#Thomas Von Party

[see-arcane]

So. What was the deal with the vampire in the graveyard versus Orlok’s Nosferatuing around?

SPOILERS INCOMING CLOSE YOUR EYES AND SCROLL AWAY

Von Franz mentions something vague about there being different rules depending on the region with the whole ‘sleep by daylight’ thing being the only consistent rule…

…except that doesn’t add up with what Thomas saw.

He followed the hunting party at night. He saw them open the coffin with the vampire still resting in it, cue the iron stake piercing him, the blood, the scream, Thomas’ startled cry—and then an immediate cut to him coming awake in the inn’s bed, now wearing a cross at his neck (which he tosses) and mud on his boots (proof of his excursion). He saw what he saw.

How did that vampire in the graveyard come to be? Was he one of Orlok’s making? Or was he never Nosferatu at all? Von Franz refers to Nosferatu exclusively as a type of undead that brings plague. That does seem to be Orlok’s gimmick, but the guy in the graveyard had no rats for company. The people Thomas encountered were out and about, hale and healthy, no fretting over plague. So what was he?

I might have misheard, but I think there was a moment as Thomas entered the inn for the first time where the woman doing an exorcism/healing rite involving garlic mentioned the word strigoi. It didn’t pop up in her subtitles, so I won’t swear to it, but it’d be interesting if Eggers went digging around in the Dracula and other vampire lit lore to fish out other variants of vampirism to play with.

But the thing is.

The thing is.

While it would be a good Easter egg hint that Thomas’ notion of hunting Orlok down and staking him in his big rat box was doomed to fail~, it would only add up if we’d gotten concrete on-film evidence that he was really mistaking one kind of vampire for another. All we have is Von Franz’ word that ‘he doubts it will work.’ Thomas, meanwhile, has seen it work and has the memory of Orlok snapping awake and actively stopping him from bringing the pickaxe down on him—if being impaled did nothing, why would Orlok bother to stop the blow?

It leaves the possibilities split down the middle.

Version A: Von Franz was right. Orlok the Nosferatu needed the Death-By-Maiden-and-Sunrise trap to be destroyed and what Thomas saw was an entirely different vampire being slain by its own methods. Potentially a vampire made by Orlok, but not a full Nosferatu plague carrier (possibly something that needs Scholomance study), or else turned by completely unrelated means. tl;dr: Thomas Staking Orlok Would Have Failed

Version B: Thomas was right. Had he been able to stake Orlok through, he might have put him down, or at least left him weak enough for them to bring on blades and fire to make sure nothing was left. Chuck the leftovers in a river for good measure. And Ellen would never have had to die.

Naturally, the latter isn’t as cinematic or thematically satisfying. It isn’t as meaty as Version A. But I can’t help picturing Thomas turning the what-ifs over and over in his head. What if he had been faster with the pickaxe? What if Von Franz hadn’t stalled them past sunset and they had found Orlok still in his box rather than Knock? What if Ellen could have been here and alive and safe if only he hadn’t been too slow, too late, too trusting?

What if…

What if both men were wrong?

Or at least failed to see the entire picture. To really wonder at the how and why of Thomas’ affliction being so different compared to every other non-Ellen victim of Orlok’s. To wonder just what Orlok intended by his drinking of Ellen as consummation by consumption. Surely he did not intend to kill her. Rather, to let her remain dead.

(The broker yet lives.)

((As a man.))

(This is no ordinary plague!)

((Plagues.))

Orlok was a cadaver who lived. The undead must first be dead. Is it not so for every form of vampire, no matter their region?

Ellen is dead. The Maiden become Death.

(He left you to the wolves yet you prevailed!)

((The wolves only came for him by daylight. When sleep ended and Thomas’ heart still beat. The work unfinished.))

Von Franz departs, head hung. Dr. Sievers will stall the formalities of the mortuary. There are dead enough to busy himself with. Let the boy grieve.

Let him think.

Of corpses that are not corpses. Death that does not stick. The sun moves between blinks as he banishes the shriveled carcass of the Count from the room, breaking and burning it.

His love is dressed anew. Clean, for she was never unclean.

(Her breast.)

((There is no bite.))

The sun sinks. Thomas holds a cold hand. Now it grips his back, their wedding bands gleaming. As she kisses his breast, he thinks perhaps it is not so terrible to be mistaken, all told.

They can be wrong together.

[the---hermit]

2024 reading wrap up

books I read (rereads in green):

Nature Human Nature And Human Difference by Justin Smith

Resurgir curated by Lorenzo Incarbone

Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman

The Pornographer by Restif De La Bretonne

Storie Brutte Sulla Scienza by Barbascura X

Only Dull People Are Brillian At Breakfast by Oscar Wilde

A Day Of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

The Ballad Of The Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

Notes On Camp by Susan Sontag

The Prince And The Dressmaker by Jen Wang

Oh! Il Libro Delle Meraviglie by Leo Ortolani

Dubliners by James Joyce

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

Il Grande Ratolik by Leo Ortolani

Emmeline Pankhurst by Mariapaola Pesce and Paola Zanghi

Babel by R.F. Kuang

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

Her Body And Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

The Vampyre by John William Polidori

Passage On The Secret History Of An Irish Countess by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The Daughtest Of Salem by Thomas Gilbert

Rita Hayworth And The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King

Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

The Mysterious Study Of Doctor Sex by Tamsyn Muir

Apt Pupil by Stepehn King

Harrow The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Nona The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Miti E Leggende Dei Celti by Mila Fois

A Psalm For The Wild Built by Becky Chambers

The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Quando Muori Resta A Me by Zerocalcare

Storie Di Merda by Barbascura X

Richard II by William Shakespeare

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Norse Mythology graphic novel volume 1

Norse Mythology graphic novel volume 2

A Prayer For The Crown Shy

short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Something Is Killing The Children volume 7

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

Life Isn't Binary by John-Meg Barker and Alex Iantaffi

Dream Hunters by Neil Gaiman

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

L'Idea di Medioevo by Giuseppe Sergi

Due Racconti di Vampiri - shoet stories by Frederick Cowles

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher

The Fall Of The House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

The White People by Arthur Machen

The Road - the graphic novel adaptation by Manu Larcenet

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

What Fiests At Night by T. Kingfisher

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves

L'Importanza di Chiamarsi Oscar Wilde by Licia Cascione and Tommaso Vitiello

Questioni di un Certo Genere by il Post

The Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Storia Degli Stati Sabaudi by Andrea Merlotti and Paola Bianchi

I Belli Hanno Rotto Il Cazzo by Barbascura X

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar

Re:Dracula

The Adventures of Amina Al Sirafi by Shannon Chkraborty

Genderqueer by Maia Kobabe

The Forbidden Harbor by Stefano Turconi and Teresa Radice

Sacred Bodies by Ver

Seghe Mentali Cosmiche by Barbascura X

Costituzione by Maurizio Floravanti

Bi by Julia Shaw

Governo by Paolo Colombo

Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio

A Babbo Morto by Zerocalcare

Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman

A Dog's Heart by Mikhail Bulgakov

the books I have dnf-ed:

The Last Man by Mary Shelly

Venerdì 12 by Leo Ortolani

The Dreamchatcher by Stephen King

Night Man by Leo Ortolani

La Donna Senz'Ombra by Hugo von Hofmannsthal

[mariacallous]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/17/samuel-alito-leonard-leo-gloria-von-thurn-und-taxis-napa-institute

Well then.

The supreme court justice Samuel Alito and a German aristocrat and “networker of the far right” from whom Alito accepted expensive concert tickets, are both linked to an ultra-conservative Catholic US group whose board members include the dark money impresario Leonard Leo and the founder of a hardline anti-abortion Christian group, documentation reviewed by the Guardian shows.

In 2018, Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, told the New York Times about attending a dinner hosted in Rome by James Harvey, an American cardinal and hardliner, and sponsored by the Napa Institute, a group founded by Timothy R Busch, a conservative Catholic businessman and political activist.

Leo, 59, is an activist and fundraiser who worked on the confirmations of all six rightwing justices who now dominate the supreme court, Alito among them. Now controlling billions of dollars in funding for rightwing groups, Leo is a director of the Napa Institute Legal Foundation, also known as Napa Legal Institute, and the Napa Institute Support Foundation.

Also among Napa Legal Institute directors is Alan Sears, founder of the Alliance Defending Freedom. The ADF was the principal driver of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case in which the supreme court ended the federal right to abortion, with Alito writing the ruling handed down in June 2022.

In 2017, the Napa Institute hosted a two-day symposium at the Trump hotel in Washington, during which Alito attended a dinner.

Writing for the Washington Post, John Gehring, an author and reporter, said the symposium “mixed traditional Catholic religious practices with moments that felt uncomfortably nationalistic”, including a “reading in the rosary booklet from [the Confederate general] Robert E Lee that [seemed] … stunningly insensitive at best … at a time when the ‘alt-right’ and white nationalism are basking in the glow of renewed attention and proximity to power”.

Alito is not the only supreme court justice with links to the Napa Institute. In September 2021, as part of a series sponsored by the group, Justice Clarence Thomas spoke at the University of Notre Dame.

“The court was thought to be the least dangerous branch and we may have become the most dangerous,” Thomas said, attacking judges he deemed to be “venturing into areas we should not have entered into” – meaning politics.

Thomas and Alito, however, have been the subject of numerous reports about undeclared gifts from rightwing donors, fueling an ethics crisis now stoked by news of Alito’s acceptance of concert tickets valued at $900 from von Thurn und Taxis.

Von Thurn und Taxis, 64, is a former punk turned billionaire, also known as Princess TNT, with close links to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. News of her gift to Alito was accompanied by reporting of further links between the two, including a picture of Alito and another rightwing justice, Brett Kavanaugh, posing at the supreme court in 2019 with the German socialite; Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a German hardliner; and Brian Brown, a prominent US anti-LGBTQ+ campaigner.

Von Thurn und Taxis told German media that Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, attended a concert at her castle in Bavaria last year as “private friends”. In emails to the Guardian, the aristocrat clarified: “We never speak about politics nor religion at the table, because we believe it limits the possibility to make friends.”

The socialite, who rejects the label “networker of the far right”, also said it would “never occur” to her to speak about “touchy subjects” like abortion with someone she knew socially, and claimed not to know that “the Dobbs decision” referred to the supreme court abortion rights ruling written by Alito.

In a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels last April, von Thurn und Taxis said European leaders were “financ[ing] the killing of our offspring” in an apparent reference to the availability of reproductive rights in Europe. She added: “Does this make any sense? Is there some kind of racism? Are we not supposed to reproduce?”

Alito and his wife have also been outspoken about abortion and other hot-button cultural issues. In June, the progressive activist Lauren Windsor released recordings in which Justice Alito agreed that the US should “return … to a place of godliness” and said, “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left”. Regarding her supposed persecution from those on the left, his wife said: “Look at me, look at me. I’m German. I’m from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me, I’m gonna give it back to you.”

Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US, which campaigns for court reform and which highlighted links between the German socialite, the Napa Institute and Alito, said: “When a supreme court justice like Samuel Alito pals around with influential rightwing figures like Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis and Leonard Leo, it raises concerns about fairness and impartiality.

“These relationships aren’t just about gifts. They reflect a deeper effort to manipulate our legal system in ways that could impact the rights of everyday people.”

Ciccone added, “What’s disturbing is that this happens behind closed doors – at parties at the Bavarian castle – away from public scrutiny. We’re talking about relationships that can affect everything, from reproductive rights to environmental protections” – both the subject of recent supreme court rulings widely seen as victories for the political right.

“The American people deserve a judiciary that serves justice impartially,” Ciccone said, “not one that can be bought.”

[meta-squash]

Squash's Reading List Year In Review 2024

(I've also posted this on WordPress here, where it might be more readable: https://jesuisgourde.wordpress.com/.../30/readinglist2024/)

Last year I read 92 books. I didn't plan on trying to surpass that number but I did, quite easily. This year I read 116 books. I didn't start off with any specific reading goal, but early on I decided to make it my goal to read more books by not-cis-men (women, trans/nonbinary people, etc) than by cis men. I hit that goal with 72 books. I did want to reread a number of books; I reread 7 books, but not all were the ones I listed in my last yearly reading review. I read 89 fiction books and 27 nonfiction. Of the nonfiction, the genres were mainly biography/autobiography, essay, science, and history. I read 45 books from small press publishers. I read 39 books by and/or about queer people. I don't have a super nice photo spread this year because I read a lot of books at work; I was going to screenshot my goodreads grid but unfortunately they have (frustratingly) changed the format from grid to list in the past week.

