RIP Will Glibbery - a tragic loss to the world

I am crushed. Devastated. Social media can be so stark and unfeeling, never more so when you discover the passing of a friend this way. I recently found out that my good friend, Will Glibbery has gone and I am numb. I cannot believe it. The last post of his that I saw - a Gandhi meme, may have been a prophetic thought and it's chillingly apposite. And just before that the sparkling, upbeat post of him arriving home early to share the joy on his daughter's face, virtually reached out and touched you from the screen.What a tragic, tragic loss. He was an amazing man, husband and father.That he was behind a car wheel, his second greatest passion in life, when it happened makes it even more tragic for me when that separated him from his foremost love and passion - his family.Will Glibbery, you were a man among men, an unbelievable light in this world and I shall really mourn your passing, mate.My heart reaches out to your family.Rest in peace, my friend.I would respectfully suggest (his family permitting) that we honour his memory by continuing relevant posts to his Facebook page, a forum where his irrepressible personality could never be contained.

THE SPIDER WEB IN WHICH WE EXIST

We may elect to laugh at the likes of David Icke but there is certainly significant validity in what he, and many others, are saying about the unfolding events in our physical material realm we euphemistically call, Planet Earth. 

Huxley, Orwell - predictors of alarming societal evolution are perhaps the true modern day visionaries or were they just transcribing the blueprint from information that was extant at the time of their writing?

Either way, we would be delusional if we continued to have faith in the illusion of democracy and a benevolent approach from the governments we've seemingly elected to make the crucial decisions that shape our lives individually and collectively. At a physical, material, spiritual and emotional level. All of those facets are influenced by our bosses. If we permit it. 

And there is no denying that a desire for absolute control of the global population through religion, media, technology, food, health, surveillance, militant policing and now remote controlled weaponry (drones etc.) has become the order of the day. That is the current reality.

And sadly, we simply accept it. It has become normal to be monitored 24/7, notwithstanding the fact that social media and communication technology encourage this, a paradigm to which we dumbly acquiesce and vigorously support as a way of life. Especially the instant access to the agendas of the moment while some more insidious shit may just be unfolding out of the view of the distracted populace.

And it produces an ethos of wholesale guilt and fear; guilt that we're not doing enough and fear that it's all going to go to shit at any given moment when the Jihadists blow up London or Israel elects (as the South African apartheid national party did) to give the world the finger while they maintain that the original inhabitants of the land they now occupy are actually subhuman and don't deserve equal rights and this escalates into full scale war in the Middle East into which the US (and their bitch, Britain) and Russia (hey, maybe even China) are inexorably drawn.

To what degree events are orchestrated and/or manipulated shall remain speculative at best and therein lies the realm of the so-called conspiracy theorist, an epithet that is designed to preemptively provide a mantle of ridicule and dismissiveness and taint the credibility of their proposers regardless of how well-informed/researched or cogent such propositions might actually be.

Critical, investigative thinking is not encouraged - following the pre-packaged status-quo most certainly is, though...the guilt and fear package that the rubbernecking drama-seeking population is conditioned to crave like sugar-riddled foodlike products.

This dynamic of programmed preconception toward (rolls eyes heavenward dismissively) the conspiracy theorist, more often than not throws the baby out with the bathwater and entire hypotheses are unfairly and unreasonably disregarded.  Such is the case with Icke for example.

No one is talking about reptilian shapeshifters here although quantum and particle physics might arguably support that potential; what is, however unarguably attempting to be maintained throughout our world, is a constant climate of fear and an inundation of challenges to everyday citizens to prevent them from rising above and beyond this relentless energetic barrage.

And there can be no denying that whoever was responsible for any current round of scary (and always tragic) events, our fearless leaders contrive to step in, appease our outrage and provide us with a "solution" that we later find out isn't really a solution at all, merely a reason for another fear-guilt decision to be made out of our hands.

