#author:petronius

[d3mok]

Musican Interlude No. 13 - “Napoleon Crossing the Rhine”

[d3mok]

“And that comment, ‘You did what you had to do,’ just drives me insane. ’Cause is that what God’s gonna say? ‘You did what you had to do. Good Job.’ Punch you on the shoulder and say, ‘welcome to Heaven.’ You know? I don’t think so.“

[d3mok]

The problem for the staunch defenders of Western values is that each and every one of us possesses this capacity for evil – it's implicit in having an ego at all; so when the demonstrators stood in the Place de la Republique holding placards that read "JE SUIS CHARLIE", they might just as well have held ones reading: "NOUS SOMMES LES TERRORISTES".

[d3mok]

There is no such thing as America

by Peter Bichsel

translated from the German by M. Schuller

  Let me tell you the story of a man I once met, a man who told me a story. As I said to him many times, I don’t believe a word of his tale. ‘You’re a liar,’ is what I told him, ‘you tell fibs, and you’re a fantasist. A fraud.’

My words made no impression. He continued to tell me his story, in a quieter voice, until I started to shout at him: ‘You hack! You swindler! You phony!’ And when I was done, he just looked at me, smiled sadly, and shook his head with disappointment. And then he said, in voice barely above a whisper, and so softly that it almost made me feel ashamed, ‘there is no such thing as America.’ I felt I had to make it up to him, and promised to do so by writing down what he told me:

It begins five hundred years ago, at the court of a King. The King of Spain, in fact. An enormous palace; silk and velvet; gold, silver, beads, and crowns; candles, servants, and maids. Courtiers who the night before threw down gauntlets at each other’s feet, and now rise at dawn to run each other through with swords; watchmen blowing fanfares from the towers; messengers who hop into the saddle, messengers who leap out of the saddle; the King’s friends and the King’s false friends; women, beautiful and dangerous; and wine; and all about the palace, people whose only purpose was to procure all of these things.

The King knew nothing besides this life, and in the end, life is the same every day. The King was bored. Just as the people of Barcelona imagine that other places are more beautiful, and want to travel to somewhere else.

The poor, of course, imagine how wondeful it would be to live like a king — the King imagines how much better it would be to be poor.

In the morning the King gets up out of bed, in the evening he gets into bed, and during the day he is so bored with his own troubles and with his attendants, his gold, his solver, his velvet and silk and candles. His bed is like a palace all on its own, but what can you do in a bed but sleep.

In the morning, the servants bow to him deeply, and every morning in just the same way. The King does not even notice. At dinner, his fork is handed to him, as is his knife; someone pushes in his chair, and the people around him only say nice things to him, and compliment him, and nothing else at all.

No one ever dares to say, ‘you idiot! You’re a complete blockhead.’ Everything that they say to him today, they said to him yesterday.

Such is life.

And that is why the king has a jester.

A jester can do as he likes, and say what he likes so long as the King laughs, and if they cannot make the King laugh, he kills them, or something like that.

Once he had a jester who loved to play with words. The King enjoyed this greatly. The jester would say ‘so high my mess!’ rather than ‘your highness’, or ‘tassle’ instead of ‘castle’, or ‘dice nay!’ instead of ‘nice day!’. It’s rather silly, to be honest, but the King thought it was hilarious. For a whole six months it made him laugh, until the seventh day of July, and on the eighth, when he got up in the morning and the jester greeted him with ‘dice nay, my high ol’ mess!’ the King ordered his head to be chopped off.

Another jester, who was short and fat and called Pepe, the King enjoyed for only four days. Pepe spread honey on the chairs of the courtiers, all of the nobles, and the knights. On the fourth day he put a big glob of it down on the seat of the throne, and the King no longer found it funny, and Pepe was a jester no more.

After that, the King bought the most terrible jester in the world. He was ugly — thin and fat at the same time, both tall but also short in some ways, and his left leg was bowed. Nobody knew if he could even speak, or if he was completely dumb. His gaze was angry, his face sullen. The only thing nice about him was his name, which was Little Hans.