Here's a photo of the books I read that I do own, which isn't a whole lot, since I read most of the books at work this year:

I'll do superlatives at the end, here is the list of what I read this year, in chronological order. (Apologies for the random line breaks in the middle of the list, tumblr doesn't like it when you have 50+ lines without breaks)

-The Sorrows Of Young Werther by Johann von Goethe -The Changeling by Joy Williams -Child of God by Cormac McCarthy -Pierrot Mon Ami by Raymond Queneau -The Ghost Network by Kate Disabato -The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan -Richard III by William Shakespeare (reread) -The Recognitions by William Gaddis -A Kestrel For A Knave by Barry Hines -Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter -Bluets by Maggie Nelson -The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March -The Hospital by Ahmed Bouanani -I Love Dick by Chris Kraus -Minor Detail by Adiana Shibli -Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson -Rent Boy by Gary Indiana -One Or Several Deserts by Carter St Hogan -Samedi the Deafness by Jesse Ball -Norma Jean Baker of Troy by Anne Carson -Die My Love by Ariana Harwicz -Missing Person by Patrick Modiano -Petite Fleur by Iosi Havilio -Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi -The Address Book by Sophie Calle -In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado -Plastic Jesus by Poppy Z Brite -New Animal by Ella Baxter -The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel (play) -Green Girl by Kate Zambrino -Death In Spring by Merce Rodoreda -Harold's End by JT LeRoy (reread) -Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto -Stranger To The Moon by Evelio Rosero -H of H Playbook by Anne Carson -When The Sick Rule The World by Dodie Bellamy -Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson -Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector -Not One Day by Anne Garreta -Mauve Desert by Nicole Brossard -Binary Star by Sarah Gerard -Slug and other stories by Megan Milks -Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block (reread) -The Deer by Dashiel Carrera -Mean by Myriam Gurba -Humiliation by Wayne Koestenbaum -The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch by Thomas Thwaites -Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts by Claire Donato -Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

-Notes on Thoughts and Vision & The Wise Sappho by H.D. -Harrow by Joy Williams -A Feast Of Snakes by Harry Crews -Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Lucy Sante -Milkshake by Travis Dahlke -Little Fish by Casey Plett -Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor -Sex Goblin by Lauren Cook -Biography of X by Catherine Lacey -Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller -Hir by Taylor Mac (play) -Daddy Boy by Emerson Whitney -Notes On Camp by Susan Sontag -Transformer: A Story of Glitter, Glam Rock, and Loving Lou Reed by Simon Doonan -Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo -Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell (reread) -33 1/3 Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott -The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides -red doc> by Anne Carson -Darryl by Jackie Ess -A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan -The Postman Always Rings Twice by James Cain -Body by Harry Crews -St Sebastian's Abyss by Mark Haber -The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams (reread) -Don't Think Twice: Adventure and Healing at 100 Miles Per Hour by Barbara Schoichet -Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer -Timbuktu by Paul Auster -Nevada by Imogen Binnie -The End We Start From by Megan Hunte -Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang -Like Flies From Afar by K. Ferraro -Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe -Bestiary by K-Ming Chang -Playboy by Constance Debre -Red Dragon by Thomas Harris -Parting Gifts for Losing Contestants by Jessica Mooney -The Outline of My Lover by Douglas A Martin -Monstrilio by Gerardo Samano Cordova -Essex County by Jeff Lemire (reread) -Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have To Offer by Rax King -The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter -Lover Man by Alston Anderson -Cecilia by K-Ming Chang -The Employees by Olga Ravn -It Lasts Forever And Then It's Over by Anne De Marcken -Mercy Killing by Alandra Hileman (play) -Tentacle by Rita Indiana

-Nox by Anne Carson -What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami -McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh (reread) -Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin -John by Annie Baker (play) -Widow Basquiat by Jennifer Clement -All Down Darkness Wide by Sean Hewitt -The Blue Books by Nicole Brossard -The Book Of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender and Unruly by Kate Lebo -Blood Of The Dawn by Claudia Salazar Jimenez -The Balloonists by Eula Biss -Ravage: An Astonishment Of Fire by MacGillivray/Kirsten Norrie -Gods Of Want: Stories by K-Ming Chang -Fem by Magda Carneci -Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Toshio Merino -Mr Parker by Michael McKeever (play) -Fucking A by Suzan-Lori Parks (play) -Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha -Otherspace, a Martian Ty/opography by Brad Freeman and Johanna Drucker

I DNF'ed a few books, but all were put down with the intention of finishing them at some point. Mostly they were books I needed to read when I was less busy/in a different headspace. I DNF'ed: Soldiers Don't Go Mad: A true story of friendship, poetry and mental illness during the first world war by Charles Glass, a reread of Her by HD, and The Apple In The Dark by Clarice Lispector. The Lispector and HD are both modernist novels that need 100% attention, and the Glass book is a nonfiction book (very good so far) that I put down in favor of something that at the time was more interesting.

I gave out a lot of 5 stars this year. The books I rated as 5 stars were: The Changeling by Joy Williams, The Recognitions by William Gaddis, Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield, 33 1/3 Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott, Transformer by Simon Doonan, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Body by Harry Crews, Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang, Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, and Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.

~Superlatives~

Like last year, I'm going to do runners-up because I read so many books.

Favorite book: The Recognitions by William Gaddis. I have to pick this one as my favorite for the year, because reading it was a journey, and because it was a book that was exactly everything I love in a book: fascinating, very human characters, weird formatting, great dialogue, metaphors galore, and most importantly, hundreds of cultural, artistic, historical, biblical and literary references. I started this book on January 4 and I finished it February 22. It was so unbelievably dense, probably the densest novel I've ever read, and I absolutely loved it. So much is going on in this novel that it's hard for me to summarize. In the very shortest version of a summary, it is a novel about counterfeits (specifically paintings, but counterfeits in all and any forms) and Catholicism in 1930s/40s New York. The main character is a young man named Wyatt Gwyon, a talented artist who instead of painting for himself, becomes a skilled counterfeiter-- not because he wants to make money, but because he's obsessed with the perfection of making exact interpretations of other people's art. He also struggles with religion and belief due to his strange religious upbringing. Many, many other characters are also focal points throughout the novel. The book is unique in that it doesn't use quotation marks when characters speak and rarely uses "he said"/"she said" or any similar phrase. But Gaddis is incredibly talented at writing dialogue so that each character's voice comes through, and it's obvious (except when he doesn't want it to be) who is speaking. Gaddis is also wonderfully scathing, and much of the novel is incredibly witty and intelligent observations about the Modernist art world and artistic spaces in general. The characters are all fascinating, there is a lot of mirroring and metaphors. I say this book is about counterfeits in every form, because it constantly highlights different ways in which each character is faking something, or lying, or pretending to be/know/do/think something they are not. This book was incredible, I annotated every single page and had so much fun reading it, even though or perhaps because it was so unbelievably dense.

Just for a bit of reference, here are a few of the more annotated pages in my copy of The Recognitions:

Runner up: Body by Harry Crews (more on this one further down)

Least favorite book: Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi. I was so disappointed by this book. The blurb on the back made it sound like it was going to be really beautiful and interesting and unique. It wasn't. It was all tell and no show. It follows Ada, a person who is born with one foot in the spirit world. A traumatic experience at university causes her to develop split personalities as the spirits from the other side step forward to protect her from trauma. Unfortunately, the spirits who now control her body have darker, more dangerous desires. Sadly, there was almost no plot, just description after description of Ada's unhealthy relationships and erratic behavior. But because the narrative is so distanced from said relationships and from Ada, the high stakes of this behavior is not felt, not really. Interesting characters can easily save 'all tell and no show type' books, but none of the characters get delved into with any depth, even Ada. The show rather than tell narrative also seriously undermines the poetic prose that crops up almost at random. This book felt flat. No plot, little stakes felt, no interesting characters, tell rather than showing everything, and it's not compelling at all.

Runner up: Playboy by Constance Debre. The back of this book describes it as a memoir detailing the writer's "decision, at age forty-three, to abandon her marriage, her legal career, and her bourgeois Parisian life to become a lesbian and a writer." Which sounds amazing! But it isn't! It's unbelievably pretentious and quite boring. It's mostly just complaining hidden by a facade of faux-philosophical meandering and directionless autobiographical vignettes. The author is a lawyer and she spends most of the time complaining about poor people and about women. It's so hilariously misogynistic. It's just various vignettes of her relationships with various women (who she dislikes and disparages for being femme or having bad bodies or for having lowbrow/uncultured interests etc etc) and then her going and visiting her ex-husband and teenage son, and then complaining that she has nothing. There's little to no emotion in the book, she is not charming, and her pseudo-philosophical musings are boring.

Most surprising/unexpected book: Body by Harry Crews. This book crept up on me in terms of a favorite. Crews' writing is not for everyone, but it's absolutely for me. The book follows bodybuilder Shereel Dupont and her trainer, Russell, who are at the world bodybuilding competition. Shereel has left home to compete over the past year and is now one of the most likely to win. Unfortunately, her family, who are "corpulent rednecks" with odd habits, show up to cheer her on, causing disruption and chaos throughout the hotel at which the competition is held and turmoil for Shereel herself. This book blew me away completely. Every time I thought it had reached a plateau of weirdness and chaos and insanity, it ratcheted that all up even higher, culminating in the most perfectly fucked up ending.

Runner up: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin. A mother trapped in the liminal space between life and death is made by an unfamiliar changeling child to retell the events of the recent past, desperately trying to pinpoint the moment she can reverse the environmental poisoning of herself and her daughter. I picked this book up because it sounded interesting, and then it ended up being an amazingly written short horror novel. It had a lot of interesting thoughts on motherhood and the horror of being a parent - not in a negative way, but the horror of wanting to protect and keep your child safe and the inability to do so.

Most fun book: Like Flies From Afar by K Ferrari. I fully judged a book by its cover with this one, and it did not disappoint. Small-time criminal/oligarch Mr Machi thinks he's hot shit, until he pops a tire on the way to an appointment and discovers an unidentifiable corpse in his trunk. As he scrambles to deal with the body, his paranoia grows as he tries to calculate who out of all his enemies and employees might be responsible, and who is trying to frame him, and who the body might be, and his life slowly transforms into a nightmare. Everyone in this book is loathsome, but in a way that is so fun to hate. The whole novel is a romp of panic and paranoia, people who think they're so cool and hard exposing how uncool they are, and a mystery that's so fun because watching the protagonist panic is a kind of schadenfreude.

Runner up: Transformer by Simon Doonan. This is a book for people who love Lou Reed, by a man who loves Lou Reed. It's just a wonderfully written biography that focuses mainly on the album Transformer, but also gives Lou Reed's history and is interspersed with stories about Doonan's own thoughts and experiences with Reed. The whole book is really passionate and vivid, and fun to read even if you don't have the album immediately to hand.

Best queer book: Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield. Leah, a marine biologist, has returned from a deep-sea voyage that went wrong. Her wife Miri begins to realize that something is wrong, and Leah came back changed. The narrative switches between Miri's point of view as she tries to reach Leah and struggles help her despite not knowing what's happening to her wife, and Leah's point of view as she remembers and recounts what happened to her during her submarine voyage. I started this book at work and brought it home. In the middle of reading it, I stopped to finish some task (I think it might have been to make dinner), and ended up having to cut the task short because I needed so badly to keep reading. The most compelling part of the book is the very different ways the two characters' love for each other shines through, even in the darkest moments of the novel.

Runner up: Darryl by Jackie Ess. The titular narrator of this novel discovers that he genuinely enjoys a cuckolding lifestyle, watching men have sex with his wife. But then he realizes that part of the reason he likes it so much, is that maybe he wants to be the wife. His explorations with sex and gender and relationships (and basketball) begin to unravel his marriage and his friendships and his own mind. Then he learns more about one of the men his wife has been sleeping with, and things get dangerous. I loved this book because despite it being written by a trans woman, the story doesn't at all go where you'd expect regarding gender or sexuality. It's satirical, it's witty, it's got some cool things to say about kink and about gender, and it's totally original.

Saddest book: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. This is a classic I'd been meaning to read for a long time. The narrator is an American WWI soldier named Joe who was hit by an artillery shell and has woken in the hospital having had his arms and legs amputated, as well as most of his facial features mutilated beyond use/recognition. Trapped in his body, he drifts through memories and musings on life and war and philosophy as he tries to keep track of the days and to figure out some way to communicate with the hospital staff. It's no wonder this book is a classic. The writing is incredible, the imagery vivid and the plot totally gripping, even as it switches between the peaceful past and the horrible present. The end is completely gut-wrenching.

Runner up: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli. This novel explores what in history is a minor detail, and what impact that little moment might have on someone in the future. The first part of the novel opens in Palestine in 1949, in a military camp, where a group of Israeli soldiers (led by a captain suffering from a bite-induced hallucinogenic fever) kidnap, rape, and murder an unnamed Palestinian woman and bury her body in the desert. Fifty-odd years later, a Palestinian writer learns about this "small" moment in history, which occurred 25 years to the day before her birth, and becomes obsessed with learning more. She obtains an illegal pass to the Zone in which the woman died, determined to go there and find more information. I don't want to summarize much more because I don't want to give away any of the hard-hitting plot points. But Minor Detail was published in 2020, and it explores the cycles of violence and the ways in which oppression has not changed for the Palestinian people. It's a book that I wish I had read twice because (as the title suggests) there were a lot of small details that repeated themselves or were less noticeable at first but slowly grew or became important later in the story, and I'm sure I would have noticed more.

