Friday, March 31, 2017

Ryan Quinn Flanagan writes



Honey Trap

Ignore the finer points of anything:
of spot welding or fellatio
or calligraphy –
just get the gist and run with it
those who can, do…those who can’t, teach
you know who said that?
Shaw.        
Probably while slicing open an over ripe melon
with a knife
or planting annuals like clockwork
or harvesting bees for his many future
honey traps.
                        
The past is the past for a reason,
pay it little mind.
                        
But do not get stuck on the glue trap
of new trends, little mouse.

Find a place in the walls
away from everything
that is warm and quiet
and yours.
 Image result for honey trap paintings
 Honey Trap -- Kazuhiro Hori

2 comments:

  1. Honey trapping is an investigative or esponage tactic that utilizes romantic and/or sexual relationships. A honey trap is primarily used to collect evidence against the victim; although the term is also used for the practice of creating an affair in order to take incriminating photos for blackmail.

    "He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches." George Bernard Shaw included this aphorism in the "Maxims for Revolutionists" he appended to his first major play, "Man and Superman," which he wrote in 1903 though it was not performed, in truncated form, until 1905. (A part of the omitted third act was performed in 1907, but the entire "Don Juan in Hell" section was not performed until 1915. The title came from Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical ideas about mankind;s evolution via natural selection towards the "Übermensch" (Superman), but Shaw's play was about the notion that women ("te Life Force") are the prme movers in selection. The central character, John Tanner, was the fictional author of "The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion," which was published with the play as a 58-page appendix that included the maxims. When he wrote it he was becoming disillusioned with the ineffectiveness of the moderate socialism of the Fabian Society. In 1903 his term as borough councilor expired and he did not seek re-election; he stood for the London County Council in 1904 but ran an eccentric campaign that guaranteed his defeat. H. G. Wells joined in 1903 and sought closer cooperation with them ore doctrinaire Independent Labour Party, but Shaw's moderates blocked his proposals. In the 1906 general election, Labour gained 29 seats in Parliament, but Shaw remained hostile. Wells left the Society in 1908; Shaw remained a member but resigned from its executive committee in 1911.

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  2. The "Maxims for Revolutionists" included a section on Education:
    When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.
    A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
    The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent’s first duty.
    The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mould a child’s character.
    At the University every great treatise is postponed until its author attains impartial judgment and perfect knowledge. If a horse could wait as long for its shoes and would pay for them in advance, our blacksmiths would all be college dons.
    He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
    A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.
    Activity is the only road to knowledge.
    Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.
    No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.
    No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.
    Do not give your children moral and religious instruction unless you are quite sure they will not take it too seriously. Better be the mother of Henri Quatre and Nell Gwynne than of Robespierre and Queen Mary Tudor. [Henri Quatre was Henri IV, "Le Bon Roi Henri," the first Bourbon king of France; the "Marche Henri IV," written ca. 1590 by "Du Caurroy" toasted the monarch while he ws still king of Navarre:
    Vive Henri quatre
    Long live this valiant king
    This fourfold devil
    With the three talents
    Of drinking, fighting
    And womanising
    Nell Hwyn was a 17th-century actress noted for her promiscuity and long affair with Charles II the "Merry Monarch;" she became his mistress after diminishing the prospects of a rival actress by slipping powerful laxative into her tea-time cakes prior to a royal tryst. Maximilien Robespierre was the moralistic Jacobin who instituted the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Mary I, "Bloody Mary," was the pious queen of England who, in the last three years of her short reign, had 283 religious dissenters burned at the stake and another 800 exiled.

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