Karma Vs. Karma

karma /kaarm/ • noun (in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as affecting their future fate.
— DERIVATIVES karmic adjective. — ORIGIN Sanskrit, action, effect, fate.

BAD KARMA: 7am, wake-up-fall-back-to-sleep-wake-up-again-pissed-off. Leave house within one minute of margin of error. Preoccupied trying to get earphones inserted as I cross the street. A car strangely pauses over to my right. A small part of my brain usually dedicated to peripheral sensory-input finds this odd, but I over-ride it.
I hear a squeaking noise behind me. I don't even bother to turn round, as I am still trying to insert the earphones into the correct ear.

I have nearly been run over by an old woman on a bicycle. Behind me, I hear her say: 'Wake up - !'

- No, YOU wake the fuck up, you old bag. Get a fucking bell.

GOOD KARMA: I dial for the latest Testament album on my iPod. A good blast of Bay Area Thrash - rocks like a mo-fo. Begin commute.
On the train, an hour later, I am approaching my stop at Jewellery Quarter. Getting there is mile after mile of delapidated, burned-out, post-industrial shit-hole. However, a minute before my stop, I see something miraculous: Three rust-coloured fox cubs playing in the trees at the side of the tracks. As usual, I am the only one on the train to glimpse this fleeting image, and I interpret it as a gift from a Higher Power. Everyone else on the train can go fuck themselves: Only I am allowed these special moments. Interpret this as a Good Omen.

Yeah, if you are now thinking what I am thinking as I write this, stick with it. Little did I know.

I get off at Jewellery Quarter, feeling great, walking along, texting my ex about the fox cubs ( she loves animal stories, and we always tell each other if we've had a Nature Encounter ).

BAD KARMA: I don't realise that again I am crossing a road, and nearly get killed by a moron in a Four-By-Four.
a ) Who the hell still drives these carbon-farting monstrosities?
b ) What kind of sexual retard needs to drive a car that big in the streets of Birmingham?
I get to work, and tell all my colleagues about the fox cubs, still feeling good, despite the Four-By-Four.

GOOD KARMA: I receive a text from Unattainable Love Interest # 1 ( she got an arranged marriage shortly after she admitted she thought I was 'hot' - yeah, great endorsement ).

Message: Hello my darling...

This puts me in an even better mood. I soon forget about the text she sent me last year, after she disappeared for six months: My parents have finally found me a guy that isn't a total dork, so I'm going to marry him. He's a pharmacist, and comes from a good family.

Replied: - Great. Thanks for that - ! ( Living in hope that she's assimilated enough into the white culture to get a quickie divorce when she realises she can't live without me ).

The good vibe continues throughout the day. The weather is excellent, the boss treats me to a sausage and egg sandwich, and work doesn't seem so bad after all. I start to anticipate getting on my mountain bike after work, and blasting around the countryside. As the weather is favourable, the light will be great, well into the evening. Before I sign out from work's PC, I check my messages on the work computer.

Unattainable Love Interest # 2 ( six-foot-tall, half my age, dark, dusky, body like a pin-up with the staples removed, the kind of chick ancient nation-states annihilated each other over ) Facebooks me:

Sorry for not being in touch. I'll call you at the weekend.

YES-S-S - !

BAD KARMA: Why haven't I received a reply from my ex about the fox cubs..? Feel weird. Is she trying to get me out of her system that badly?

GOOD KARMA: It's the evening. I have just consumed several billion kilowatts of pasta, and am powering around the leafy lanes of Worcestershire on the bike. The sky is blue, white clouds hanging lazily, and I am high as a kite from the sheer abundance of green-ness. The ultraviolet blue and purple flowers are glowing, making me feel like my senses have expanded outside of their normal spectra. I'm now perceiving my surroundings on a cosmic level, like a visiting Inca deity with expensive head-gear ( see Chariots of The Gods, by Erik Von Daniken, or the art of Jack Kirby ).

I think: 'England is so beautiful...'

BAD KARMA: '...Shame about all the ugly fucking c**ts that live in it.'

Note: I wonder if that last thought was evidence of an emerging Extra Sensory Perception? Like a kind of 'Spidey Sense'...

GOOD KARMA: Mobile rings. Slam on the brakes, pull over. It's Kev. He announces an appointment with Unattainable Love Interest # 3 ( tall, well-spoken beauty, annoyingly keeps trying to fix me up with other women, and then changing her mind ). Drunk on the theme of fertility, I stupidly begin to think that things are going my way.

