'Dismaland' - Dazed and Bemused - The New Banksy Exhibition is more than meets the eye.

If ever there was a town gripped, to the point of crippled, with celebrity fever, it's Weston super Mare today. This afternoon, the word on everyone’s lips is ‘Banksy’. You can’t venture out, go anywhere in the town, without hearing someone mention the elusive satirical street artist’s name.

For the past few days, locals have been given tantalizing clues that ‘something’ was about to be revealed on the seafront, mainly in the guise of an entertainment ‘event’. It was at first rumoured to be some kind of Hollywood film set. Little did anyone anticipate that the big reveal would literally become a mega phenomenon.

The international arts sensation that is ‘Banksy’ is headlining all the local news media, and some mainstream international outlets, with the likes of CNN and ABC News, plus Variety, and The Huffington Post getting in on the act.

UPDATE: Approximate queuing time for Dismaland... Five hours!

The 100,000 tweets in 24 hours had the words 'Weston-super-Mare’swirled around the internet… this had never happened to my little home town before. Not bad for a traditional sea-side venue, that’s a holiday for day-trippers, and a retirement destination, but usually catering mostly for those on a low income.

This is the crux of why the town plays host to such a prestigious contemporary art exhibition at all. Banksy chose the dilapidated old swimming pool (lido) on the seafront, now mostly filled with seagull droppings and empty bags of chips, precisely because it reminded him of his childhood. The renowned Bristolian, spent many summers splashing around the pool, according to his own recollection...

Banksy said: “I loved the Tropicana as a kid, so getting to throw these doors open again is a real honour.

“I hope everyone from Weston will take the opportunity to once more stand in a puddle of murky water eating cold chips to the sound of crying children.”

The Old Tropicana

Bring on the controversy!

The once glorious summer holiday venue, now reduced to a concrete shell, with the faded shadow of its sign ‘Tropicana’ staining the facade above the entrance, has repeat visitors reminiscing about ‘the good old days of Weston’. Perfect to host a pastiche of the new world, a homage to what has now come to pass, with works by 58 handpicked artists including Damien Hirst. Installed across the 2.5-acre site, it's a large-scale group show lampooning Disneyland, but with its very own message to the masses.

‘Dismaland’ is born. “The UK’s most disappointing new visitor attraction”.

The website explains little…

Dismal Land – a festival of art, amusements and entry-level anarchism.

Are you looking for an alternative to the sugar-coated tedium of the average family day out? Or just somewhere a lot cheaper?
Then this is the place for you. Bring the whole family to come and enjoy the latest addition to our chronic leisure surplus…

Even the online ticketing system played into the premise of a dismal experience. Today it's announced that you can't buy a ticket online anyway... site crashes engineered to enhance the experience!

Queuing had already begun overnight, so the chance of getting into this contemporary art exhibition is pretty slim.

My local paper prints the World Exclusive!

Jack Black loves Weston too!

As close as I got to Dismaland yesterday!

You really don't need to venture into the town, and queue for hours, before discovering other brilliant satirical works of street art. Weston has its very own Banksy in the guise of JPS Artist. I've already posted some of his works that I've discovered around while returning to my old haunts.... such as...

If I do happen to get into the venue, I will post more... apparently there is controversy, thought-provoking masterpieces of pop-art, and sick satirical jibes, strictly not suitable for children!

But it IS...only... a Trick of the Light?

So, what is really going on in the world lately? Can you see? Can you guess? Can you see through the glare of the press? A 'Gladio' style operation on our door step?

Remember, it's the height of the summer, but we must not venture off to a hot Mediterranean holiday, nor to a city centre hot spot. For you never know what dark deeds are afoot. You can only guess who might be lurking behind the shadows of the umbrella.

The powers-that-be, currently engaged in the Brussels ‘Let's Destroy Democracy' war games, would have us all believe that, if we trust our government, we will be protected.

This doesn’t mean that we shirk our responsibilities. We must keep ourselves informed and alert to the dangers. Remember, it only takes a lone student gunman terrorist, wandering around a holiday resort killing tourists at random, to erect a memorial in Hyde Park these days, and we don’t need any more of those now do we?