Weirdest book: The Changeling by Joy Williams. I love Joy Williams! I love everything she writes! Her themes are always so interesting and her writing style is so unique. The main character, a young woman named Pearl, escapes her terrible marriage by joining a rich older man and in doing so ends up living with him on an island that is populated by children he has taken under his wing. Pearl wants little to do with them and spends most of her days getting drunk by the pool -- the children are eerily smart and her son has joined their games and lessons, and they all want her attention. But her son is less and less her son as time goes on, and the children are not always the children, and the adults in the house are all bizarre and half-mad. I wish I could give a better summary, but Joy Williams books are always difficult to summarize, because so much of the stories are less about the plot and more about the characters just feeling things at the reader, and the plot is often built on or around odd occurrences and philosophical musings. This book blew me away with its imagery and its metaphors. I want to reread it, because it was just so amazing. My absolutely favorite thing about Joy Williams (and this is true for all of her books) is the way she writes these incredibly profound and philosophical phrases like they're nothing at all, like they're so easy, just breezes on by them even though she's just punched you in the chest. It's amazing.

Runner up: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.

Most gripping book: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. This book is an absolute masterclass in pacing. It tells just a few fragments out of the whole history of the Irish Troubles, but the fragments that are focused on are woven together with brilliant timing, humanizing and vivid portrayals, fantastic analysis and contextualization, and altogether excellent writing. Every time I put this book down I wanted to keep reading, to know what was going to happen next. The book has 3 focal points: Gerry Adams, (alleged) leader of the IRA; Dolors Price, a member of the IRA; and the family of Jean McConville, a woman kidnapped by the IRA. At first, all three storylines are disparate, but Keefe slowly weaves them together, pulling all the threads of context and action and years in prison or government or delinquent schools together slowly but steadily. The book reads like a thriller, and I adored it completely. (Yes, I do know about the miniseries. I haven't finished watching it yet!)

Runner up: Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield.

Book that taught me the most: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

Runner up: The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch by Thomas Thwaites. This could also go under weirdest book, easily. As a graduate art school project, Thwaites decided to attempt to build the simplest (and cheapest) appliance he could think of - a toaster - fully from scratch. Quite literally, starting with mining the elements to make the right kinds of metal and figuring out how to make the right kind of plastic. Half of the book is Thwaites' attempts to build various elements of a toaster - and how they go wrong, or right, and why it's so hard. The other half discusses all the processes that go in to making all these elements in a more manufactured setting, their impact on the environment and the economy, and the difference between cheap mass-produced products that break down vs more expensive products that last longer. The writing was fun and included photos and diagrams and interviews with various industry professionals Thwaites contacted to learn more.

Most interesting/thought provoking book: The Recognitions by William Gaddis

Runner up: Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang. I've now read everything this author has published and this is by far her best book. Her narrative style is so unique and so poetic, and the themes she always comes back to are so interesting, and they culminate in this amazing novel. This magical realist novel centers around two best friends, Anita and Rainie, who are both first generation Taiwanese-American. The story opens when they are adolescents, and Anita has recently learned that they come from generations of dog-headed women and women-headed dogs. They vow to become dogs together, tying a string around each other's throats as collars and playing at dogs in the empty lot near their apartment complex. But Anita's dreamlike imagination and obsessively loyal personality starts to clash with Rainie's more reserved nature, and when it becomes too much, Rainie's family moves away. Rainie grows up, while unbeknownst to her, Anita has sunk into a dreamworld and her body has begun to rot. She narrates her family's past and her mother's bloodline because she cannot narrate her own present. When she returns to the town she grew up in, Rainie discovers Anita's condition, and knows that she is the only one who can save her. This novel is beautiful, incredibly poetic, and experiments with formatting and narration in really unique ways. Its exploration of friendship and queerness and obsession and tradition and folklore is absolutely fascinating. I often write in my books and underline sentences or paragraphs that I really love. I didn't write in this one, because I would have ended up underlining the entire novel.

Longest/shortest book: My longest book was The Recognitions by William Gaddis at 952 pages, and my shortest was Notes On Camp by Susan Sontag at 57 pages.

General thoughts on all the other books that didn't get superlatives:

-Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. This is the first McCarthy book I've ever read (I know, I know) and I really enjoyed it. You just watch a horrible guy walk around in the rural countryside of a small town, doing increasingly fucked up things and committing various awful crimes. Which is exactly up my alley in terms of literature. The main character, Ballard, is someone who is so weird and pathetic that he becomes turned inside out into evilness. You feel sorry for him but you also hate him and he's also fascinating because he's so fucking weird. It's a great book.

-The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato. This book was so much fun to read while living in Chicago. It's a rock n roll mystery novel that riffs on Situationism and the L tracks and maps. A rock star disappears, and the main character who is a fan of her's is determined to find out what happened to her. What she uncovers is a series of clues based on defunct lines and stations of the Chicago transit system, and the Situationist concept of detournment, which lead her towards finding out what actually happened to the rock star. This book was so much fun, and so much of it was based on real life defunct train lines and the actual Situationists, both of which I found really interesting. The ending was also just so good! Somehow I managed to have read everything I needed to in order to get every single reference in the book, which was really surprising to me, because they all came from different places.

-New Animal by Ella Baxter. This book baffled me. It is about a woman who works as a makeup-artist at her family's morgue. When her mother dies unexpectedly, she skips the funeral and goes to stay at her estranged father's house. While there, trying to figure out how to vent her grief, she decides to try out the local kink scene. Her first experience is with a dom who is a manipulative, horrible asshole. She has a bad time, but wants to try again, so she goes to a place that hosts scenes. She acts like she knows what she's doing when she doesn't, no one gives her any instruction, so she fucks up massively, and everyone has a bad time. It's the worst portrayal of the kink scene I think I've ever encountered. The author said she did a lot of research but it just seems like a lot of terrible assumptions and misinterpretations. I thought it was going to be a book that positively portrayed kink and people who like the kink scene, but it's very much not. It didn't even feel like the author was doing this so the character would learn that she can't run from her grief. It seemed more like the author had one bad experience due to poor communication or shitty individuals, and then decided that's what the whole scene was like.

-Harold's End by JT LeRoy. I read this book in high school (or perhaps just after graduating) and totally fell in love with it, and then never saw another copy until recently. It was so good to reread it, to re-experience the gorgeous watercolor portraits that come with it. The novel follows a young street kid/hustler who lives with other street kids; all his friends have pets but he doesn't. A john takes a liking to him and buys him a snail as a pet, who he names Harold. The book follows him as he lives on the streets and as his relationship with the john develops. The book is classic JT LeRoy, and the end is LeRoy's usual style of characters experiencing a life lesson and growth but not necessarily in a happy way. It definitely holds up!

-Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson. This was such a fun and weird book and I really enjoyed it. Markson's idea for the novel was "what if someone actually lived the way that Wittgenstein's Tractatus suggests?". What we get is a woman who believes she is the last person on earth (it is never confirmed whether this is true or not). She muses on life, culture, art, philosophy, and her past, and discusses her trips across the world despite its emptiness. But her story changes constantly; she's always referencing things she said before and editing herself. It's a weird, fun, fascinating novel with a lovably weird main character.

-A Feast Of Snakes by Harry Crews. Yet another fucked up book that I loved. It follows Joe Lon Mackey, a former high school football star that now lives a dead-end life in his hometown in Georgia. Each year the town hosts the Rattlesnake Roundup, where people come from many states away to try and catch as many rattlesnakes as they can in order to win a competition. Joe Lon is in charge of the event now that his father is too old and ill. He's uncomfortably self-aware of his own personal failings and his inadequacy and his abusive relationship with his wife; he'd rather not think about any of it and is incapable of figuring out how to change things. But his old girlfriend is returning for the event, and his father's attempts to control the goings-on from afar mean he's unable to stop thinking about where his life has ended up and where it's going. All this drives him slowly crazy with desperation until the insane ending. Crews is incredibly talented at writing characters that are likeable despite being so flawed and fairly awful people. This book is no exception.

-Milkshake by Travis Dahlke. What a weird novel! In a near-future dystopian heatwave, an 11 year old girl escapes the environmental catastrophe by traveling back in time to her past life as a fertilizer salesman whose marriage is slowly collapsing. I really enjoyed it, because it was just so odd. Now that I'm thinking about it, I feel as though it would have been really interesting to read just before or just after reading Tentacle; both books focus specifically on time travel and on environmental disaster.

-Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. At the opening of the box, a Witch has been murdered in a small village in Mexico called La Matosa. The rest of the chapters are narrated by different characters, who all have some small or large hand in the death of the Witch, who was a woman who the whole town visited in secret for medicine, fortune-tellings, and advice. The narrating characters include a schoolgirl, a drug dealer, a prostitute, a hapless husband who wants to make something of himself, and a teenager in love with his young girlfriend. With each narration we learn more about the Witch, and her mother who was a Witch before her. Slowly, we get inklings of the nature of the murder, and the revelation at the end is brutal. Melchor's writing is incredibly vivid, and the characters are all caught in the cycle of poverty, driven by superstition and fear and hardship. None of the characters are likeable, but they're all so human.

-Biography Of X by Catherine Lacey. In a dystopic alternate-universe US, where the Southern Territory split from the North after WWII and established a fascist theocracy, a woman named CM grieves her recently deceased wife X, who was a famous artist. Despite X's wishes, CM decides to delve into her wife's past, researching her history before they met and before she was known as X. She uses her credentials and privileges as a journalist to cross into the Southern Territory and learn about X's family and the communities from which she came, her activism and her hidden lives, and begins to realize that maybe learning all this about the woman she loved won't benefit her in the long run and that maybe their relationship wasn't as rosy as she thought. This novel combined fiction and real life in really fascinating ways, and includes both real and fake sources in its footnotes.

-The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. A famous and successful painter murders her husband and then refuses to speak. A psychologist who is also a fan of her work is determined to get her to speak again. Obsessed with uncovering the truth, he ends up taking risks that threaten himself and his patient. A fun mystery that went down easy. It didn't attempt to be too realistic from the start, so suspension of disbelief wasn't hard. I do think the book could have done without the entire last part. Leaving it on the realization of what had happened and allowing the reader to sit with that realization (especially with how creatively the twist is presented) would have had more impact I think than the slower and less engaging denouement of the last 3 chapters, which were far weaker than the rest of the book.

-Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell. I reread this book for the first time since about 2009 and really enjoyed it. It's a very sad novel about a man living in NYC during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Most of his friends and lovers have died and he's scared and sad about his own life and cynical about love, but he's attracted to the man who owns the shop below his apartment. It's a dark book, sad and scared and jaded. I think the main character's anxiety and grief that slowly escalates into paranoia is an amazingly surreal way to portray all the emotions that consumed the queer community at that time. I also loved the sort of lack of closure at the end - because many people didn't get that.

-Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. I don't generally go for science fiction novels, but I read this one because so many people said they had liked it. I really enjoyed it. The unnamed narrator, a biologist, is part of an all-female expedition into a harsh, unknown territory that has appeared adjacent to the US. The suspense and strangeness of the novel had excellent pacing. The descriptions were also so vivid and clear, which made the story's weirdness so compelling. I loved watching the main character struggle to remain objective the whole time while knowing that she's failing. Her growing fascination and terror is so fun to read as each feeling tries to overtake the other. I also think it was great as a standalone and I feel no interest in reading the other books in the same universe.

-Nevada by Imogen Binnie. I'm a bad queer person, I hated this book. In it, the narrator, a trans woman, is frustrated with her life and has just broken up with her girlfriend, so she steals her ex's car and drives away, ending up in a small town where she spends the night with a department store employee. I just really don't like books that are meandering tell and no show without characters or a plot that are interesting. This entire book felt like someone recounting their weekend over breakfast, complete with casual informal language and overuse of the word "like". Which would be fine if any of the characters were compelling, or if the plot was really interesting and went somewhere, but it didn't. A good portion of it is just musings on New York City, but without the creativity or vividness that other portrayals of NYC have to offer. After I read it, I learned this book was kind of the catalyst for a specific style of trans writing. Which also explains why I hated Detransition, Baby when I read it a couple years ago, as it's a sort of literary descendant of this. I'm happy to read books that are tell rather than show....so long as something interesting happens or at least one of the characters is unique and compelling. This book sadly has neither.

-Essex County by Jeff Lemire. I read this for an English class in university, so this was a reread and I really enjoyed reading it a second time! All the stories in this collection are so beautiful and compelling, all the characters are so real. And the art style is fantastic. The stories revolve around characters living in the titular Essex County in Canada, across a number of generations. It weaves together their relationships and their lives, much of which revolves around hockey. There were some storylines I remembered quite well and others I didn't remember at all, so it was really nice to revisit this one.