BAD KARMA: At this point, many of you will be aware that I was pursued along the country lane by a homicidal maniac in a car, who repeatedly tried to run me off the road, and then chased me on foot into a guy's garden. Yeah, it was like Spielberg's debut movie Duel. I wrote the whole thing out in great detail, and have just erased it, as it sounded ridiculous reading it back.

So instead, you can have this, remade as a segment of the police-camera TV show America's Maddest Bastards:

From the helicopter, we see known felon Milt Scroatle chase a hapless cyclist along a deserted road in Hokeyville, Arkansas. Luckily, the cyclist avoids certain death, by bailing and escaping on foot. After Scroatle was apprehended by patrolmen, investigators found the remains of twelve bicycles under the crawlspace of his trailer.

It transpires that Scroatle had a history of disturbed behaviour since accidentally being anally-penetrated by the lead group in the Tour De France, while on holiday with his family in the Alps as a child. He was crossing a road to a burger stand when the group collided with him.

The lucky cyclist may have escaped him, but Scroatle now knows he cannot escape the law.

Back to the original - the nut has just sped off, and I knock at the house where I jumped off the bike...

GOOD KARMA: I ring the door bell, and a guy who introduces himself later as Jeff, opens the door. I go in, and Jeff hands me a glass of water, while we try to ring the local constabularies, warning them that there is a nut in a silver car, forcing cyclists off the road in the Kinver area.

BAD KARMA: I can only remember BV24 from the license plate.

GOOD KARMA: We put the bike in Jeff's Four-By-Four ( yeah, I know ), and take a drive around the area to see if we can find the psycho, but there's no sign. Jeff drops me off in my street, and we exchange email addresses. I go home and do some weights, as I still need to psychologically decompress.

GOOD KARMA - Unattainable Love Interest # 36DD ( Generously-endowed English / Irish / Scottish girl ) texts me:

- Let's meet soon.
................................................................................................................
Follow-Ups -

BAD KARMA. Unattainable Love Interest # 1 ( Arranged Marriage ): Still married, no quickie divorce, no catch-up. I'll probably see her twice a year, if I'm lucky.

GOOD KARMA. Lady at the diner round the corner from my studio finds me charming, and gives me a free load of tea bags, to take back to my room.

BAD KARMA. Unattainable Love Interest # 2 ( The one that keeps trying to fix me up with other women, and then retracting them ): Had two beers which, as many of you may know, is well past my threshold, and consequently told her I wanted to 'bite her on the arse'.

GOOD KARMA: Spidey Sense tells me to keep yesterday's newspaper. I have no idea why. I open it, and look at that day's star signs: 'Continue to resist any mind games, especially around your love life'.

BAD KARMA: Lose house keys.

GOOD KARMA. Decide to do Euro Lottery. It's 110 Million. I figured that would just about compensate after the week I've had.

BAD KARMA: A Spanish bastard won it.

GOOD KARMA. Unattainable Love Interest # 3 ( the dark, Amazonian Goddess ) texts me while I'm at my studio: Let's meet at six. ( She's starting a new job soon, and has been promising a get-together for ages ).

BAD KARMA: I tell her six is good, but I've been at my brother's all weekend. I have no deodorant on, my clothes need washing, and I look like shit. I wash in the men's toilets at the studios, shaving with the Fairy Washing-Up Liquid that I use to clean my paint dishes.

GOOD KARMA: Luckily, a while back, Spidey Sense made me leave a pristine white t-shirt there in case of emergency, one that shows off all my muscles. I meet the girl for a drink and a meal. She's beautiful, ballsy and intelligent. At intervals we go out the back to the secluded smoking area, and she smokes all over me. However, I don't care about my finely-tuned athlete's lungs. She can do what she likes as far as I'm concerned.

Additional -


Unattainable Love Interest # 5 ( Kate Moss look-alike ): Unexpected addition to the list. Not really a love interest per se, but an absolute charmer nonetheless. We spent seven hours drinking tea, eating chocolate and wandering along the canal network, after a suspected terrorist attack closed the local shopping centre ( it was a gas leak ), and she wasn't allowed to go to work. I took a picture of her while we were walking along the canal, and with no effort at all on her part, she made it look like a page from Vogue. Amazing.

Unattainable Love Interest # 6 ( chronic extrovert and former wannabe glamour model ): Another last minute addition, she wanted me to take some portraits of her, to send to her guy in Germany. The camera had one of those automatic facial-recognition settings, but, like me, it couldn't concentrate on anything other than her heaving breasts. I don't know what this says about me. Do I have the same level of cognition as the average household appliance?

Unattainable Love Interest # 36DD: I shall be enjoying them both shortly.