Michael Crichton was very vocal on the topic and even penned a novel called State of Fear which conveyed this message through the overly politicised premise of Global Warming (euphemistically called drastic climate change) - another Damoclean guilt-infused agenda that would have us all believing that our collective demise is cataclysmically imminent and everything that happens to the climate is all our fault, the sun, moon and repeating terrestrial climatological cycles be damned. The latter have no bearing on what's happening - it's all about cars and underarm aerosols apparently.

More guilt, more fear.

Let me stress here and now that awareness of our environment and a responsible approach to preserving it through sustainable technology is indeed laudable and everyone should try and do their part but the simple fact remains that the majority of the world's impoverished population is more concerned with daily survival than the procurement of a low energy light bulb, in most cases a superfluous aspiration in any event as they subsist without electricity or even potable water...yeah about that...

But as Crichton sagely asserts - no-one actually knows what is going to happen in three or even thirty years regarding climate and this the scientists readily admit, yet they are willing to incite catastrophic ideologies on this matter based on questionable computer projections looking hundreds and thousands of years into the future when all around us rampant poverty and disease (all of our own doing, it has to be said) run riot.

But instead of focusing the scientific agenda on a solution for such widespread and unnecessary human tragedy, we would rather make robotic limbs, better mobile networks  and let the rock stars worry about world hunger and war. Let's face it, they're a lot prettier than those white-coated geeks with the long words and there may even be a benefit concert in the offing where another long-haired Bohemian can secure an OBE or a Nobel Prize or something - cool! 

Not that I'm knocking the efforts of those who dedicate themselves to improving the plight of the helpless and disenfranchised - I'm not..but it's all just so skewed - the elected leaders and the great scientific minds of our time (science is, after all the modern global religion) should be tasked with solving our ongoing socio-economic disasters yet they continue to make political and fiscal policy decisions that actually perpetuate the problems while, of course, turning a profit at the same time. if it's not worthwhile and it's just some abstract humanitarian endeavour then it really doesn't get the political mileage it should actually warrant. There are too many people anyway so it's all nice and balanced isn't it?

No, it fucking isn't. That's the point. 

There's so much money to be made and so little time after all. Climate change is big business along with everything else that's inevitably politicised.

And it's all your fault.

The Abbott government wants to dismantle environmental regulations, carbon tax (already done), dismiss the protection of flora and fauna, hey - bird flu may come back, the Middle East is set to pop, civilian planes are exploding in the sky, anthropogenic global warming is out of control, paedophilia is everywhere, everything we eat gives us cancer and makes us fat, cruelty abounds at every stratum of society so what the fuck are we going to do about it?

It's all so overwhelming. It's all so depressing.

So we might have another doughnut and a couple of beers and watch some sport on TV. That'll sort it.

The fact is, I believe that the world is being orchestrated for us to sink to these levels of despair and hopelesness where we succumb and acquiesce to the apparently inevitable because it just is so overwhelming and seemingly hopeless.

But it isn't.

There is family and laughter and music and art and creativity and the real connection we have with spirit (not religious fervour or fundamentalism where a pre-chosen religious symbol on "our' flag defines us - not that bullshit) to not only sustain us but to help us rise to a higher level than this dense depressing vibration of fear in which so much of the material world exists and languishes.

It may seem flippant or contrived to assert that creative pursuits will somehow resolve the bitter conflict between Hamas and the Israelis - they obviously won't (not immediately anyway) but if sufficient numbers of us do engage in positive, creative and higher-minded endeavours, that leads to innovation and engagement and sharing and joy and a realisation that all isn't actually hopeless at all and there are more beneficent, constructive ways of sharing this reality.

There is only one reality - just multiple ways of interpreting it.

Awareness and solutions will then arise. The butterfly effect.

Everything is connected, allegorically like an infinite spider web ever outward and ever inward, linked by an endless spiral strand. Make a decision on any strand (your own reference point) and the ripples, no matter how subtle they may seem, influence every part of the web. 

If we elect to perpetuate the drama and live in the global game of fear and guilt then that will forever remain our chosen reality and those ripples will continue to resonate as we validate them. 

Ergo: simply make them invalid and create a new paradigm. 

Stepping outside of the externally contrived perception and unifying our thoughts, intentions and deeds inevitably has a snowball effect and positive change is effected regardless of the agendas of our manipulators.