But then there was his awful laugh. It always started small and glassy and deep in his belly, then gurgled up, until it was a belching that made his face all red and almost made him choke, and then burst out in a big, booming cackle. Then he would smack his knees, and dance about and chortle, and the King loved it, but only because it made everyone else pale and tremble with fear. When Little Hans’ laugh would ring out through the castle, doors were locked and windows barred, shutters closed, and the children were taken to bed with wax in their ears.

The laughter of Little Hans was the most ghastly thing in the world.

Whatever the King said, Little Hans would laugh.

The King said things that couldn’t be funny to anyone, and yet Little Hans still laughed. One day, the King said, ‘Little Hans, I’m going to hang you.’

Oh, how he laughed! He roared out like never before.

So it was decided that Little Hans would be hanged the next day. The King was serious. He wanted to see Hans laugh from the gallows, and wanted to make everyone watch the awful spectacle. But all of the coutiers, the nobility, the knights and the squires, they all hid in their rooms, with the doors locked. The morning of the hanging, it was just Little Hans, the hangman, the King, and his attendants. So the King cried to the attendants, ‘bring me everyone you can find!’ They searched the whole city, but found no one, as everybody was hiding.

Finally, one of the attendants returned with a boy, who they dragged before the King. The boy was small, pale, and shy, and the King had him brought to the gallows and ordered him to watch. The boy looked up at the gallows, clapped his hands in amazement, and said, ‘you’re such a kind King! You’ve built a perch for pigeons! And look, two have already landed.’

‘You’re a half-wit,’ said the King. ‘What’s your name?’

‘I am indeed a fool,’ said the boy, ‘and my name is Colombo. My monther calls me Columbine.’

‘Well, you’re an idiot, Columbine. Someone is about to be hanged,’ said the King.

‘What’s his name?’ asked Columbine, and when the King told him he said ‘aah, that’s a nice name. How can a man with so nice a name be hanged?’

‘His laugh is terrible,’ said the King, and he ordered Little Hans to laugh, and it was twice as bad as the day before.

Columbine said, ‘your highness, what’s so terrible about that?’ The King was surprised, and could not answer, and Columbine went on, ‘I don’t like his laugh much, but the pigeons are still sitting on the gallows. They aren’t frightened. Pigeons have good ears. You should let Little Hans go.’

The King thought about it, and then said, ‘Little Hans, go to hell.’ And for the first time Little Hans spoke, and he said to Columbine, ‘thank you’, and smiled a warm smile, and then went.

The King had no more jesters. The King’s servants and maids and all the courtiers believed, though, that Columbine was the new jester. But Columbine was not funny. He stood around, lost in thought, rarely speaking and never laughing, and never making anyone else laugh. ‘He’s not a jester, he’s an imbecile,’ is what everyone said about him, and Columbine said ‘I’m not a jester, I’m an imecile,’ and then everyone laughed at him.

If the King had known about this, he would have been very angry, but Columbine said nothing about it, because it didn’t bother him at all to be laughed at. At court there were the strong, the intelligent, the King was a king, the women were beautiful and the men brave, the priest was pious and the kitchen maids industrious. Columbine, and Columbine alone, was nothing.

If someone said, ‘Columbine, come and fight me!’ he would say, ‘I am weaker than you.’

If someone said, ‘Columbine, how much is two times seven?’ he would say, ‘I’m dumber than you.’

If someone said, ‘Columbine, I dare you to jump over that stream!’ he would say, ‘no, I don’t think I can.’

And when the King asked Columbine, ‘what do you want to become?’ Columbine would say, ‘I do not want to become anything. I am something, I am Columbine.’

The King said, ‘but you must become something,’ and Columbine said ‘what can one become?’

And the King said, ‘look at that man there, with the beard and the brown, leather face. He is a sailor. He wanted to become a sailor, and he did, and he sailed across the sea and discovered new countries for his king.’