-Ravage: An Astonishment of Fire by MacGillivray. Man, this book had so much potential. This novel is a fake biography of a fake poet who disappeared from a Scottish island in the 1960s after falling into delusions that he has become a demon. The fascinating thing about this book (at first), is that it's completely convinced that it is an actual nonfiction book. It gives no hints that it's fake, and the first 50 pages are convincingly written with an academic, nonfiction voice as the novel is utterly convinced of its own delusion of factualness. The novel claims to be an analysis of found papers: first, the poetry and written tracts of Tristjan Norge, a Norwegian poet, then the analysis of his works by MacGillivray, and finally, the diary of his companion Luce Montcrieff. Unfortunately, it is fairly repetitive in a way that bogs the reader down quite a bit. Even so, I think I would have enjoyed much, much more if the ending did not abruptly switch genres to a supernatural/fantasy novel in a way that was startling and had no previous indications of earlier in the book. Up to the last 20 pages I thought it was interesting, even when it was dense, but the end felt like the author didn't know how to end the novel and just used the deus ex machina of supernatural occurrences.

My goal for 2025 is to read majority nonfiction. I don't know if I'm going to actually meet that goal, but I'll try. I don't have any goals for how many books I want to read, especially because I tend to read nonfiction quite a bit slower than fiction, so I don't have a good idea of what my reading amount goal should actually be. This year I also forgot entirely about my attempt to read all of Jean Genet's (translated) works, so I will hopefully actually meet that goal in 2025, since I only have one or two books left to read. But my first three books of the year are going to be Soldiers Don't Go Mad by Charles Glass, which I started this year but didn't finish, The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews by Jean Genet, and Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe.

[john-laurens-hamilton]

John W. Mulligan and Charles Adams.

Would you believe me if I told you Hercules Mulligan's son and John Adam’s son were lovers? Well, maybe you would think it's a made-up story to satisfy the gay-historic-thirst of the Hamilton musical fans, but I assure you, it was a real story.

Charles Adams was the younger brother of John Quincy Adams, who was very noticeably the favorite child. He grew up with the same education as his brother, and there was not much difference between them until, at his return from school in London, Charles got a job working at Alexander Hamilton’s law firm. There, he met another young man his age, whose father was an old acquaintance of Hamilton’s: John W. Mulligan, Hercules Mulligan's son. We don't know when their relationship started, but soon after, they moved in together. They were, at this time, handsome and wealthy men in age to marry, but neither did so. Both seemed to enjoy the company of the other best.

It was, more or less, a year after they moved in together, when John Adams visited his son. His brother John Quincy was thriving in the world of politics, and the man wanted an update on how Charles was doing at Hamilton's law firm. By visiting their home, Adams quickly realized Charles and John’s relationship transcended friendship, and this horrorized him. How could his son give in to the sin of Sodom? Even though Thomas Jefferson had changed the penalty for it from death by hanging to castration in 1776, the risk of getting caught and ruining his reputation was too high, and so Adams tried to force Charles to break up with John.

But the two young men loved each other too much to simply give in to his orders. This is when John ran to Hamilton, asking him for help, confiding in his father's old friend. As a side note, this is another proof of Hamilton's bisexuality being known between his inner circle: why would John trust him with his own homosexuality if he thought Alexander wouldn't be supportive? Theorizing, Alexander probably told his first friend in the Colonies about his ‘proclivities not limited to the fairer sex’, in his own nephew’s words, which would mean Hercules knew about John's relationship with Charles, probably being the one to advice him to ask for help from Hamilton.

Alexander understood their problem. He probably saw himself and Laurens in them, and so he wrote to Baron von Sugar Daddy—I mean, Baron von Steuben—about John and Charles’ problem. Now, a bit about Baron von Steuben before continuing with the story—Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben was an openly homosexual man who was exiled from Prussia for it. In the Colonies, he rapidly joined the army and ascended to General. Washington didn't seem to care about the Baron’s past in Europe, letting him have his own military facility where he did a number of very gay things. Two should be highlighted: first one, the party he held with his aides where pants were not allowed, and the second is his three closest soldiers: his personal assistant, Pierre Stephen du Ponceau (though this one gives me a bitter feeling, as Pierre was only 17), William North and Benjamin Walker, who were his lovers and formally adopted (the homosexual replacement for marriage in the 18th century) to be in his will at his death later. Now, carrying on, von Steuben was a protector of homosexual men of the time: by sending Charles and John away to him, Alexander was shielding them from Adams and giving a safe space to be open about their relationship. 

This is how they moved in with von Steuben, with whom they stayed for a happy year, being together. However, after this year passed, the Baron wanted to move upstate: while John desired to become his personal assistant and move with him, Charles desperately wanted to stay in the city. They parted ways, though this wasn't the end of their relationship: Charles got married and had two daughters, and he often left them at home while being off visiting his lover at von Steuben’s. It was on a day when Adams decided to show up uninvited to their home and he found his daughter-in-law and granddaughters alone. When questioning them for his son’s location, he was incredibly mad. Everybody knew the Baron was gay, and this only confirmed his suspicions. We have a register of the colorful vocabulary he used to refer to his son to Abigail, highlighting the following: “rake” (meaning the equivalent to manwhore) and “buck”, which meant an effeminate man. After this, he properly disowned Charles.

Charles died young of a liver infection probably caused by a genetic condition, or perhaps, alcoholism. John outlived him and von Steuben, being present on his will.

They were, indeed, very gay.

[kellyvela]

did u see that now on the jonas fan circles, and their similar interests, people are spreading/acting like the divorce is because sophie is a cheater? even some t**lor sw*f* fans are spreading it as well, saying she is their JA that she used JJ and cheated on him 🙄 as if JJ hadn't been mentioned of partying with early 20s girls and cheating on sophie for years before

Hello anon 👋

I don't care what the jb stans say, they are as stupid and willfully blind as targies.

Everyone is free to think what seems best to them, BUT the thing is, IF Sophie cheated jj with Perry as those people claim, then why Perry's ex girlfriend Olympia still follows Sophie on instagram, the woman that supposedly stole her man???

Perry and his ex break up was only made public mid September 2023, but the rumors about their separation started way before (November 2022), especially in July 2023, when Olympia celebrated her 27th birthday in Tuscany, Italy, and Perry was notoriously absent.

Friends began whispering about the state of their relationship when property developer Perry was conspicuous by his absence at the Chelsea-based model's 27th birthday party in July. They have not been seen in public together since last November. For three consecutive summers, the couple holidayed together, but this year they went their separate ways. The Princess visited Italy and Greece with family and friends (...) Perry, meanwhile, spent his summer with pals in Cow Neck, New York state, as well as in Spain with family. He was also at the Burning Man festival in Nevada with a posse of attractive young women.

Actually, the rumors of cheating came from Olympia's part, since she was seen with some married with children TT chef that was kicked out of his home by his wife when the rumors erupted.

King Charles's goddaughter, 27, beamed as she made her way to the celebrity chef's car, in Notting Hill, just days after her  ex-boyfriend Peregrine Pearson, spent time with Sophie Turner in Paris, where they were spotted kissing.

The wife of celebrity chef Thomas Straker has kicked him out of their marital home after being told he was in a romantic relationship with Princess Maria Olympia of Greece. Friends of Straker and his wife Davina who have two daughters aged four and two, said she was 'devastated' to be told of his infidelity in October.

I have seen those people claiming that Sophie and Perry were together since July 2023, since Sophie were in Tuscany, Italy, around July 2023 as well; but apparently they missed the fact that Sophie was there with jj (see the pictures), but Olympia was alone, without Perry, whose absence was conspicuous (see the pics and read article linked above).

So how were Sophie and Perry cheating, if Sophie was with jj in Italy, while Perry was with his family and friends in Spain and US???

Also, IF Sophie really cheated jj with Perry, then why Olympia's long time close friends like Ella Richards and Sascha von Bismarck, or George and Camilla Blandford, or even Rupert Gorst, to mention only some of them, are OK hanging out, travelling, partying and posting pictures of them all happy with Sophie, the woman that supposedly stole their friend's man?

Think about it.

Now, in addition to his well known awful reputation, over their 7 years together, there was a lot of rumors and blinds about jj being a serial cheater.

But not only that, while "sources" were claiming that jj has been caring for his daughters "alone" and "pretty much all of the time," there was a podcast about him living a single life in NY, clubbing till late hours:

Also, while there were headlines with jj saying that it was "too soon" for Sophie to date someone new, he was seen with more than one girl.

Look at this reddit post from November 6th 2023, about jj having a double date with a girl he met at some restaurant she works at:

Also, he was seen with this other girl in Seattle, around November 11th 2023:

And around December 2023, he was also seen with a redhead in Montreal:

And now jj is dating a model that got famous after starting a relationship with a 17 years old male model, while she was 28/29 years old, and they became parents soon after the male model turned 18 . . . . Sounds familiar??? 💀

A little update, it seems jj and new woman knew each other and were interacting a lot since before he started dating Sophie . . . .

 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[fashionbooksmilano]

Bob Colacello's Out

Bob Colacello

Introduction Ingrid Sischy, Design by Sam Shaid

Edition 7L Steidl, Göttingen 2007, 232 pages, 30x21,4cm, ISBN 9788654034

euro 50,00

email if you want to buy booksinprogressmilano@yahoo.it

Out documents a social era that seems so close and yet so far away: that wild, glamorous, disco-and-drugs-driven decade between the end of the Vietnam war and the advent of AIDS, when every night was a party night and such distinctions as uptown and downtown, gay and straight, black and white were momentarily cast aside. As the editor of Andy Warhol's Interview from 1971 to 1983, Bob Colacello was perfectly placed to record the scene, which he did in his monthly "Out" column, a diary of the frenetic social life that took him from art openings to movie premieres, from cocktail parties to dinner parties, from charity balls to after-hours clubs, often all in the course of a single evening. Although Colacello started writing his column in 1973, it didn't occur to him to take his own pictures for it until two years later, when the Swiss art dealer Thomas Ammann gave him one of the first miniature 35-mm cameras to come on the market, a black plastic Minox small enough to hide in his jacket pocket.

With their skewed angles, multilayered compositions, and arbitrary lighting effects, Colacello's pictures have an immediacy, a veracity, and an aesthetic not often found in the work of professional party photographers. He wasn't standing at the door pairing up celebrities and telling them to smile; he was in the middle of the action - "an accidental photographer", he likes to say, catching his "subjects" off-guard. And what subjects he had: Diana Vreeland, Jack Nicholson, Raquel Welch, Mick Jagger, Yves Saint Laurent, Nan Kempner, Gloria Swanson, Anita Loos, Willy Brandt, Joseph Beuys, Robert Rauschenberg and Warhol himself, at his most relaxed and private. Here as well are those who didn't survive the endless party - Truman Capote, Halston, Studio 54's Steve Rubell, Egon von Furstenberg and Tina Chow. Because space in Interview was limited, only a handful of Colacello's pictures were published each month, so most of these images have never been seen before. They bring to life a carefree but reckless moment in history when social mobility and personal expression were played out to the limits.

23/12/23

[oscarwetnwilde]

James Wilby + Historical Portrayals: .2nd Lt. Siegfried Lorraine Sassoon (Regeneration) .King George VI (Bertie & Elizabeth) .George Boscawen, 3rd Viscount Falmouth (Poldark) .Bruce Ismay (Titanic) .Ofonius Tigellinus (Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire: Nero) .Edward Russell Thomas (De-Lovely) .John Denby Wheater (The Great Train Robbery) .Brendan Bracken (Churchill's Secret) .Lord Howard Staunton (The Chess Game/La Partie d'echecs) .Herbert Spencer (George Eliot: A Scandalous Life) .Leofric, Earl of Mercia (Lady Godiva) .Judge Carl Aarvold (The Duke) .Charles Lightoller (Words Of The Titanic) .Helmuth James von Moltke (Witness Against Hitler) .Lord Louis Mountbatten (The Last Days of The Raj)

[cinemaocd]

Movies I watched in March 2024

Under the Cherry Moon (1986)** I'm Not There (2007)*** Jingle All the Way (1996)* Three Graves to Cairo (1943)** Hitchcock (2012) ** Silent Partner (1978)** Possession (2002)** Oppenheimer (2023)** Oscar Wilde (1960)** Turning Point: The Cold War and the Bomb (2024)** Anselm (2023)*** 24 Hour Party People (2002)** Two of Us (1999)*** Remains of the Day (1993)*** Doubt (2008)*** Dune (1984)*** Dune Part II (2024)***

Under the Cherry Moon (1986)** Absolute bobbins of a script is still beautiful to look at, very gay and of course mainly a vehicle for Prince's music. Under the Cherry Moon was the follow up to Purple Rain. It was a box office flop, a critical failure that earned Razzie nominations, but is a worth another look. Prince and Jerome Beton are sex workers with a rich female clientele on the French Riviera, the kind of career that only exists in movies. Kristin Scott Thomas makes her film debut as the debutante who comes between the friends and threatens to part them. Prince's death scene, harkens back to Camille with Prince playing Garbo. Like Garbo, Prince was happy to exploit his own androgyny and like Garbo, he was doomed to only explore that in a way that could be squeezed into heteronormative films.