 

Diving is good

Of course, the suspension of disbelief is a must, and should be adhered to, as much as is possible. For example, family of twelve, including an 11 month old baby, and Cancer ridden great-grandmother, have decided to end their holiday to Bangladesh by joining Isis in Syria. You must believe it, especially when it’s been on the BBC, Channel 4 and SKY News.

When these mass-media reporting straight from Gaza tell you that Hamas says it doesn’t believe, support, or condone Isis, you have to wonder why? For years Syria and Assad were a target for the West, due mainly to the fact that the former was a strong-hold and supporter of Hamas. Now it’s home to Isis? How does this make any sense?

 

A Speargun for enthusiasts

Kind of like the British press, when they report on lone-gunmen, then go on and tell us this…

Daily Express, Tuesday, June 30^th – Anil Dawar

I saw second gunman on beach says Briton.

A RETIRED British police officer caught up in the Tunisian massacre yesterday told how he saw a second gunman open fire on tourists.

Steve Johnson who was on the beach when Seifeddine Rezgui went on his rampage, described seeing a man in red shorts also armed with an automatic rifle shooting sunbathers. His sighting contradicted official accounts suggesting that Rezgui, dressed in black, was operating as a 'lone wolf' attacker.

Mr Johnson, 65, an ex-Leicester Rugby Club captain and England B player, now a BBC commentator, was on holiday with his wife Val 64, and another retired policeman Michael Perry, 66, and his wife angela, 59.

He said: 'We were on the beach when I heard gunshots and I just told people to run - run and got off the beach as fast as I could. I looked back and I saw a man in red shorts machine-gunning someone on a sun lounger. He can't have been more than 20 yards away from us'.

When a Tunisian policeman later escorted them back to the hotel they passed a body covered with a sheet in a corridor. 'I could see he was the right build and colouring of the shooter I had seen.' he said, 'and he had the red shorts on.'

'When we got the news we saw that it was being reported that there was just a single shooter. But the second shooter is still not being reported and I don't know why'.

The former policeman praised local officers. He said, 'They did the lock-down very quickly I don't think anywhere in the UK, except maybe in London, could have done it quicker!'

Charlotte The Black Queen

The 'Black' Queen

The news is full of stories about racial tensions in America and the 'immigration debate' in the UK. Today we hear the latest, that Prince William and Kate Middleton’s baby daughter will be known by the name Princess Charlotte of Cambridge. 

The name doesn’t do anything for me, sounding more like some kind of made up stereotypical-character princess, than a respectable aristocrat with any heritage."You're wrong!" I hear you cry.

Of course equality and civils rights and babies, what do they have in common in this latest story? Not much, except when trawling Twitter for feedback on the royal birth yesterday. I discovered a gem of a synchronicity that literally dawned today.

From a very interesting blogger David Lindsay we read…

A Touch of Colour

I suspect a stroke of genius.

The name Charlotte entered the Royal Family in the person of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the wife of George III, who gave her name to the city in North Carolina.

She, a direct ancestress of the present Queen, was descended from the part-black old Royal House of Portugal, and was in fact referred to in her lifetime as having "Negroid" features.

Portraits often show her looking much like many mixed-race Britons of today. Yet even they were probably, so to speak, toned down.

No wonder that Thomas Jefferson would suffer no son of hers as his King.

Over here, though, we have had her descendants on the Throne for 195 years, and counting.

Every one of them, including this latest addition, legally black in Jefferson's Virginia. Or in North Carolina, USA.

MORE AT:

http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/a-touch-of-colour.html

The Guardian has an older article which elaborates on the 'Charlotte' America knows and the possible links of a black lineage to the current Royal Family…

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/12/race-monarchy

What is ironic and synchromystic is the Twitterverse joke about how monumental the news of a royal birth is. 

People going all tongue-in-cheek about the event, claiming that Kate Middleton gave birth to a... black baby!