‘If you want, my king,’ said Columbine, ‘I’ll become a sailor.’ At that, the whole court burst out laughing. Columbine ran out of the hall shouting, ‘I will discover a country, I will discover a country!’

Everyone looked at each other and shook their heads, and Columbine ran out of the castle, through the city, and across the fields, and when the farmers who were in the fields greeted him, he called out to them, too: ‘I will discover a country, I will discover a country!’

And so he came to the forest and hid for weeks in the bushes and brambles, and for weeks no one heard a word about Columbine. The King was sorry and blamed himself, and the courtiers were ashamed for laughing. Finally, after weeks and weeks had passed, the watchmen on the tower blew a fanfare and the court rejoiced, for across the fields, through the city, and up to the gate came Columbine, and he went before the King and said, ‘my king, Columbine has discovered a country!’

And because the courtiers did not want to laugh at him, they tried their best to look serious and asked, ‘what is it called and where is it?’ ‘It does not have a name yet, because I have just discovered it, and it is far out to sea,’ said Columbine.

One of the grizzled sailors stood up and said, ‘well, Columbine, I, Amerigo Vespucci, will go and look at this country of yours. Tell me how I get there.’ ‘You go into the sea, and then go straight, and you have to keep going straight and not give up until you come to the country.’ Columbine was terrified, of course, because he knew that what he said was a lie, and that there was no such country. So off went Amerigo Vespucci, and for days and days Columbine could not sleep.

No one knows where Amerigo went. Perhaps he, too, hid in the forest.

Then the trumpets blew, and Amerigo came back.

Columbine was red in the face and dared not to look at the great sailor. Vespucci stood before the King, and said loud and clear, so that all could hear: ‘Your Majesty, O King, the land is there.’

Columbine was so glad that Vespucci had not betrayed him that he ran up to him, hudded him, and cried, ‘Amerigo, my dear Amerigo!’

And the people believed that this was the name of the country, and they called this land that did not exist, ‘America.’

‘You are truly a man,’ the King said to Columbine, ‘and henceforth you shall be called Columbus.’

And Columbus was famous, and all marvelled at him and whispered as he walked past, ‘there he is! The man who discovered America!’

And they all believed that there is such a place. Only Columbus was not sure, and doubted it his whole life, but never dared to ask the sailors for the truth about where they had gone. Soon enough, other people went to America, and then, a great many people. And those who came back all said, ‘America is there!’

‘I,’ said the man who told me this story, ‘I have never been to America. I do not know if America exists. Perhaps people only say that it does, so as not to disappoint Columbus. After all, when you see two people talking about America these days, they wink at each other, and hardly ever say “America”. Instead, they say something vague about “the States” or “over the pond”, or whatever.’ Perhaps when someone gets on a plane or a ship to go to America, they are told the story of Columbus, and hide away somewhere, and come back later to talk about cowboys and skyscrapers, about Niagra Falls and the Mississippi, and cities called ‘New York’ and ‘San Francisco’.

In any case, they all say the same things, and talk about things that they already knew before they left, and that is very suspicious.

And people are always arguing about who Columbus really was.

I know it.

  (1969, Kindergeschichten)

[d3mok]

NINA SIMONE, "Sinnerman"

[d3mok]

PETE SEEGER, "IF I HAD A HAMMER"

"Some may find them [songs] merely diverting melodies. Others may find them incitements to Red revolution. And who will say if either or both is wrong? Not I."

[d3mok]

On top of all of this, I want you to think of a few other implications this rhetorical device has. For one thing, what does it say about the women who aren’t anyone’s wife, mother or daughter? What does it say about the kids who are stuck in the foster system, the kids who are shuffled from one set of foster parents to another or else living in a group home? What does it say about the little girls whose mothers surrender them, willingly or not, to the state? What does it say about the people who turn their back on their biological families for one reason or another?

That they deserve to be raped? That they are not worthy of protection? That they are not deserving of sympathy, empathy or love?

And when we frame all women as being someone’s wife, mother or daughter, what are we teaching young girls?

