from home before the pandemic). most actual workers had to continue on traveling in and working through it. 

as tooze notes, it's not like the world began 2020 from a place of peace - the 2008 financial crisis had ended the globalisation and the 'neo-liberalism is good' era and spawned counter-movements such as trump(1)  and brexit. the world was mad enough already before covid arrived - in a way covid arrived to capstone off that era and as a necessary moment of pause and exhaustion before the post-globalisation new thing could begin. 

in some ways the oil shock that is happening now as a result of the US re-opening the forever war will be more significant.  the world has returned to the global warming train tracks it was on before the pandemic as if it had never happened. 

horsemouth thinks it will break the US as world hegemon as the irresistible force of american military power runs up against the immovable object of the iranian regime. it will produce a cultural crisis in the US similar to that post the vietnam war. this did not find expression or release until watergate, the failure of the carter presidency and the iran hostage rescue mission (and so we begin again). 

'you gave me bad advice'  yells trump at bibi. (bibi shrugs)

this was should teach the west  a number of useful things - the need to distance themselves from the US, the need to distance ourselves from israel, the need to distance ourselves from oil. 

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it's the morning. a very pleasant day yesterday. horsemouth has a slight headache (he's definitely got a cold whatever he says to the contrary). 

the coffee is doing its work. horsemouth's headache is clearing. 

'a strange fit of nervous restlessness'

'after dinner today I was seized with a strange fit of nervous restlessness such as I have never felt before. I should think it must have been something like the peculiar restlessness that comes shortly before death. I could not sit still or rest for a minute in any posture. the limbs all kept jumping and twitching and I should have liked to set to  run only I felt so weak and wretched... I got up and walked about but nowhere could I rest...'

kilvert on this day in 1872. (we can't leave him like this)

'after a while I fell asleep or dozed in my chair and afterwards I awoke better.'

oh dear horsemouth lost his temper the morning of the friday. (a friday the thirteenth lest we forget). it's the failure to go out bell-ringing and socialising. fortunately he got a lift back with the bus driver and they had a chat about music (so this cheered him up).

soon kilvert  will be applying to move from clyro. we have only a few months left. this could be what has been weighing on his mind. 

horsemouth has developed an interest in full moon swordsman - horsemouth doesn't understand if his signature move is a real physical effect or a supernatural effect (but it looks pretty cool). 

outside a bright sunny day (but cold). there's been a frost (hopefully the last one of the spring). no great plans for the day having delivered eggs, gone into the village and mucked out the hen shed yesterday. 

'I dread it yet I am drawn to it' (a gothic episode)

'rain was creeping over the hills from the west and blotting out the mountains. below lay the black and gloomy peat bog, the rhos goch, with the dark cold gleam of stagnant water among its mawn pits, the graves of the children.

this place has always had a strange singular irresistible fascination for me. I dread it yet I am drawn to it.'

- kilvert, on this day in 1872. 

tomorrow kilvert suffers 'a strange fit of nervous restlessness'. 

yesterday (the thursday) a rainy day (rain all day). horsemouth's mum went off in a car to purchase a particular plant for a particular aunt. 

today the weather looks like it will be decent. saturday the morning looks decent. from midweek next week it looks good.  

this is a relief frankly because the all rain days are hard on the soul.  horsemouth will wander in to ewyas harold to pick up the hereford times and up the hill to deliver some eggs. he may also muck out the chicken shed. there are things to be done but not quite enough things to be done (nor can they be done in an efficient manner). 

anyway. he's up. he's fed the chickens. 

things to do

in the churchyard at dore abbey a new bench. '212 souls'  a memorial to those who died at abbeydore workhouse in its near century of operations (1837-1930) and are buried in unmarked graves in the churchyard. 

at least that's the figure obtained from perusing the archives. (it could easily be more). 

yesterday horsemouth also went for a wander up on the common (though not up to its highest point due to the mud) and he delivered eggs. 