More

Reddit Funny @redditfunnybot · May 2

Kate Middleton gives birth to black baby via /r/funny 

△ @Staarzy1 · May 2

Kate Middleton gives birth to black baby

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Olivia Claire @OClaire1029671 · May 2

Kate Middleton gives birth to black baby

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The Future Black Queen

Aliens and the Theory of Everything

Having just enjoyed a weekend hearing all about UFOs and aliens, monsters and mysteries, ghosts and the paranormal, I am ready to tackle new theories. These were all subjects that I loved as a kid. Now a fully-grown adult, (although some of my friends might disagree with this description, especially when it comes to my attitude to life and the world around me) I feel able to comprehend mysteries easily.

I have always been fascinated with the unknown. These past few years, I’ve moved away from reading up on the above subjects, in favour of more macabre themes, such as crime scene investigations, and unsolved murders. Of course, these also fit under the banner of the strange and unknown to an extent.

I like to think that I have honed my skills of detection, problem solving, and logical analysis. Now I find myself re-evaluating everything I thought about the UFO phenomenon once more. Not having seen the much touted ‘Mirage Men’, a 2013 documentary film directed by John Lundberg, written by Mark Pilkington and co-directed by Roland Denning and Kypros Kyprianou, about how the US government used the mythology of Ufos to cover up their advanced technologies, or so it goes. I can no doubt come up with another conclusion about what I think is really going on.

If you have yet to see the programmes, ‘UFOs: The Secret Evidence’, ‘Alien Investigations’, and ‘The Great UFO Conspiracy’, you should, if only for entertainment. You’ll see Timothy Good being cornered into admitting that he thinks Jesus really is an alien, and you may choke on your popcorn when discussions of decades long black-helicopter surveillance leaves one investigator with a serious psychological problem. Talk of crop-circles being deliberately created for no reason, along with the latest Falklands ‘Black Goo’ conspiracy will have you rolling your eyes along with the ‘Black Eyed Kids’.

Just because I am fascinated with these subjects doesn’t mean I believe every word I’m told. However, it doesn’t mean that I would dismiss any rational explanations, theories, or even proof, should they arise. That old cliché, ‘If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck!’ can never be taken for granted.

The Internet is a minefield of new and expanding theories of everything. What’s more disturbing is that, in some quarters, people are actively trying to string all anomalies together, to make a ‘one-theory- fits-all’ concept appear plausible, thus causing serious researchers a headache of trouble trying to separate the truth from fiction.

One classic that got me saying ‘ah ha’ was that worn nugget of the Moon Landing Hoax. We never landed on the moon verses we did land and the astronauts saw aliens but were sworn to secrecy. This is why we’ve never been back?

By the way, did anyone catch Buzz Aldrin talking to Physicist Brian Cox about how he used a felt-tipped pen to start the ignition on the Apollo moon lander? Apparently this is a story he told on The Sky at Night Live programme, yesterday evening, just before the special Eclipse 2015 show on BBC 2. 

Who said that, ‘If you can think of it, it’s possible!’? An example, any subject the X-files series ever touched upon is now being reported by someone somewhere. We live in a very strange world of possibilities and unexplained occurrences. They don’t all have to form one huge theory of everything, do they?

This weekend has prompted me to take a browse through my old book shelf and compare what people were thinking over fifty years ago, with ideas which have changed in our technologically minded new Millennium. Everything from Big Foot sightings, the Bermuda Triangle, visions of the Virgin Mary, the Lindbergh Baby and Jack the Ripper. Picking up Frank Edwards ‘Flying Saucers – Here and Now!’ caused a sudden revelation.

The (McMinnville) Trent photographs of 1950, as one of the most famous prime examples, re-looked at from a different perspective. View them today and what do you see? (Remember not to read the description of eye-witnesses before-hand) You can see clearly, looking not from left to right, but from foreground to background, the image of a Stealth bomber or fighter, heading away and rising into the sunset. Oops! Is this another case of 'perception management?'

Perhaps JFK did ask too many questions after all, and there was no one on that grassy knoll. Like a lot of people these days, I’m not waiting for UFO disclosure, or any kind of Apocalypse, just a straightforward answer will do.

Beware of the Dog

wag the dog:

"To cause a persuasive movement in any large body of influence, i.e., a mass of people, through means by which a lesser influence is utilized.