Epilogue -



One habit that I have acquired lately, is that for every beautiful woman I spend time with, I automatically give all my loose change to the next homeless person that crosses my path.

Being homeless, and having nothing, they are closer to God - or whatever is your deity of choice - so it's kind of like giving a tip, for all the good vibes.

The upshot of all this?

Got up this morning and couldn't even afford a fucking loaf of bread.


.................................................................................................................
With thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary Online.

Last week's Poll Result - !

''Do you think that the populace, and their sense of total entitlement to just about everything, deserves to painfully face reality in this 'Credit Crunch'?''

Hell yeah! - 33%
They are easily manipulated - 0%
Indifferent - 33%
I like greed - 33%

Total polled: 4,134,987

Thanks for voting, and you will find this week's poll below the main feature - !

Article: Michael Dobbins - Facebook's Poet Laureate

A bi-product of any new technology in the age of communication, is often the emergence of a new artform, dictated by a strict set of rules, usually enforced by the limitations of the medium itself.

Matters such as memory and screen size, etc., can dictate the form of expression, and thus establish a formal set of rules to work with. Like a modern Haiku, as often happens in human communication, restrictions have the paradoxical effect of nurturing creativity.

One of the new forms of self-expression - the 'Facebook post' - is currently called the 'what's on your mind?' box at the top of the user’s page. Commonly, messages of everyday banalities are posted, which then appear across all the ‘walls’ of the user’s friends.

Like text messages, and before them, telexes and morse code, there is a restriction on the amount of expression possible in this emergent medium. As in texting, the Facebook posts are usually unambiguous ( but unlike texting, can contrastingly also work well when deliberately cryptic ). Messages can be compressed using the now orthodox appropriation of non-language symbols and numbers.
Working within these constraints, they can sometimes exhibit a spontaneous creativity, and also an inherently existential, merit.

There is no greater example of the mastery of this protean form of writing, than Michael Dobbins of Stourport, Worcestershire, England. In his brief communications, Mr. Dobbins can somehow telegraph the hopes, the dreams, and, yes, the despair, of an entire civilization.

Criticism and Response.

1a ) Take the following example, widely-acknowledged as the true debut of the auteur:
My cat has just had a shit ( 15 April at 22:34 )

A clever reference to animist cultures of pre-Christian times, a meta-layer of meaning is established. A totemic symbol in many ancient cultures, the figure of a feline harks back to ancient Egypt and pre-Conquest South America. The skilfully-evoked dual-meaning - that Michael’s cherished household pet, once worshipped by ancient civilizations, has enjoyed a satisfying bowel-movement - instills a feeling of well-being in the reader, as we empathise with this noblest of beasts.

1b ) Compare and contrast with the much less disciplined example of:

Why does my cat come in to have a shit in his litter tray then go back out again??? ( 15 March at 11:13 )

One can see that in this earlier attempt, the meter is non-rhythmic and hurried, and the imagery, though consistent with established tropes, is somewhat laboured. Does the litter tray mean a litter tray, or is it an allegory of what may be inflicted upon Mankind by an indifferent and violent 'Nature'?

2 ) The many disciplines and philosophies of modern science are also inferred, as a way of underlining Man’s uneasy relationship with the cosmos. Observe the variable tenses in the following example:

Michael Dobbins Is going to have a shit and I've taken the newspaper with me
( 8 hours ago )

This clearly mocks the scientific establishment’s failure to find the unifying principles that bring together the General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics.

It is also a pun on the quasi-religious act of faith behind the Schrodinger’s Cat scenario. Namely: how can Michael be going to have a shit in the future, if the act of taking the newspaper occurs in the past?

3 ) Finally, consider what is widely known as a masterpiece of this emergent form:

Michael Dobbins has got an ich on my foot in-bertween my little toe and 4th toe and it feels so good to scratch with my socks on ( Thurs 20:48 )

The lack of punctuation clearly causes what could have been a well-defined overall metric tone, to disintegrate. This evokes the notion that bodily reflexes such as scratching, are automatic and unconscious, ungoverned by social niceties. Mr. Dobbins is clearly in a hurry to relieve himself of the itch, and as we can see from his writings, both he and his pet are often to be found relieving themselves in a variety of ways. ( This closeness to Nature suggests a more Eastern approach ). To conclude: Controversial though it may be, in Michael Dobbins, ten thousand years of human civilization are successfully distilled into a few simple syllables of free-form, abstract poetry that sum up a shattered humanity.

Or, as the author himself puts it:

I have just taken a pregnancy test and the result has come out negative ( 11 April at 00:14 )


This piece is submitted for comment.