Taking this power back is the way forward. Thinking new thoughts creates our now.

Our thoughts and intentions do unarguably create an effect on the manifest material reality we occupy and positive actions result. 

What we choose to think and affirm will make that reality bend to our collective will.

The next choice is the only one we have just like the moments in which we exist.

 

HAVE YOU BEEN SOLD A PIG IN A POKE? TEACUP PIGS - WHAT ARE THEY?

So in keeping with having been advised to "do my research", which I actually did do when I rescued Potbelly and Kolbroek pigs from slaughter, I confess to having been more ignorant when it came to so-called "teacup" pigs. I didn't have any at the time so what was the point?

I did, however, on my travels, while seeking to rehome our pigs, pending our emigration to Australia, discover from vets and pig sanctuaries that they are inundated with abandoned pigs which were sold as "miniature" animals and turned out to be no such thing.
When they did, after even two years exceed the "specifications" that had been promised them by the sellers, the shocked owners either sought redress, found other homes or just gave the pigs up. And more often than not, the sellers weren't interested in the plight of the owners when the pigs ballooned beyond specification. They were often just told that they had been overfeeding their pigs hence the oversized outcome. And yet, even when one feeds a pig the prescribed amount and quality of food (that isn't augmented with growth hormones and chemicals as in most of the commercially available feeds), these "little" guys still became much bigger than predicted.

So where is the margin for error and the acceptable parameter beyond which sellers are prepared to go when "miniature" pigs become bigger than envisaged? I have no idea but I do know that there are a lot of disgruntled pig owners out there who were arguably sold "a pig in a poke"...
One pig sanctuary went as far as to say categorically that teacup pigs simply did not exist, at least not as they are advertised far and wide - i.e. being these miniature creatures that do not grow taller or heavier than lapdogs, and Susan Spencer, whose website link I attach, would seem to concur with that opinion insofar as the claims of miniaturisation are concerned.

I'm not about to enter the debate around the genetics involved as I have no expertise in that area at all but logic would dictate to me that accomplished breeders of pigs would originally have been aiming to create animals that comprise bulk, after all these creatures were designed to be eaten so the optimisation of meat yield would have been the primary motivator.
Much later in time, as we (arguably) evolved into a species that took to keeping pigs for reasons other than simply edible commodities, people's needs became more specific and smaller pigs much more desirable as they were practically more manageable. Hence the advent of the so-called teacup pig or so it is claimed.
But the Teacup is not an actual breed which I find to be most surprising after all this time - teacups are merely a variety of pig created by the hybridisation of other breeds to create a smaller animal that conforms to certain specifications.... but here's the thing - they usually don't. And as asserted by Susan Spencer who runs Tiny Teacup Pigs and has written several books on the topic, none of them comply with the claims of the breeders that they will not exceed the size of a small terrier dog and weigh in at under 30kg. And yet these claims persist to the eternal detriment -  not of the humans but of the pigs themselves when they are simply rejected.

One would have thought, given the marketability of small pigs that by now a successful strain would have been created that consistently yielded miniature animals and that those and those alone were interbred to maintain an exclusive breed and not rely on this hit and miss lottery that seems to obtain.

Folks, just be warned if you're considering a piggy as a pet - they start out as really, really minuscule mites and piglets must rank amongst the cutest baby animals around but they grow and they grow and they grow - for up to four years.
And until they officially proclaim that teacups are now, in fact, a breed, there can be no guarantees what your hybrid piglet is going to become - it's just educated guessing and when it goes "wrong", you're the one usually left holding the pig in the poke.

For me, they're worth it anyway big or small but I have 4 hectares in which they can roam and be pigs, others are not so fortunate and a larger than anticipated pig can wreak havoc in a suburban home and environment.
Whatever you do, think about the pig before you think about yourself. Please.
A pig, regardless of its size is a BIG commitment so don't own one if you're not prepared to make that commitment.

Potbellies can go from this:

To this in just 3 years:

I urge you to peruse this website. There is some interesting and very revealing information there.

Tiny Teacup Pigs can be found here