[d3mok]

CON LOS TERRORISTAS: Towards a Structuralist Understanding of the Harlem Shake

The first thing you notice is the music. The vocal call out ('with the terrorists', the internet translates it as) and the steady beat. What comes next has many variations but in its most refined form, it is well crafted and predicatable. For fifteen seconds, you see a tableau in which one figure dances, usually masked, helmeted, or otherwise strangely garbed. It draws your eye. As visual boredom sets in, you look at the surroundings: everyone else in the scene sits or stands around, ignoring the only activity. And then the bass drops, and all of a sudden an explosion of movement has already happened, the tableau has shifted, and while you race to take everything in (the man on the tricycle, the inflatable sex doll being waved about, the girl swinging from the rafters) the video suddenly ends. What has just happened?

The arch-meme is a finely crafted instrument. It presents a base template through which many ideas can be pulled. Most memes, in their early form, are about taking a joke and extending it by replaying it in different contexts or with minor variations on the original. The humor gets drained quickly, until all that is left is the format. The prime example of this is the iterations on the famous British propaganda poster, 'Keep Calm and Carry On'. By the time we've arrived at 'Keep Calm and Stay Southern', we've completely hacked away the compelling notion at the core of the original (an understated, almost accidentally perfect encapsulation of one national character in a particular era) and replaced it with something so totally unrelated that the emblem of the crown which adorns it is a nonsensical interlocutor, a signifier that has been torn from its signified. The format lends nothing at this point, except as a vehicle for being redistributed. Is this what we mean by 'viral'? Not pandemic-scale dissemination, but rather infesting one idea with wholly alien genetic material and using that idea's genetic code to manufacture new ones, mutations, until the strain is of a totally different taxonomy. There are many variations of the Harlem Shake, and you can watch them in rapid succession in the form of 20-odd minute compilations. Taken as a body of work, what is most surprising is that they're quite addictive, even though you know exactly what's coming. Partly, it's the music. Even though it is only the first thirty seconds of a longer song, it loops surprisingly well. That's probably because the first thirty seconds tell you all you need to know about the rest of the song. It, too, might as well be on a loop. The other factor, of course, is the level of effort and detail that the creators of these videos go to. The simplest videos are the least interesting, whether its five guys in a frat house living room or, as in one particularly arresting example, one guy alone, with his dog. The most compelling ones are the gymnasiums, the universities, the army units, where that bass drop shatters the thin varnish of a scene of reasonably plausible every day life and turns it into a depiction of collective madness that would make Bosch proud. High production values alone doesn't always win it. Red Bull's skydiving iteration, though well put together, suffers from giving itself away in the jump cuts. It's the static camera that does the most work. Like the room at a standstill before the drop, we're stuck watching the infective dance as it jumps from Patient A in the motorcycle helmet to the entire school around him. We long to join the fray, to leap up from our computer chairs into this brave new world where it's okay to dance with a floor lamp and take off (almost) all of your clothes.

It's also impossible to deny that there is a codified sexual release built into this depiction of madness. Men strip down to their underwear, discarding their uniforms or fashionable outfits. Anonymity prevails through costumes. And of course, the music itself is the music of the club beat. The pelvic thrust is everywhere, and whether or not this can be reduced to a symptom of it being the only way left we have of dancing, its implication cannot be wiped away. Other tropes get dragged in quickly, too. Several versions feature Angry Birds paraphernalia, or Pirates of the Caribbean costumes, or whatever else we have handy. Like a Breugel painting, we've shoved all of our metaphors into one picture. And it is a picture, the post-animated-gif version of a photograph. To be sure, the Harlem Shake probably couldn't have happened until after the Lady Gaga video meme craze, but it is a finer take on the idea, simply for its better absurdity. But this precedent raises another important point: these sorts of videos, this viral spread, is one limited to a specific cultural context. Where Gaga and dubstep have happened, Poker Face and Harlem shake may follow. The low art of the high empire finds its legs in the internal communication channels, but at the borders it stops suddenly and ends. The bizzaro-world democracy of YouTube is one open only to fellow citizens. Whatever the Internet meme culture tells us about ourselves, it tells us only about ourselves, and only in the minutes and half-minutes that the videos last, and only for the week or so in which we pay attention to them. Once they hit CNN, we're done, we've developed the antibodies, and we wait for a new disease to come and take hold of us. Meanwhile, perhaps, we become a little more impervious to the new and strange ideas that leak in from outside our bubble, faster to dismiss the novelty as another passing phase.