I'm not There: (2007)*** A fascinating look at Bob Dylan, dividing him into six personae played by six different actors. Haynes uses different film styles, the Cate Blanchett mid Sixties Dylan of Bringing it All Back Home and Blonde on Blonde is matched in style with the black and white cinematography of D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back. It also has elements of the Italian Surrealists like Felinni or Antonioni with a scoch of A Hard Day's Night. The soundtrack is particularly good, avoiding for the most part, the licensing pitfalls that plagued Haynes' Bowie biopic, Velvet Goldmine. Some of the most effective moments of I'm Not There, pair landscape shots with Dylan's music. Given the catalogue and the array of talent, Haynes has gathered, one perhaps expects a bit more , but then that has always been Dylan's nature, he's mysterious and aloof, leaving us wanting more.

Jingle All the Way (1996)* We watched this Christmas movie in March because we recently learned that part of it was filmed at my son's elementary school. It had Jake Lloyd somehow being more annoying than he was in the Phantom Menace as a bonus. Phil Hartman got dragged into this unfunny mess as well.

Three Graves to Cairo (1943)** Tense war time drama about a British officer who gets trapped behind the lines and ends up hiding out in a hotel working as a waiter for Field Marshall Rommel. Billy Wilder ratchets up the tension, his script giving all the best lines to Rommel, played by Erich Von Stroheim who really owns the film though Anne Baxter and Franchot Tone nominally "star."

Hitchcock (2012)** Hichcock's struggle to make Pyscho dramatized with fantasies where he hangs out with Ed Gein, while Alma Hitchcock gets involved in a Hitchcockian romance with a hack writer. Scarlett Johannson plays an almost deliberately obtuse Janet Leigh and James Darcy captures pre-Psycho Tony Perkins. It's a bit silly but I'll never turn down Helen Mirren and Anthony Hopkins in anything. This has a slight, arch feel to it, like many of Hitchcock's pictures, but lurking underneath are the ordinary hates and passions of a man who fears being left behind, at the height of his career. For his long-suffering wife's part, she too feels she's being replaced by the young actresses that Hitchcock is obsessed with at the moment. The conclusion is sweet enough for the Hayes office: husband and wife rediscover the magic of their working relationship, which was always the rock upon which their relationship was built.

The Silent Partner (1978)** With Elliott Gould, Christopher Plummer and Susannah York in the cast, this should have been better. Decent heist plot that devolves into slasher film . Christopher Plummer takes on the dubious mantels of playing a villain in a piss-poor American action film and a cross-dressing murderer.

Possession (2002)** A rather thin adaptation of a great novel, A.S. Byatt's story of two modern academics who disover a previous hidden romance between two Victorian poets. The film lacks the poetry of the novel, which I think is necessary for the story to have its full impact, but the film is full of plenty of jabs at academia as well as burning passions. Gweneth Paltrow and Aaron Ecklund play the young couple, while Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle play the poet/lovers. Tom Hollander has a small but memorable part as does Toby Stephens.

Oppenheimer (2023)** My least favorite half of Barbenheimer still damn good and the physics nerd in me reveled in seeing my dead physicist boyfriends on screen. There are better films about Oppenheimer's life (BBC did a mini series starring Sam Waterston and it's on youtube) but something about the dreamy quality of Nolan's film captures that quantum mystery kinda vibe and put it in a blockbuster package. Cool.

Oscar Wilde (1960)** Preceded the landmark film Crisis by one year, without the world shaking honesty that film managed, around the topic of homosexuality and the law. Both films hinged on blackmail of a gay man but Oscar Wilde is careful to skirt around explicit mentions of sexuality, using tricks like showing the dictionary definition of "sodomy" briefly on camera. More was needed and more was achieved a year later. Ralph Richardson contributes to the courtroom scenes admirably and Morley is a terrific Wilde, who would rather make point for style than save himself from prison.

Turning Point: The Cold War and the Bomb (2024)** Fascinating background to our current situation, most of which is terrifying and now I'm worrying about the bomb again. I took off a star for the sheer number neo-con/Reaganite talking heads in this...

Anselm (2023)*** Wim Wenders stirring mostly visual documentary about Anselm Kiefer, a German artist who has explored his childhood memories of post war Germany in a frank and intimidatingly in your face way, on a massive scale combining sculpture, painting and physical spaces, many of which he has engineered himself. As a middle aged person who feels estranged and terrified to look more deeply into her own childhood, Anselm was something to sit with for two hours.

24 Hour Party People (2002)** Steve Coogan plays Tony Wilson, the Manchester TV personality and club owner who helped launch the careers of Joy Division, New Order and The Happy Mondays. Coogan has a tendency to make all his characters Alan Partridge and this is no exception, but it kind of works? It did more to get me to listen to Joy Division that numerous goth roommates ever could...

Two of Us (1999)*** I can't stop watching this made for VH-1 fanfiction of a movie starring Jared Harris and Aidan Quinn as John Lennon and Paul McCartney, dramatizing a probably apocryphal tale that John and Paul met up in NYC in the 70s when Paul was playing Madison Square Garden. Pure fluff and nonsense. I need it like air.

Remains of the Day (1993)*** Revisiting this old favorite and finding that it's kind of pacey and funny for a Merchant Ivory pic. The movie that made me love Tony Hopkins as an actor, his Stevens is really such a fascinating, ostensibly tragic character and yet there is a weird kind of triumph to living one's life so completely to a schedule and a code, and yet never being to eliminate desire and feeling.

Doubt (2008)*** This is the second Philip Seymour Hoffman movie I've watched in the last few months that has left me utterly haunted. Like The Master, Hoffman creates a villain who charms the audience at the same time you know that he's probably done unforgivable things and is only at the start of a long career of doing unforgivable things. Meryl Streep gives a heavy handed performance (Streep never met a colloquial accent that she didn't wear like a Groucho Marx nose) that certainly gets the point across that unpleasant people usually aren't the bad guys you want them to be. Amy Adams plays a naive young nun who, like the audience, is left wondering what to believe.

Dune (1984)*** Unapologetic Lynch Dune lover here. I love the cheesy acting, the wild tonal shifts, and the attempts to put this sprawling multibook epic in the Star Wars shaped box that the studio wanted him to use. My favorite scene has become Lynch's cameo, he seems so happy just pretending to be a spice miner, in his little spice mining suit in his little unconvincing space ship. I love him and this whole stupid mess. Sorry Frank Herbert.

Dune Part II (2024)*** My prediction is that Villeneuve's probable trilogy will--like so many franchises--peak in the second film. The first part was a slow-moving visual feast, that only hinted at the potential of this cast. Things actually start moving in the plot and Chalamet's Paul does his best to cope. Unlike MacLachlan's avuncular Atreides, who takes being a Messiah as just being another Tuesday of being the Universe's Most Gifted Child, he actually seems conflicted. Zendaya continues to utterly dominate every time she's on screen. Can Channi be the focus of the movie? Please?

[tilbageidanmark]

MOVIES I WATCHED THIS WEEK #206:

9 MORE POST-DOGMA DANISH FILMS:

🍿 I probably seen RIDERS OF JUSTICE 12-15 times already, and I just can't get enough of Anders Thomas Jensen's 2020 brilliant thrill ride. It's an absolutely perfect movie, perfectly-told. The level of nuanced cinematic story-telling here is as good as any movie I've seen. It's about fate and chance, the power of coincidences and healing, about grief and mental health, and a fraught relationship between a father and daughter...

Watching it around now is even better, because it's actually a Christmas fairy tale (although a tale that include PTSD, sodomy, death of a mother, sale of a child (alleged), and intense bloodshed and gang violence.) 10/10 re-watch ♻️.

🍿 The new FAMILIES LIKE OURS which just premiered on Danish TV, is my 6th by Thomas Vinterberg, and his first miniseries. It has a terrific premise: Because of rising sea level, flatland Denmark [whose highest hilltop is 186 meter] is about to be completely flooded, and all its citizens must evacuate to other countries. So the nice, middle-class society which was used to life of civility and leisure, become climate refugees among other European countries, who may or may not be interested to have a new flood of immigrants among them.

Instead of creating over-dramatic situations, Vinterberg concentrates on the interpersonal travails of the members of one extended family, some more interesting than others. Eventually, the 7 hour-long saga becomes a bit too lengthy and kind of stodgy - a condensed 2 hour version would have been so much more effective. 4/10.

🍿 LAST ROUND (1993) was Vinterberg's film school graduation short. Young Thomas Bo Larsen has terminal leukemia, so he parties hard in his last night in town. But it's an unconvincing, nervous, childish effort.

🍿 THE IDIOTS WHO STARTED THE PARTY is a celebration of the Dogma 95 movement, on its 25th anniversary in 2020. Exciting recollections by members of the collective, as well as interviews with my old film professor from the University, Peter Schepelern! (Photos Above).

The 10 "Rules of Chastity" which they defined and enforced were gimmicky and off-putting, and out of the 35 movies made in this style, only a few are worth watching today. But it definitely built a highly-successful 'New Wave', it energised a whole generation of local filmmakers, and it re-established the Danish film-scene into an international powerhouse.

🍿 WHEN DANISH FILM CROSSES THE LINE (2020) is another Denmark Radio documentary about the most controversial Danish films, From Benjamin Christensen's 'Häxan' (which I haven't seen yet) and Asta Nielsen's 'The Abyss', to 'A stranger knocks' and Lars von Trier. Denmark was the first country to legalize pornography in 1969, so there's plenty of sex involved, but also violence, animal abuse, profanity and atheism, sometimes all at once. Among the talking heads, Peter Schepelern again puts things in prospective! [*Female Director*]

🍿 ØDELAND (WASTELAND) (2015), an unusual film school short - not from Copenhagen, but from the the town of Odense on Fyn . A live action doomsday dystopia, similar to 'The Road', very low-budget but fully accomplished. A father and his teenage daughter, among the last survivors, must use extreme caution when they run across a deaf, traumatized boy. Found at random on YouTube, and surprised that the director never broke through.

🍿 Susanne Bier directed 6 of Anders Thomas Jensen's manuscripts (including my all-time favorite 'After the wedding'). OPEN HEARTS (2002) is the only one I haven't seen until now. It's different from his usual fare, being a straight love melodrama with a strong, domestic plot; A driving mother causes an accident that paralyses a young man who's preparing to get married. Mixed-up doctor Mads Mikkelsen, the driver's husband, falls in love with the fiancé of the paralyzed man, and eventually leaves his family for her. It's a small mess.

There's a lot of fawning online, both gay and hetero, over sexy Mads Mikkelsen. This film surely created much of this fawning: he is playing here an ordinary guy, not a hero, who's just deliciously lovable. [*Female Director*]

🍿 Also, two of Mads Mikkelsen's earliest films: In his very first film, CAFÉ HECTOR, Mads has a small cameo, while the main character is played by his real-life brother, actor Lars Mikkelsen. An affected little make-believe story about a social outcast pretending to be Travis Bickle who actually gets to stop and kill a real psychopath with a gun. Surprisingly, this is also one of Anders Thomas Jensen's first works as a writer. 1/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿 THE CARETAKER (1997), a little nightmarish Noir about a man watching a woman with binoculars, sees a murder, maybe not. Some surrealist touches, cockroaches crawling in the ceiling, bloody hand - M'eh.

🍿 The "romantic" comedy ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS (2000), my second by Lone Scherfig. But while 'An Education' was wonderful, this one was unpleasant all the way through. Not only the low-cost, indie, badly lit and noisy vibes, but none of the clumsy, meek and fumbling characters were endearing. There are two abusive parents (who fortunately and separately, die), and especially the main dude, Hal-Finn, is a real asshole but whom everybody tolerate. And they all want to learn Italian, for some reason. Pass! [*Female Director*]

🍿

ROSE HOBART was a 1936 experimental collage film, an early re-purposing of found footage. It comprised mostly from snippets of Rose Hobart, the main actress of 'East of Borneo' which Joseph Cornell, the shy avant-garde artist who made it was obsessed with, making it also an early 'fan-edit'. Salvador Dali disrupted in rage during the premier of this film which he attended, claiming that Cornell stole the idea "from Dali subconscious". Selected for the 'National Film Registry' in 2001.

🍿

4 SHORTS BY GERMAN ANIMATOR VOLKER SCHLECHT:

🍿 THE WAITING: "Ecologist Karen Lips lived for several years in a tiny little shack in Costa Rica to observe frogs. When she left the cloud forest for a short time and returned, all the frogs were gone. She set out to find out what happened to them – and encountered a horrible truth. Mysterious deaths occur all over the planet and have a similar pattern. Why have so many species vanished? And what does it all have to do with us?"

This outstanding 2023 science animation of a real-life crime mystery won a bunch of awards at film festivals. 9/10.

🍿 In KAPUTT (2016), two women who were political prisoners in East Germany describe the horrific conditions of forced labor and abuse in the notorious central prison at Hoheneck. Hard watch. 10/10.

🍿 GERMANIA WURST (2008) is a semi-humorous rundown of Germanic history, from the Holy Roman Empire to the present day. He serves it sliced with bouts of sausage making and lively military march music. Terrific! 8/10.