From the phrase, 'It's the tail that wags the dog.' This can be seen when a dog begins to wag it's tail, and it's body then follows.

in partisan politics, an unpopular party will wag the dog using a variety of provocative political manoeverings and machinations to undermine the public favour from the popular party, out of which a momentum can be borne."

Tales from the Crib

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas... as merry as possible!

The news is full of quite dramatic, depressing and rather sad events. When strange tales like these appear, shiny, Christmas-light-entangled antenna, start twitching! I apologize in advance for any offense that may be taken by the following item about dead babies everywhere...

Baby No. 1

A vicar and his daughter are being held on suspicion of murder after a baby's body was found at a Lancashire house.

Police made the discovery after reports of a woman giving birth to a stillborn baby boy in Freckleton. The 28-year-old, named locally as Ruth Percival, was taken to Blackpool Victoria Hospital for treatment and later released.

She was arrested on Tuesday with her father, Reverend James Percival, 64, of Holy Trinity Church in Freckleton.

(Source BBC News Lancashire Dec. 2nd)

RIP Charlotte Bevan of Bristol - mother of baby Zarnee (at Stonehenge)

Gone but not forgotten

Baby No. 2

The body of a new-born girl has been found in a wheelie bin in North Yorkshire. The baby was found by a man in a communal waste area at the historic market town of Richmond on Monday afternoon.

"It is highly likely that the (missing) mother is in a very distressed state and needs professional support. We urge her to contact the police or medical staff as a matter of urgency as her health and well being is the priority."

(Source The Telegraph Dec 3rd)

Baby No. 3

POLICE have issued an urgent appeal for help to find a mother and her four-day-old baby who have gone missing in Bristol city centre.

They say Charlotte Bevan was not wearing any shoes when she left St Michael's Hospital shortly after 9pm tonight.

A message on the Avon and Somerset police Facebook page said: "We have serious concern for the welfare of her baby."

"We have officers searching the area near to the hospital but need your help to find mother and baby - we are worried because neither are dressed for the cold night."

She is thought to be wearing a black top and black trousers but was not wearing a coat. 

Police added: "She may appear confused and worried."

(Source Bristol Post Dec. 2nd)

The stories appeared so quickly, one after the other, and details of the latest case of missing (found dead today) mother Charlotte Bevan and her baby, (now also found dead) are full of strangeness, you have to wonder what dark forces lie behind them.

Baby No. 3 cont. 

Police desperately searched all night for Charlotte, who walked out of St Michael's Hospital with daughter Zarnee Teanna around 8.30pm to 9pm last night. Boyfriend Pascal Malbrouck told the Bristol Post that 30-year-old Charlotte Bevan was happy before she gave birth but had become increasingly sleep deprived over the last few days.

But he said he could think of no reason why she would go missing.

Pascal, who comes from a remote French-owned island in the Indian Ocean, posted a message on Facebook saying: "My daughter has gone missing with her mum Charlotte Bevan.

A BRISTOL mother who yesterday walked out of a maternity hospital with her four-day-old daughter suffered from schizophrenia and depression, according to her boyfriend.

Charlotte, according to her Facebook page works for environmental charity Good is Planet Earth.

Addition:  Dec. 4th - FIREFIGHTERS were called to a small fire at St Michael’s Hospital today.

Three resilience crews attended the incident at the maternity hospital in Kingsdown at 9:54am. It is believed the blaze was caused by an electrical fault involving a socket.

Worthy of note: St Michael's Hospital is also a specialist genetics center for the South West region.

Baby No. 4

A newborn baby boy was found dead on a moving conveyor belt at a waste recycling plant after he was thrown out with the rubbish, an inquest heard today.

The body was discovered by a horrified worker operating a picking line at Associated Waste Management in Shipley, near Bradford, West Yorkshire.

At the time, the worker was separating mixed household and business waste including glass and paper.

(Source Daily Mail Dec. 12th)

Add the statistics of dead babies in the news from your own location, and we have a veritable 'creche of dead babies' stories... what on earth is happening?

More to follow... watch this space as I attempt to tidy up!

Blog Off!

Still can't get this damn thing to work! Excuse me a moment...