[d3mok]

MUSICAL INTERLUDE No. 5 — HUUN HUUR TU, “CHYLANDYK”

[d3mok]

"Somehow, we need to get beyond the “I’m right so I’m right to nuke you” ethics that dominates our time. That begins with one word: Shame."

[d3mok]

 Buried under layers of denial is a clear understanding of his own, hopeless, powerless life, which makes him marginally more clued-in than say, Dwight. His response is  frenetic and desperate manipulation of the drama of false validation that has been set up for his benefit.  Some of this is with the knowing consent of his enablers.  Like experienced improv-comics, within limits, the rest of the office follows the rule of agreement in the Theater of Michael (in a brilliant piece of meta-commentary, in one episode we get to see Michael at his own impossibly bad worst in his real improv class, where he ruins every single sketch).

Venkatesh Rao's discusses the lessons of management and hierarchy inThe Office.

[d3mok]

Historical Precedent: "As a country, we have been through this too many times."

There will not be a single person in this country who would not have wakened this morning hoping beyond hope that yesterday was just a bad dream; so there will be nobody today who will not experience huge sadness and dismay on realising that it did all happen.

One does not need to have lived in the town of Dunblane or to have seen three children go through Dunblane primary school to share the grief, horror and sheer desolation that our town feels today — one just has to be a fellow human being. It was that worst of all possible nightmares that any parent can think of — and for it to happen to so many of the littlest and most innocent makes the tragedy one of unspeakable misery.

I have to say that Dunblane today is worse than yesterday in its mourning, and tomorrow will probably be worse still, as the enormity of the massacre comes home in the shape of real children gone, real families afflicted, and a whole community scarred and tortured.

I join the Secretary of State's tributes to headmaster Ron Taylor, whose composure and self-control — which we witnessed yesterday — in the face of the most traumatic events was an inspiration. To act with speed and calmness as tiny pupils die in one's arms cannot be described as ordinary professionalism — it was heroism. The staff of the school also deserve great praise and thanks. We deeply mourn Gwen Mayor, the truly dedicated teacher who died with her charges in the gymnasium.

The Secretary and I met, spoke to and thanked — and I do so again — members of the emergency services, police, ambulance staff and medical teams from a supremely dedicated health service, who acted with superlative dedication and skill, even when their own emotions were tested to the limit. We must be so grateful for the caring services of the local councils, Church leaders and members of the whole community, who poured in to help.

Naturally, there are questions to be asked — with the nation, let alone the local community, needing answers. The worst service that we can do to the infant victims is to rush to instant judgment. Therefore, I strongly welcome the decision to appoint a High Court judge of the calibre of Lord Cullen to investigate all the circumstances of yesterday.

Those of us who met and distrusted Thomas Hamilton — I argued with him in my own home — in truth could have had no inkling to guide us to his final act of wantonness. Of course, we expect a thorough examination of and any necessary action on the present gun laws, which enabled such a man to own such a lethal armoury. School security, too, will need looking at, but we should not pretend to ourselves that even a fortress would have kept an armed, crazed, suicidal killer at bay. That is not for today.