🍿 NOTHING ELSE (2001), Schlecht's second film, more of a mood piece about tiny gestures on a train ride.

🍿

MORE FROM FREAK OF NATURE RICHARD CONDIE:

🍿 Re-watch♻️: Isn't his 1985 THE BIG SNIT the best Canadian movie ever made? Yes, it is. And why is there a giant Goodyear Tire in one of the rooms? 10/10.

🍿 "Moments ago I had everything - Now there's a cow in my nose - Because I opened the stupid door!"

In LA SALLA (1996) a wacky Italian inventor literally loses his head. So much drugs were used during the creations of this film!

🍿 OH, SURE (1977), a very short short about how to make a fool of yourself, even at your old age. Perfect for me.

🍿 In PIGBIRD (1981), a man smuggles a hybrid animal into the country, only to discover too late that it is covered with some nasty ticks. It was actually a PSA for Canadian Customs. 9/10.

🍿 THE APPRENTICE (1991) is another weird, incomprehensible story set in medieval times. Wordless, it's told only through guttural, cacophonous sound effects.

🍿

THE ONLY GIRL IN THE ORCHESTRA is a new documentary about the first woman whom Leonard Bernstein allowed to play with the all-male New York Philarmonic in 1966, and her illustrious career as a double-bass musician. It features some beautiful music, but the old-time sexist theme is told in the typically pedestrian Netflix style, devoid of air and life. [*Female Director*]

🍿

2 WITH ELEANORA PIENTA:

In PLAISIR (2021) she's a young American seeker who doesn't speak French, but nevertheless comes to the south of France to stay in an art/work commune. It's about the inability to communicate, and not being exactly sure what you know and what you want. Female-focused with a distinct female gaze. [*Female Director*]

🍿 LITTLE CABBAGE is a Southern Gothic of a kind. In 1959 Alabama, a young female composer falls for a black man and goes insane. 1/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿

A BUNCH OF SHORTS:

🍿 My first Popeye cartoon, the 1934 A DREAM WALKING. What a terrific piece of art! Popeye and Bluto fight each other to see who will get to save the sleepwalking Olive from the beams of a high-rise construction site. Absolutely thrilling - 10/10.

🍿 "Shag me kindly...?"

LADY PARTS (2018) is the pilot for the series about this all-girl Muslim punk band in Camden. The musicians are one Halal butcher, one Uber driver, one illustrator who sells her art at the open market, and their Niqāb-clad manager working at cheap ladies' lingerie booth. [*Female Director*]

🍿 "Give the kid a bagel!"

A miracle in Brooklyn, and a holiday classic: In 2007 Ken Russell's was challenged to make a film so offensive that even he would want it banned, so he made the absurdist A KITTEN FOR HITLER, with an Oompa-Lumpa playing a little Jewish boy with a swastika tattoo. As much as I hated 'Jo Jo Rabbit'...

🍿 MERMAID (1997), my 5th Pagan/Christian Russian fairy-tale by animator Aleksandr Petrov, done in his recognized style: Pastel oils applied by hand unto glass plates, like moving paintings, making his films seem like blurred dreams.

🍿 When I lived in Norway in 1974, there was a little toddler in the farm, and her favorite TV-characters were the classic KARIUS OG BAKTUS. These two puppets were tooth bacteria that lived in some boy's mouth, and destroyed his teeth. I can see how traumatic was this 1955 horror cartoon for little kids.

🍿 I only watched the Israeli love story SASSI KESHET NEVER EATS FALAFEL (2013) because it had 'Falafel' in its title. It's a stupid reason - just like this film. 1/10.

🍿 "Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty details." Don Herzfeldt's WORLD OF TOMORROW, my second favorite movie of all times. I should start watching it every week... 11/10.

🍿

When I saw the first episode of STONER CATS, I wrote: "I like cats and I like 'stones, so (this) was exactly for me. 5 cats gets stoned when their old lady shares her medicinal delivery stuff with them." But now that I saw the whole first season, I say: Screw that! It was a one joke stretched into an unwatchable lame, thin slop soup. 1/10.  

🍿

(ALL MY FILM REVIEWS - HERE).

[juicydangler]

for your halloween playlist consideration:

The Man with X-Ray Eyes by Bauhaus, inspired by the 1963 science fiction horror film X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes

I Was a Teenage Werewolf by The Cramps, inspired by the 1957 science fiction horror film of the same name

Lotion by the Greenskeepers, inspired by the 1991 psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs

How Do by Sneaker Pimps, inspired by the 1973 folk horror film The Wicker Man

Nosferatu by Blue Öyster Cult, inspired by the 1922 silent horror film of the same name

Frankenstein by Rock Bottom, inspired by the 1931 horror film of the same name

Frankenstein Rock by Eddie Thomas, about taking a date to see horror movies

Nasty by The Damned, about horror movies on VHS

Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus, about legendary actor Bela Lugosi not being alive anymore

Boris the Spider by The Who, about a spider called Boris

October Funeral by The Cemetery Boys, about a funeral in October

Cemetery Gates by Pantera, about the struggle to let go when someone you love dies

Cemetery Girl by ICP, about the struggle to let go when someone you love dies

Dig Up Her Bones by the Misfits, about the struggle to let go when someone you love dies

L.I.C.H. by Ginny Di, about a lady who doesn't want to die

Party In the Graveyard by Ghost Town, about knowing you will die and having a silly little time with it

thegraveneverfeltsonice by aWannabe, about knowing you will die and lowkey looking forward to it

Spirit Got Lost by Mental As Anything, about being dead and ambivalent about it

Zombie Crew by Send More Paramedics, about being a punk rock zombie

Nobody Likes You (When You're Dead) by Zombina and the Skeletones, about the social challenges faced by a young zombie

Re: Your Brains by Jonathan Coulton, about the social challenges faced by a white collar zombie

Mad Professor by ICP, about making friends

Ur-Ur-Enkel von Frankenstein by Frank Zander, about making friends (in German)

Hex So Heavy by Bambie Thug, about revenge, and how two enemies used to be friends

Nightmare by Brainbug, spooky techno instrumental

The Dead Eyes Opened (1994 remix) by Severed Heads, inspired by reporting around the real life 1924 murder of Emily Kaye

A Forest by The Cure, about a spooky forest

The Greatest Show Unearthed by Creature Feature, about a spooky carnival

Scaretale by Nightwish, about a spooky fairy tale carnival

Bury a Friend by Billie Eilish, about the POV of the monster under the bed

Boogie Woogie Wu by ICP, about the POV of the boogie man

Sunglasses at Night by Corey Hart, not about vampires (unless sound engineers count) but really kinda sounds like it is

I.C.U. by Caligula, about vampires

Night of the Vampire by Roky Erickson and The Aliens, about vampires

Transylvanian Concubine by Rasputina, about vampires

Vampires In Love by Marvelous 3, about vampires (in love)

Danse Vampyr by Inkubus Sukkubus, about vampires (horny)

We Suck Young Blood by Radiohead, about vampires but only as a metaphor

Teeth by Lady Gaga, about sex but sounds like it could be about vampires or maybe werewolves

Bare Your Teeth by Ashbury Heights, about going feral werewolf style

The Ones by Aesthetic Perfection, about nightmare creatures stealing teeth

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by the Damned, inspired by the 1886 Gothic novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Nevermore by The Cemetery Boys, about the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe

Graveyard Picnic by Voltaire, about the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe

Mr Raven by MC Lars, based on the poem The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Legs and Tarpaulin by Cinema Strange, inspired by the story King Pest by Edgar Allan Poe

Pet Sematary by Ramones, written during a visit to the home of Stephen King and inspired by his 1983 horror novel of the same name

Cemetery by Silverchair, about ennui

Living Dead by Marina and the Diamonds, about ennui

Living Dead by Discordia, about being a disenfranchised young person (I think)

Black No. 1 by Type O Negative, about a goth gf

Release the Bats by The Birthday Party, about a goth gf

Tombstone by Peaches, probably about sex somehow lbr it's Peaches, but sounds like it could be about a goth gf

Every Day Is Halloween by Ministry, about being a goth

I Can Tell You Shop At Hot(t) Topic by The Gothsicles, about seeing a goth

You've Been GOTH BLOCKED by Stevie Ryan, about seeing too many goths

Mephiskapheles by Mephiskapheles, about what if Satan played ska

Des Satans liebster Klingelton by Soko Friedhof, about what if Satan sold ringtones (in German)

Janet's Potato Salad by Cupcake Television, about what if Satanists held a potluck

Satan by Orbital and Kirk Hammett, not about anything just a guy yelling Satan a lot (it's a sample of Gibby Haynes of Butthole Surfers from the song Sweat Loaf but let's not get bogged down in details here)

Creep in the Cellar by Butthole Surfers, about a weird scary guy

Abwärts-Nick Nack Man Now by Frank Zander, about being a weird scary guy (in German)

Gravedigger by MXMS, about being a weird scary girl

Innsmouth by Aural Vampire, about being a weird scary girl (in Japanese)

When You're Evil by Voltaire, about being an evil guy and having a silly little time with it

Skullcrusher Mountain by Jonathan Coulton, about being an evil guy and having an unrequited crush

Frankenstein Rock by Peter Thomas (no relation), about a scary guy called Frankenstein and the creepy parties he throws (in German)

HAUNT ME by Johnny Goth, about hoping to be haunted, sexually

Ghost of a Texas Ladies' Man by Concrete Blonde, about being haunted, sexually

Ghost Story by Charming Disaster, about being haunted, sexually

One Second Ghost by The Gothsicles, about retro video gaming

Flying Saucer Boogie by Eddie Cletro, about UFO sightings

Unmarked Helicopters by Soul Coughing (from The X-Files S04E18), about UFO conspiracies

Can't Get Abducted E.T. Don't Dig Me Blues by Bruce Brown, about getting swerved by aliens

Bugs by Pearl Jam, about being overwhelmed by bugs

March of the Sinister Ducks by The Sinister Ducks, about how ducks are sinister

the entire 1998 album Hellbilly Deluxe: 13 Tales of Cadaverous Cavorting Inside the Spookshow International by Rob Zombie

literally anything other than Zombie by the Cranberries

[ctheathy]

Communities

• = Platonic and/or Pet-like

• = Romantic

• = Suggestive

• = NSFW

Vocaloid [+AUs from any song. Example: The Court Jester!Fukase] :

Hatsune Miku ,, Kagamine Rin ,, Kagamine Len ,, Luka Megurine ,, Meiko ,, Kaito ,, Gumi ,, Fukase ,, Utatane Piko ,, Flower ,, Oliver

The Evillious Chronicles [Daughter/Servant of Evil] AU:

Riliane ‘Rin’ Lucifen d'Autriche ,, Alexiel Lucifen d'Autriche // Allen ‘Len’ Avadonia ,, Kyle ‘Kaito’ Marlon ,, Michaela ‘Miku’ ,, Germaine ‘Meiko’ Avadonia

Baldi's Basics :

Baldi ,, Arts and Crafters ,, Playtime • ,, 1st Prize ,, It's a Bully ,, Principal of the Thing ,, Gotta Sweep ,, Cloudy Copter ,, Beans ,, Chalkles ,, Dr. Reflex ,, Mrs. Pomp ,, The Test ,, Null // filename2 ,, 0th Prize ,, PlaceFace ,, Bladder ,, Johnny

The Powerpuff Girls :

Monster Hunter Stories :

Villains:

Mojo Jojo ,, Brick ,, Boomer ,, Butch ,, Princess Morbucks ,, Fuzzy Lumpkins ,, The Amoeba Boys ,, The Gangreen Gang ,, Sedusa (+Ima GoodLady) ,, Rainbow the Clown//Mr. Mime ,, Abracadaver ,, The Sandman ,, The Gnome ,, Dick Hardly ,, Knock-off Powerpuff Girls ,, Him (+MIH) ,, Owlie Boop ,, Allegro ,, Chelsea ,, Sapna Nehru ,, Packrat ,, The Powerpunk Girls [Berserk, Brat and Brute] ,, The Rowdyright Boys [Blake, Bash and Breaker] ,, The RowdyRouge Girls [Bellicose, Bedlam and Bruiser]

Lute ,, Cheval ,, Lilia ,, Mille ,, Hyoro ,, Genie ,, Itsy-Bits ,, Dr. Manelger • ,, Debli ,, Avinia // Ayuria ,, Gale ,, Kayna ,, Ena ,, Alwin ,, Zellard ,, Reverto ,, Kyle ,, Yoomlana

South Park + Hellpark :

Corpse Party :

Stan Marsh ,, Kyle Broflovski ,, Craig Tucker ,, Clyde Donovan ,, Tweek Tweak ,, Thomas ,, Jacob Hallery ,, Cosette ,, Philip “Pip” Pirrip/Pirrup ,, Damien Thorn ,, Estella Havisham

Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun :

Satoshi Mochida ,, Yuka Mochida • ,, Seiko Shinohara ,, Naomi Nakashima ,, Ayumi Shinozaki ,, Yoshiki Kishinuma ,, Mayu Suzumoto ,, Sakutaro Morishige ,, Yuuya Kizami ,, Naho Saenoki ,, Sachiko Shinozaki •

Hanako // Amane Yugi ,, Yashiro Nene ,, Kou Minamoto ,, Teru Minamoto ,, Mitsuba Sousuke ,, Aoi Akane ,, Akane Aoi ,, Sakura Nanamine ,, Natsuhiko Hyuga ,, Tsukasa Yugi ,, Tsuchigomori Ryūjirou

The Koopalings + DiC cartoons :

Larry Koopa + Cheatsy Koopa

Morton Jr. Koopa + Big Mouth Koopa

Ludwig Von Koopa + Kooky Von Koopa

Wendy O Koopa + Kootie Pie Koopa

Lemmy Koopa + Hip Koopa •

Care Bears + Movies :

Iggy Koopa + Hop Koopa •

Roy Koopa + Bully Koopa

The Care Bears • ,, Care Bear Cousins • ,, Auntie Freeze • ,, Professor Coldheart • ,, Frostbite ,, No Heart ,, Beastly ,, Shriekeline “Shreeky” No Heart

The Care Bears: Adventure in Wonderland

Alice ,, White Rabbit ,, Caterpillar ,, Cheshire Cat ,, Mad Hatter ,, Stan the Jabberwocky ,, Princess of Wonderland ,, The Wizard of Wonderland ,, Dim & Dum

Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation

Dark Heart ,, Christy ,, Dawn ,, John

Happy Tree Friends :

Cuddles ,, Giggles ,, Toothy ,, Lumpy ,, Petunia ,, Handy ,, Nutty ,, Sniffles ,, Pop ,, Cub • ,, Flaky ,,The Mole ,, Disco Bear ,, Russell ,, Lifty & Shifty ,, Mime ,, Cro Marmot ,, Flippy + Fliqpy ,, Ka Boom ,, Splendid ,, Splendon’t ,, Lammy ,, Mr. Pickles,, Truffles ,, FatKat

Chikn Nuggit :

Chikn Nuggit [+ Demigod form] ,, Cheezborger ‘Chee’ ,, Iscream ,, Slushi ,, Fwench Fwy ,, Sody Pop • ,, Sassparilla ,, Cofi ,, Hawt Saus ,, Bezel ,, Milkshek ,, Old Pea ,, Katsup and Meowstard • ,, Beta!Fwench Fwy ,, Beta!Slushi ,, Beta!Hawt Saus

Angry Birds :

Red ,, Chuck ,, Bomb ,, Matilda ,, The Blues ,, Jake, Jay, Jim • ,, Bubbles ,, Hal ,, Silver ,, Ice Bird ,, Terence ,, Corporal Pig ,, Foreman Pig ,, Chef Pig ,, King Pig ,, Prince Porky ,, Stella ,, Poppy ,, Luca • ,, Willow ,, Dahlia ,, Gale ,, Handsome Pig ,, Artist Pig

Littlest Pet Shop :

Zoe Trent ,, Russell Ferguson [+Cyril McFlip] ,, Minka Mark ,, Penny Ling ,, Vinnie Terrio ,, Sunil Nevla ,, Pepper Clark ,, Buttercream Sundae ,, Sugar Sprinkles ,, Mitzi ,, Shahrukh ,, Madame Pom ,, Delilah Barnsley ,, Scout Kerry ,, Sweet Cheeks ,, Cashmere Biskit ,, Velvet Biskit ,, Blythe Baxter,, Brittany Biskit,, Whittany Biskit

My Little Pony :

G1 AU: >>>

Twilight Sparkle ,, Rarity ,, Pinkie Pie ,, Apple Jack ,, Fluttershy ,, Rainbow Dash ,, Spike ,, Sunset Shimmer ,, Starlight Glimmer ,, Trixie Lulamoon ,, Moondancer ,, Coco Pommel ,, Coloratura ‘Rara’ ,, Maud Pie ,, Limestone Pie ,, Marble Pie ,, Flutterbat ,, Chimera ,, The Diamond Dogs [Rover, Fido, and Spot] ,, Discord ,, Lord Tirek ,, Flurry Heart • ,, Cozy Glow • ,, Snowdrop • ,, Nightmare Moon ,, Daybreaker ,, Queen Chrysalis ,, Unreformed Changelings ,, Thorax ,, Pharynx ,, King Sombra ,, Tantabus ,, The Sphinx ,, Pony of Shadows // Stygian ,, Grogar

Megan Williams ,, Spike • ,, Danny Williams ,, Molly Williams • ,, The Moochick ,, The Bushwoolies ,, The Grundles ,, Sludge ,, G'nash ,, Dinah • ,, Squire Alonzo ,, The Crabnasties ,, Mayor Camembert ,, The Sheriff of Muensterville ,, Pluma [+The Ghost of Paradise Estate] ,, Woebegone ,, Mayve • ,, His Elevated Eminence •

Applejack ,, Bow Tie ,, Ember • ,, Firefly ,, Glory ,, Medley ,, Moondancer ,, Twilight ,, Heart Throb ,, Lickety-Split ,, Posey ,, Gusty ,, Buttons ,, Fizzy ,, Ribbon ,, Galaxy ,, Mimic ,, Gingerbread ,, Magic Star ,, Shady ,, Cherries Jubilee ,, Cupcake ,, Truly ,, Sweet Stuff ,, Wind Whistler ,, North Star ,, Paradise ,, Surprise ,, Lofty ,, Locket ,, Whizzer ,, Masquerade ,, Princess Tiffany ,, Princess Primrose ,, Princess Royal Blue ,, Princess Serena ,, Princess Sparkle ,, Princess Starburst ,, Baby Lickety-Split • ,, Morning Glory ,, Rosedust ,, Honeysuckle ,, Peach Blossom ,, Lily ,, Forget-Me-Not

Scorpan ,, Tirac ,, Beezen ,, The Duchess ,, Knight Shade ,, Zeb ,, Erebus ,, King Charlatan ,, Niblick ,, Draggle ,, Reeka ,, Hydia • ,, Ahgg ,, The Smooze • ,, Squirk ,, Crank ,, The Flores ,, Jewel Wizard ,, Lavan [+crystallized form] ,, Sting ,, Queen Bumble ,, Princess Porcina ,, The Raptorians ,, Crunch the Rockdog ,, The Sqree ,, Somnambula ,, Kyrie ,, Bray ,, Grogar

Seito Kure ,, Boron Makuroshi ,, Toru Garakuta ,, Haruma Neko

Popee The Performer + Chinchikurin :

Popee Paraphone // Hanabishi Kuruwaya ,, Kedamono // Keita Ookami ,, Papi ,, Marifa ,, Eepop (mirror Popee) ,, Onomadek (mirror Kedamono) ,, Nightmare Popee ,, Docter Popee [Phaeton & Me]

The Amazing Digital Circus :

Pomni ,, Caine ,, Bubble • ,, Ragatha ,, Jax ,, Zooble ,, Gangle ,, Kinger ,, Gloink Queen • ,, Dr. Football ,, Moon ,, Sun ,, Paine ,, The Bone Pastor,, Princess Loolilalu ,, Gummigoo ,, The Fudge • ,, Chad ,, Max

Abstracted characters [Digital+abstracted form] :

Kaufmo ,, Queenie ,, Rett (yellow dog) ,, Wriggle (worm on a string) ,, Doz (purple dinosaur) ,, Blonk (pink cyclops) ,, Moppsy (mouse sockpuppet) ,, Yucko (yellow rabbit-like creature) ,, Bizz (polka-dot covered clown)

Fan-made names by Sunnie_Daies on Reddit

Lego Monkie Kid : ••••

MK ‘Monkie Kid’ ,, Mei Dragon ,, Tang ,, Pigsy ,, Sandy ,, Mo • ,, Red Son ,, Demon Bull King ,, Princess Iron Fan ,, Bull clones • ,, Lady Bone Demon (+disguise form) ,, ‘Bai He’ • [little girl] ,, Spider Queen ,, Huntsman ,, Goliath [strong spider] ,, Sun Wukong ‘Monkey King’ ,, Six-Eared Macaque ,, Syntax (+pre-corrupted/human form) ,, The Mayor (+Chief of War) ,, Yin & Jin ,, Guardians of Knowledge • ,, Lion Guardians • ,, Demon Accountant ,, Ne'Zha/Third Lotus prince ,, Erlang Shen ,, Scorpion Queen ,, Azure Lion ,, Peng ,, Yellowtusk ,, Chang'e ,, Tang Sanzang ,, Zhu Bajie ,, Sha Wujing ,, Ao Lie ,, Ao Guang/Dragon of the East ,, Master Subodhi ,, Dragon Attendant ,, Kui Mulang ,, MK [party clone] ,, MK [artist clone] ,, MK [delivery clone] (he won't be obese here...) ,, MK [backup clone] ,, Ink MK ,, Store Owner ,, Li Jing ,, Xiangliu ‘Nine-Headed Demon’ ,, 100-Eyed Demon ,, Nüwa

Ferdinand :

Ferdinand (+young form) ,, Paco ,, Nina • ,, Juan ,, Valiente (+young form) ,, Guapo (+young form) ,, Bones (+young form) ,, Lupe ,, Angus ,, Maquina ,, Una ,, Dos ,, Cuatro ,, Hans ,, Greta ,, Klaus ,, El Primero

Disney movies (will accept all characters of said movie) :

Cuz it's too many characters to write down damn it

19s — Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ,, The Chronicles of Prydain ,, Bambi ,, Cinderella ,, Alice in Wonderland ,, 101 Dalmatians ,, Peter Pan ,, Sleeping Beauty ,, The Fox and the Hound ,, The Little Mermaid ,, Beauty and the Beast ,, Aladdin ,, Hercules ,, The Lion King ,, Pocahontas ,, The Rescuers Down Under ,, The Hunchback of Notre Dame [fuck Frollo up for me, will you dear? <3] ,, Mulan ,, Tarzan

2000s — The Emperor's New Groove ,, Monsters, Inc. ,, Finding Nemo ,, Pirates of the Caribbean ,, Brother Bear ,, The Incredibles ,, Howl's Moving Castle ,, Ratatouille ,, Up ,, The Princess and The Frog

2010s/2020s — Tangled ,, Frozen ,, Brave ,, Maleficent ,, Inside Out ,, Zootopia ,, Finding Dory ,, Moana/Vaiana ,, Coco ,, Raya and the Last Dragon ,, Luca ,, Encanto

Misc. :

- Reisuke Houjou • [Mirai Nikki // Future Diary]

- Rococo [Omori]

- Tobey McCallister [WordGirl]

- Dr. Sylvester Ashling [Epithet Erased]

- Ahmanet (+alive Ahmanet) ••• [The Mummy]

- The Lamb // Lambert [Cult of the Lamb]

- ENA (+ _____ form) [Joel G]

- Sun [Two Face ,, GH'S Animation]

- Blommy // Bloomy [Fluffffpillow's oc]

- Nabbit [Super Mario Bros]

- Marx (+Marx Soul) [Kirby Milky Way Wishes]

- Manga Marx [Kirby of the Stars! Moretsu Pupupu Hour!]