on the monday march 11th 1872 kilvert sees his love daisy and they have the chance to have a good chat but she talks of the dissenters stealing 3 bells from the 6 at llanigon church instead. (this seems to horsemouth quite a major undertaking). 

tomorrow a gothic episode.

in the morning grey skies and a cold wind. his mum is up early (citing 'things to do'). 

a grotesque boiling down

'he becomes a grotesque boiling down of all the preposterous characters he has ever impersonated' 

-  h.l. mencken.

horsemouth's reading of the dedalus book of dutch fantasy goes well 

he's on his fourth or fifth story having read aletrino's in the dark, jan arends' breakfast (where a crusty old gent in a retirement home turns into a monkey - temporarily), and asscher's the secret of dr. raoul sarrazin (spoiler: the secret is he has a library of blank books - very fashionable in these days of AI thievery). 

he should return to his sensible reading also (the portable hannah arendt). 

instead he sat out at the bench and listened to the world at one (on an old school (digital) radio).

at the moment horsemouth needs a number of things to get on. he needs sand and cement so he can fix the patio wall knocked over by the milkman, he needs more seeds and such like for the vegetable garden (peas, carrots etc.). the number of raised beds has been increased - these will be good for the kind of vegetables that have to be picked (peas etc.) rather than the kind of root vegetables that have to be dug up (carrots, potatoes). 

last year the marrows came to over dominate the garden. while it looked good neither horsemouth nor his mother particularly like marrows (and neither do any of the family). 

today it looks like decent weather (but hereafter it all goes to shit for a while). 

so far the morning looks pretty decent. 

in good news triple negative have a gig coming up. 

in bad news horsemouth has a cold. or rather,

 'at the moment horsemouth has what many casual observers would assume to be a ‘cold’ - dripping nose/ slight cough... in fact these minor ailments are on a timer.'

'because I have nothing to say...'

'just as people sometimes work because they are bored, I sometimes write because I have nothing to say...' - fernando pessoa, the book of disquiet, entry dated 10th march 1931.

this wednesday the recycling bin goes out. thursday the bells. 

this friday is a friday the 13th (and there's a dave webb technodub show). 

the weather does not improve until this saturday. it remaining rainy and grey throughout. 

this sunday is mothers' day. 

horsemouth has just (monday) lunched going into town, because he would probably only buy more books and he has enough already. he could do with reading more. he has the dedalus book of dutch fantasy and the portable hannah arendt to be getting on with for starters. 

something horsemouth wrote about another war  four years ago 

(with the names redacted to protect the guilty).

'meanwhile the news continues to be fucking terrible. the ________ of _________ continues, those who can, flee. there is a strong media push for us to cheer on the _________ers but horsemouth would point to grozny, fallujah, syria...

to horsemouth's way of thinking actual wars with bombs and guns are more often than not bad news for the working class (who get to fight and die, be bombed and be shot, but don't get to profit from the reconstruction contracts). 

horsemouth suspects that _____ is unable to solve _____'s real problem - the politico-economic problem  of how to integrate it into global capitalism while still maintaining his rule, and so has adopted fighting wars as a means to stabilise his regime. ___________ and its client states on its borders are stabilised by oil and gas revenues but the world is marching away from oil and gas and this war will accelerate that trend (and retard it at the same time). 

_____'s regime could fall - an actual war is a pretty desperate gamble...' 

2 years 9 months of trump's presidency to go

horsemouth's mum's house is heated with fuel oil. it is towards the end of winter and the tank is low. had prices not gone high (as a result of trump's adventure war in the straits of hormuz)  horsemouth would probably have filled it up a little just to cover water heating across summer. as it is horsemouth will try to get it to last out until the end of april. in the autumn he will come back for a refueling of the whole tank at whatever price needs to be paid . 

meanwhile this morning horsemouth dreamed of getting new fangled electronic tickets to a gig with howard. but also lethal, lethal and his two sisters. 

the sun has been up and bathed everything in a golden glow but now it is hidden behind the clouds.