And while we're reflecting upon songs (and stars) of yesteryear...

...it's oh so sad to learn, only tonight (from my brother), that the song - in my view, obscenely hijacked, by the Coca-Cola Corporation...a company which once, like my own Christian denomination, shared the distinction (when no-one else did) of being located in each and every nation-state on the corner of the Globe (though unsure if that applies - in either case - to that little but ever significant piece of real estate known as the Holy See, i.e. the Vatican, a geo-political power that, utterly belying its geographical size or populace, today once more wields a religio-political influence upon world affairs unseen or unheard of since probably the time of the Great Protestant Reformation of the 1500s) - 'I'd like to teach the world to sing - in perfect harmony', was itself originally composed by said CCC as an advertising gimmick (or suchlike). A song in my view of such profundity that its 'co-option' (as I choose to see it) by the world's most popular and egregious pedlar of physical poison (next to and alongside the five Western powers still 'downloading' the dangerous, destructive 'elixir' of sodium fluoride upon their respective populations, quite apart from releasing its carcinogenic et al cousin compound 1080 upon the same) is a truly disheartening thing to say the least... ...and yet fails to detract one iota from the song's worth or quality in and of itself... This blogpost is my way of 'celebrating' - not! - this week's apparent 100th (or whatever) anniversary of said Coca-Cola Corporation...whose profiteering pirates and poisoners incorporated, may they reap the 'rewards' they so richly deserve for helping rot the teeth (among other things) of so many...contributing to humanity's teeth what the likes of Rothmans and Pall Mall et al have so long contributed to the lungs of so many others...

You Were Always On My Mind...You Were Always On My Mind: Thank you, and sleep in peace, Wayne Carson...

Four nights ago for some reason I still cannot quite fathom, the title and recurring refrain of this inescapable song of yesteryear, its haunting, brooding melody and simple yet oh so profound lyrics kept returning to my mind and conscious awareness... So recurring were the tuneful words of the song's chorus that I sought eagerly among my 385-odd record collection to uncover the singer and/or particular LP containing it, but all to no avail...though it seemed to me the likes of Frank Sinatra or Burt Bacharach might have brought it to fame (and fortune)... Little was I to know that only days later was its (to me, anyhow, never known) writer to leave this life...but that eerie reality came home to me this morning upon BBC News, where they mentioned none other than Wayne Carson, and a couple of other songs he'd composed, of which only one (or the three) I recollected at all, but not as anything great. And then the penny dropped (as I recalled my weird experience Saturday night, as 'You were always on my mind' was at last cited...and its composer...who just so happened (and happens) to share a surname which means and has meant an awful lot to me...shared by a lady who might have meant an awful lot more to me if I hadn't let nerves and fear - those many (almost 22-odd) years ago in the US of A - consume me. But thank God and praise the Lord for their fellow namesake Ben Carson, whose impeccable credentials - of character - place him head and shoulders, heart and soul, above and beyond any of his various and sundry Republican party rivals for the presidential nomination in 2016...not least of all the Self-Trumpeteer himself, a 'man' (if he ain't rather a mouse, to adopt the old adage) who has had the audacity, some would say the sheer nerve, to 'call out' and seek to cut down someone (Senator John McCain of Arizona) who had the ill-fortune to be captured in Korea, or was it Vietnam, and undergo torture as a prisoner of war for five long and rather miserable years...decrying and disparaging his status as a war hero, when said Trump himself epitomized sheer cowardice in the same, seeking (and obviously wildly succeeding) in five times apparently evading the draft, a fellow who didn't even have the courage of his convictions - as my own Dad certainly did, and suffered in consequence - to go to prison (or the equivalent in a labour camp and/or army barracks) for however long, because he happened - in The Don's case, it would seem quite evidently, not, to suffer whatever might befall him for being a man of integrity, a man of principle... So rest in peace Wayne, go well Ben, and Elizabeth, all I can say with the immense benefit which hindsight ever provides, is 'You've been [oftentimes] on my mind'...and in my heart...

And by the by, while the Western media loses no time in pursuing Queen Elizabeth the Second's supposed childhood Nazism, how about that selfsame media 'fessin' up to its absolute, unremitting double standards on that particular score...And no, I couldn't frankly give a toss about Wild Harry's Naziesque party escapades...it's also relatively small fry in the scheme of things...but surely - in view of all the regaling, celebrating and metaphorical wining and dining being entered into and engaged in by one and all over Pope Francis these days (admittedly oftentimes for good reason it would seem) - to maintain proper balance, ever and always a basic tenet of true journalistic ethics, least when I spent years deeply involved in the same on my high school newspaper - a little more investigation into the two previous pontiffs is called for: firstly, re the highly-acclaimed, long-serving John Paul the Second, who evidently never corrected the longstanding, incorrect media impression that he'd been at all, let alone deeply involved in the WW11 Resistance Movement, when none other than renowned author David Yallop long since uncovered the absolute falsity of such a pretension; and the media's very hands-off approach to *Pope Benedict the 16th's neo-Nazi youth, surely deserving of a far more in-depth, thorough investigation than the pitiful, pitiable, pathetic excuse for such we were all well and truly dished up with at the time...(*And that's not even reflecting upon how said mainstream (BBC in this instance) media, after loudly, repeatedly and rather insistently suggesting that he'd be facing no less than a citizen's arrest upon arrival in the U.K. (for what transpired, back in 2009 or 2010 I believe, as a well-feted, celebrity success, as appears from a video of the same I made of BBC footage at the time) for his well-publicized involvement in effectively covering up for various high-profile Roman Catholic cardinals and/or archbishops by repeatedly failing to follow up or through upon requests from numerous Catholic laity to properly investigate the same, instead effectually and continually sweeping the same under the proverbial carpet, despite maintaining for years, even decades prior, the position of head of the Roman Catholic Church's modern Inquisition (as it was indeed called, if in far more elaborate terminology admittedly, in a very recent incarnation of the same). Or perhaps it's a matter of who happens to be the geo-political flavour of the month, or to paraphrase George Orwell: we're all equal (and entitled to identical treatment from the powers that be, especially the legal authorities), but a few of us just so happen to be a little more powerful and influential than all others...Which surely, seeing as we've just celebrated the 800th, I believe, anniversary of the Magna Carta, isn't what its authors had in mind...or is it? But then other major geo-political leaders of recent years - the likes of Tony Blair and George Dubya - have managed to evade citizens' arrests and/or prosecution by the International Criminal Court for their own involvement in war crimes and/or wilfully misleading their respective citizenry, Sudan's President has once again evaded the same, Bashir Al-Assad, Benjamin Netanyahu et al routinely get away with the same or some might legitimately claim far worse...while Germany's Angela Merkel - alongside her Eurocratic colleagues-in-arms - has the sheer gall to heavy little old Greece into repaying comparatively insignificant monies when set, in relative terms, against the massive reparation debts owed by her own country following its barbarity and evil inflicted upon so many of its own and others in the 1930s and 1940s, which debt was freely and generously forgiven and forgotten by one and all and resulted in placing both it and its Eastern ally Japan on the sound economic footings in subsequent years and decades which saw both countries racing to the summit, the very zenith, of modern Western technological supremacy, and then some...'Nuff said? Methinks so!

Sure, the Pope looks real cute in that new outfit, and what a trickster, using that eaterie (or whatever) in South America for a redressing number: what a dag!...But hey, all I really wanna know, is how come the Vatican recently interposed to stay proceedings against a high-profile Polish archbishop/cardinal being arraigned on charges of child abuse/paedophilia etcetera...or could it happen to somehow implicate a former very high-profile pope from that thar part of de world? Just wonderin', truly...