- Taranza [Kirby: Triple Deluxe]

- Scooby-Doo [Velma Meets the Original Velma]

- Evil [I Eat Pasta For Breakfast by Chibi-Works]

- Eloise Sarah Bellrose ‘Stripes’ [I Eat Pasta For Breakfast by Chibi-Works]

- Patchy the Pirate // Flying Dutchman [SpongeBob SquarePants | The Time Travelling Ghost Pirate Theory] •••

° Rio Ranger (+Rio Laizer)/Toto Noel •••• ,, Sei Satou ••• [Your Turn To Die]

° Monaca Towa ,, Nagisa Shingetsu ,, Jataro Kemuri ,, Masaru Daimon ,, Kotoko Utsugi [Danganronpa // Warriors of Hope]

° Isaac “Zack” Foster ,, Rachel Gardner ,, Edward “Eddie” Mason ,, Daniel “Danny” Dickens ,, Catherine “Cathy” Ward ,, Abraham Grey [Angels of Death // Satsuriku no Tenshi]

° Satou Matsuzaka ,, Shio Kōbe • ,, Asahi Kōbe ,, Taiyō Mitsuboshi ,, Sumire Miyazaki ,, Mitori Tajima ,, Shōko Hida ,, Satou’s aunt • [Happy Sugar Life]

° Eun Sian ,, Chae Yul •••• ,, Chae Yuri ,, Hyun Yujin ,, Min Hyunee [Secret Alliance]

° Aoi Mukou ,, Miyuki Sone ,, Haru [You and Me and He // Totono]

° The Angel •••• - The Demon •••• - The small Demon • [Avogado6]

° Justine Florbelle ,, Aloïs Racine (+pre-torture, +mid-torture) ,, Basile Giroux (+pre-torture, +mid-torture) ,, Malo de Vigny (+pre-torture +mid-torture) [Amnesia: Justine] ••••

° Rush ,, Hide ,, Seek ,, Eyes ,, Halt ,, Ambush ,, Screech • ,, Figure ,, Jack ,, Glitch [Roblox Doors]

° Sharko ,, Marina ,, Zig ,, Bernie ,, The Ghastly Ghost ,, Manic Mermaid ,, King Neptune [Zig & Sharko]

° Oh ,, Gratuity ‘Tip’ Tucci • ,, Pig • ,, Gorg ,, Kyle ,, Captain Smek ,, Boov [Home 2015]

° Pound (+Monstar form) ,, Bang (+Monstar form) ,, Nawt (+Monstar form) ,, Bupkus (+Monstar form) ,, Blanko (+Monstar form) [Space Jam // The Nerdlucks]

° Charmander ,, Squirtle (+Wartortle) ,, Bulbasaur ,, Leader Caterpie ,, Whiskers ,, Gastly • ,, Haunter ,, Flareon ,, Chimchar ,, Turtwig ,, Abomasnow [Starter Squad by Shippiddge]

° Kitsunami the Fennec [Sonic the Hedgehog]

- [Any Tails variant will do tbh] ➴

OG Miles ‘‘Tails” Prower • movie Tails • boom Tails • Anti-Miles • SH/TSAA Tails • (There's something about Knuckles) Tails • Blacksmith • (Tails’ Dark Diary) Tails • WWMH Miles • Nine • Mangey • Sails • Tails.EXE • starved Tails • Inner Tails • Ali Baba • Tailsop • Tails-Zilla • Tails Doll • Metal Tails • Luther • (Tails Gets Trolled) Tails • AOSTH Tails • Zails the Zone Cop • pinball/brainwashed Tails • Requital (The Sonic Oddities) • (Sonic Prime) Tails • (The Ankh) Hologram Tails/Hollow • (Operation Crimson) Tails • (Operation Crimson) Flor • Tails emo AU (Kayla Green)

May add more in the future ...

[x-heesy]

Who's that knockin' on my door?

What ya tryin' to bother me for?

Don't want none of what you're sellin'

I know that you're rotten to the core

So my 44 mags, about to put one in your melon

Last night one of my neighbors

Got held up for the paper

But the popos never came

They won't do you any favors

Say your prayers

So many layers

Some things will never change

Ha ha ha

This afternoon got caught up at a red light

In the line of sight

Of these motherfuckers from the other night

Seems like the right time

Pullin' out his life line

Anytime you threaten mine

Gonna be a fight, you see

See I'm numb just lookin'

For a reason for my finger

To be squeezin' on the trigger

Do another killin' season

One gun, two gun, three guns, four

So many guns keep on runnin' out the store

Pop goes the weapon

You better keep on steppin'

Pop, pop goes the weapon

Pop, pop, ha ha ha ha

Pop, pop goes the weapon

You better keep on steppin'

Pop, pop goes the weapon

Pop, pop, ha ha ha

Who's that knockin' on my door?

Who's that knockin' on my door?

Who's that knockin' on my door?

Who's that knockin' on my door?

Ha ha ha

Feelin' my soul leave my body

La dee da dee

Somebody got me

I don't even know his name

Started fightin' at a party

No karate

Hammers droppin'

But the popos never came

Lightheaded and I'm dizzy

My vision fuzzy

I get the feelin'

It's the end of the game

I'm on the television, talk of me, ask who was he

'Cause they don't love me

That's when the fuckin' popos came

Pop goes the weapon

You better keep on steppin'

Pop, pop goes the weapon

Pop, pop, ha ha ha ha

Pop, pop goes the weapon

You better keep on steppin'

Pop, pop goes the weapon

Pop, pop, ha ha ha

Yeah, pop goes the weapon

You better keep on steppin'

Pop, pop goes the weapon

Pop, pop goes the weapon

Pop goes the weapon

You better keep on steppin'

Pop, pop goes the weapon

Pop, pop, ha ha ha

Who's that knockin' on my door?

Who's that knockin' on my door?

Who's that knockin' on my door?

Who's that knockin' on my door?

Quelle: LyricFind

Songwriter: Brad J Wilk / Carlton Douglas Ridenhour / Lord Aswod / Louis Freese / Thomas B Morello / Timothy Commerford

Songtext von Pop Goes The Weapon © BMG Rights Management, Unison Rights S.L., Wixen Music Publishing

https://www.mediafire.com/file/e5ptgcjpjs7ixlc/TumblrPlus.apk/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/8r3ttiuh6rpk8k4/TumblrPlus_clone.apk/file

Pop Goes The Weapon by Prophets Of Rage 😤

[mariacallous]

Germany remains a central focus of Russian disinformation efforts, and Kremlin-backed campaigns continue to grow in scope and intensity.

That was the warning that senior security officials and lawmakers issued this week during a public session of the German parliament's committee responsible for overseeing the country's intelligence agencies.

"We have long recognized the threat to Germany from foreign influence and hybrid warfare, especially from Russia," said Konstantin von Notz, a Green Party lawmaker and the committee's chairman.

"However, we are now witnessing a new level of intensity, and this development is deeply worrying for all of us."

Germany perceived 'as an enemy' by the Kremlin

Heads of Germany's intelligence services echoed von Notz's sentiments.

As Germany has emerged as one of the staunchest supporters of Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, the Kremlin has increasingly perceived Germany "as an enemy" and treated it as one, said Bruno Kahl, president of Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).

Kahl explained that Russian President Vladimir Putin has long waged a "hybrid war" against countries in the West to "create a new world order." To achieve this end, Putin is using Russia's secret service agencies "as the spearhead in the fight against the West, with a state mandate, with all the means at their disposal, without legal restrictions and, above all, without any conscience."

This has led to a "dramatic increase in the number and quality of cyberattacks by Russian state actors and their proxies," Kahl added.

At the same time, cyberattacks are just one method that Russia is using to assert its influence. 

Thomas Haldenwang, president of Germany's Federal domestic intelligence agency, warned of "influence operations" to spread pro-Russian disinformation: coordinated efforts to sway public opinion that blend cyber activities with the spread of disinformation.

He cited the example of one such campaign, dubbed "Doppelgänger," which was recently uncovered and involved cloned websites, fabricated articles, and misleading social media posts that mimicked established European media outlets to push pro-Russian narratives.

Growing influence of pro-Russian voices

Researchers say the majority of pro-Kremlin disinformation campaigns targeting German audiences have one of three objectives, researchers say: weakening support for Ukraine, tarnishing NATO's image or amplifying pro-Russian voices across Germany.

"We see that this strategy is gradually achieving its goals, and the public debate in Germany is increasingly shifting in a direction that serves the Kremlin's interests," said Felix Kartte, a political analyst and senior fellow at Germany's Mercator Foundation.

"Two parties that represent pro-Kremlin positions, the AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, are now also getting significant attention in traditional media," he told DW. Both the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) party and the left-wing nationalist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) achieved record results in recent state elections.

How to combat Russian influence

So far, Germany has failed to develop "a comprehensive government strategy that recognizes, analyzes and effectively counteracts the campaigns" launched by Russia, Kartte said.

He stressed that such a strategy to counter Russian influence operations would need to address the issue on multiple levels.

"This would include better regulation of online platforms, strengthening independent media — especially local journalism — and better analysis of the financial support of prominent pro-Kremlin figures in Germanyby security and intelligence agencies," he said.

[ancestorsalive]

Image: ABORIGINAL KILNS in the Murray Darling by William Blandowski

Women carrying, preparing and cooking 'Bulrush', Cumbungi, GUMBUNG (Wemba Wemba) BOURT-DEET (Wurundjeri) roots in the plains area of the Lower Murray River. From William Blandowski's expedition to the lower Murray between 1856 and 1857 (Central Murray Vic/NSW).

The women collected the roots in shallow swamps between January and March as a staple vegetable food throughout the high summer period. The small secondary roots are taken off, then the bigger roots are tied into bundles and put onto heated in earth and clay kilns and roasted for 2-3 hours.

Johann Wilhelm Theodor Ludwig von Blandowski (1822-1878), was a Polish born German explorer and zoologist. He is most known for his exploration of the Murray and Darling Region aided by a German naturalist, Gerard Krefft, illustrating animals, plants and birds. He demonstrated an interest in the activities of First Nations people with his numerous illustrations.

There was fallout between Blandowski and some members of Philosophical Institute after the Murray Expedition so he decided to name a couple of fish species to insult two of them - the two species documented descriptions were as follows, 'A slippery fish. Lives in the mud. Is of a violent bluish colour on the belly. The whole upper surface is of a dirty olivish-green colour, with numerous irregular dark patches' and the other: 'A fish easily recognized by its low forehead, big belly and sharp spine.'

This created bitterness and ill-feeling among some members of the Institute Council but Blandowski refused to withdraw the descriptions or the paper in which they appeared, and was quickly censured by the council. The insulted parties attempted to have him expelled from the institute, but eventually withdrew themselves when they could not obtain the required two-thirds majority of votes (quorum).

Blandowski remained active in the Philosophical Institute for the next three years, participating in the Exploration Committee that organised the Burke and Wills expedition. He felt strongly that Victorians should be actively involved in exploring Australia.

Blandowski returned to Europe with his sketches of First Nations people in 1859 and believed to be complaining of his treatment in Australia by the colonial scientific community.

MORE IMAGES HERE: (W Blandowski Google) https://bit.ly/3lN05Hj

FURTHER READING:

Wikipedia, William Blandowski

Darragh, Thomas Alwynne (2009), William Blandowski : a frustrated life

Harry Allen, William Bladowski's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia

Science and the making of Victoria – Philosophical Institute of Victoria, p. 21–22. Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre and The - Royal Society of Victoria.

Blandowski, William (1822-1878), Trove

William Blandowski Biography: https://goo.gl/8HWrFP More Blandowski illustrations: https://goo.gl/J2kWGX Publication: https://goo.gl/6e3VR9 (out of print but also available in Libraries and secondhand copies on ebay etc) Article Source: With thanks from the Sovereign Union FB page: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=898359955664408&set=pb.100064712347523.-2207520000

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Okay things are going a little too fast right now with a response is about project 2025,

First about Biden I saw this post that was saying that project 2025 is already here and Biden is already moving those goals and you did criticized Biden for being an enemy to LGBT+ by radicalizing him and I kind of got the impression that he shouldn't explicitly support the movement.

https://www.tumblr.com/decolonize-the-left/745588100726734848/i-saw-your-post-about-the-leopards-eating-faces

Secondly I kind of felt the same way with it not being talked about anywhere. Not even like popular people that like covers politics at times don't even bring it up like not even as like an offhanded comment.

3rd verify this a little bit more there are people that kind of sounds like they support it and is that that people from Trump's administration like Jonathan Berry; Ben Carson; Ken Cuccinelli; Rick Dearborn; Thomas Gilman; Mandy Gunasekara; Gene Hamilton; Christopher Miller; Bernard McNamee; Stephen Moore; Mora Namdar; Peter Navarro; William Perry Pendley; Diana Furchtgott-Roth; Kiron Skinner; Roger Severino; Hans von Spakovsky; Brooks Tucker; Russell Vought; and Paul Winfree support it.

Yeaaaaah a racist they/them with a cashapp link in their bio is exactly the kind of outrage hustler I'd expect to be propping up something like Project 2025. That's exactly why it's bullshit. Nobody but these people are talking about it. They're the QAnon of the left.

So I'm going to roll your previous question about Biden (now that I know what you meant) in with your question about Trump, since my answer is the same in both cases. So here we go. Project 2025 is a very detailed proposal that touches on literally every single aspect of politics. Just by the law of averages, you're going to find politicians in every party doing something outlined on the Project 2025 website solely because there's so much there. And similarly, you're going to find a lot of good ideas and a lot of bad ideas solely because there are so many ideas and proposals presented. There are hundreds of pages of PDFs on that site. I have not read them all, not even close. But I did randomly skim to get an idea of what they're putting out there, and there's a lot of common sense stuff in there. Like shrinking the bureaucracy and dismantling Homeland Security entirely. There's stuff about eliminating security flaws in certain government offices and ending the department of education and putting the states back in charge of their own schools. Most of these things I'm reading with my random skim are pretty mainstream modern conservative/libertarian positions. Again, I'm not reading the whole thing, and I won't because I'm not insane, but I'm not seeing anything in what I'm reading, or in the headlines of each different chapter, that warrants the kind of pearl clutching panic the fringe left seems to have for this thing.

As for the endorsements, the site has a list of 100 organizations that they claim support the Project, but they link to no statements or even to the organizations themselves, so I have no idea how legit the endorsements are or where you're getting your info about the people you listed above. I'm going to guess it's from a left wing website unless you personally went out and found statements from these people supporting the Project, and I'm gonna tell you right now, if you did get it from a far left website I'm just going to assume they're lying, just like I'm going to assume they're lying about everything they're saying about Project 2025 since that's what sites like that tend to do. Lie to keep people scared, keep the clicks coming, and keep those cashapp transfers going strong.