George Robertson addressing the House of Commons, 14 March 1996

[d3mok]

Silly people — and there were many, not only in enemy countries — might discount the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would never be united. They would fool around at a distance. They would never come to grips. They would never stand blood-letting. Their democracy and system of recurrent elections would paralyze their war effort. They would be just a vague blur on the horizon to friend or foe. Now we should see the weakness of this numerous but remote, wealthy, and talkative people. But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch. American blood flowed in my veins. I thought of a remark which Edward Grey had made to me more than thirty years before — that the United States is like 'a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.' Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

Winston Churchill

[d3mok]

Political Questions

Bonfire Night has come and gone, although no doubt you will still hear the crackle of leftover fireworks being shot off for the rest of the week. It is a particularly curious event, especially for the outsider: the celebration of a four hundred year old arrest in one of the longest religious conflicts seen on the European continent. The religious struggle is long over, but night remains as a tribute to the most enduring traditions of the kingdom: the monarchy, the English church, and a long memory. Perhaps Bonfire Night is most instructive for reminding us, in this age of ideological divisiveness realized on a global scale, that what we now consider the 'developed' world has also been responsible its share of zealotry and internecine conflict. The idea that this country could, in 2012, tear itself apart on the scale that it once tried to (several times over) seems absurd. The worst that has to be countenanced is Scotland leaving the Union – far fetched though even that is – which would be a limited kind of separation. The EU and the de facto political economic community in Europe as a whole makes for a kind of international psychology which even the fiercest skeptics must acknowledge as unique in the world. Derisive laughter though there was at the awarding of the peace prize to the European Union, as protests flared up again in the austerity-hammered countries around the Mediterranean, it can surely be acknowledged that the lack of war inside its borders in the last fifty years is the glaring exception, rather than the rule, when taken in consideration with the last century, never mind the last five hundred or a thousand years.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a much less deserving recipient of the Nobel Prize is about to have his political future put to the test. Although every presidential election in the last twelve years has been hyped as momentous for one reason or another (aren't they all, in their own way?) this one seems particularly so. The latest and most damning evidence of climate change has just rocked the east coast, which is still picking up the pieces despite being pushed almost instantly out of the news cycle. (In any other year, one might expect at least a week of attention, especially as the other bookend to a landscape-altering decade of New York history.) But the climate isn't on the agenda. Neither is war or foreign policy. Even the Guardian must admit that in Afghanistan and China the thought of the American election elicits not much more than shoulder shrugging. The drone strikes will continue, trade will flow. These things are certainties. What isn't certain is the political and social attitude of the country that perpetuates these facts. The political soul of America is being argued for in this election, and the choice is clear: a slightly right-of-center executive who inspires racist-tinged obstructionism in his opponents, or a corporate man in thrall to the worst reactionary elements of the GOP. It is enough to make filling out that absentee ballot a terrible chore. But still, one does. Even though the cynic might delight in pointing to a Republican victory as a way of illustrating that things really haven't changed in four years, or that as a nation American cannot and will not join the modern world, with it's supposedly awful 'socialized medicine' and community-saving 'welfare state'. The optimist in us does not delight in these things. The optimist thinks that maybe, given another four years and lessons learnt, we will see a rise in Democratic politics in America that pushes back against the hard right turn of conservatism of the last decade and a half, that given time and the realities of implementation, a healthcare system that acknowledges every citizen will become as politically untouchable as the NHS is in this country, even if an insurance mandate is only the pale shadow of actual national care. Most of all, the optimist dares think that time might give way to reason, that the cynic will lose his bet against the incumbent, and that the slow crawl towards a new kind American progressivism might one day begin again. He admits that although the commentators crow on about the political realities of the last four years shearing away the idealism of the sitting president, that his own idealism has not been completely sheared away. He dares whisper that one, now guilty-sounding idea: there might still be some hope.

[d3mok]

... after handing you your ass in the Death Mountain maze, it revealed the world from the first game to be but the tip of the Hyrulian iceberg.  It altered the scale of the screen (the original overworld’s 128 became approximately 1) and thus expanded the scope of the entire adventure in the player’s mind.  The raised stakes of the sequel were palpable; they were right there on screen.  The world, not the towns or their people or any text, grounded the adventure, gave it shape.  Death Mountain spoke for itself.

[d3mok]

MUSICAL INTERLUDE No. 3 — BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON, "DARK WAS THE NIGHT, COLD WAS THE GROUND"