Friday, May 31, 2013

Teaching you 9 hair

Lipsync: Jinkx x Detox from RSFD on Vimeo.


Naming our nameless war.

     "Quag-Hole

He waited and, as he waited, grew less eager.
He had come first, believing he was anxious.
The quag lay buried in the darkness at his feet.
The village lights shone far between and meager.

He must not whistle here. His nerves grew tauter.
A wind, that rose among the woods behind him,
Died through the fields. Then silence—broken only
By turtles puddling the invisible bog water.

Then, through a stillness, listening, he heard
Her running on the path, night-terrified
Or eager. And he saw her body slacken
And look for him. She stopped. He never stirred.

But watched how credulously, hour by hour, she stood.
And when, at last, the longing woman went,
He set his face to make the nearest light,
And marched to beat the silence through the wood."

--Whittaker Chambers, in: Anthology of Magazine Verse, ed. Wm Braithwaite (1925)


(via bldgblog)

Quadrillage.

"Well, unlike the majority of you (I assume), I actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions.

Of those who couldn't leave my city, Sarajevo:

Some people (very few) were prepared for what they thought would be the "long haul" - this tended to be a couple of months. These people were widely seen as lunatics and dangerously pessimistic ones at that.

Most people were not at all prepared. This included my family. Many of those - like my family - considered the idea of "preparation" to be an affront to the decency we felt most people possessed. Were we wrong? Well, I don't know. We suffered greatly; my parents were killed. But speaking only for myself, I never felt I cheapened my soul by betting on calamity. Today, that still feels like it's worth something.

But here's the main point: "Preparing" for the disaster really didn't do anyone much good. Those who "prepared" ate a little better for a while. They stayed warmer for a few extra days. They enjoyed the radio for a while longer (via batteries.) But in the end, they ended up hungry, cold and bored too, just like the rest of us. Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces. The worst parts of war were psychological - the fear, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, paranoia, bad dreams. Respite from those things came with sharing food with a neighbor, finding a piece of clothing that would fit someone you knew, commiserating with others in your position, figuring out how to make make-up from brick or french fries from wheat paste and spreading this newly-acquired war knowledge around the mahala.

We knew who had extra food and supplies. For the most part, they weren't attacked or hassled or bothered. Contrary to what these survivalists say, those in dire times generally hold on to their personal sense of pride even more than they do in normal times. I'd take a bite of a friend's salad without bothering to ask in normal times. I'd never have done that in wartime, no matter how hungry I was.

Within the domain of those trapped in the city, civility greatly increased.

You often hear how Holocaust survivors felt guilt at surviving. Well, during war, that was a feeling everyone was aware of - people started dying right away (my parents were killed near the start of the siege, for instance) - and there was a palpable enough common sense of karma to make everyone into good Samaritans. None of us understood why we survived while others didn't. I shared food when I had it, even though I often knew I wouldn't have a crumb the next day. Which was no big achievement, because nearly everyone did the same.

Those who'd prepared, well, the majority of them shared their food and whatever else they had as soon as someone else was clearly in need. I can't swear it, but I think they felt a little foolish to have been so self-obsessed, and giving away that stuff might have lessened that feeling. There were a few people who hoarded things until they ran out of stuff - eventually everybody ran out of anything worth hoarding - and they soon became wishful beggars like the rest of us..." --Dee Xtrovert on MeFi

Merchants of shame.


(via wikipedia "Didyma")

Escherian stairwell.


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Thursday, May 30, 2013

Perish the feeling, my facial gymnastics

“I remember other magic” --the Kalevala

Ursine accelerationism.


(via architecture dot about dot com)

“Man cannot love mortal things. He can only love immortal things for an instant.” --Chesterton

Five stages of collapse.


(via hauntology & desire)

Ghost Box as Alternative Heritage (pdf).


Retro GeoCities fun.


(via Frames / sing)

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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

My legendary Silver Triangle Wealth Pyramid


Geomedia.

"If there were no longer our modern strife between nations, there would only be a strife between Utopias." --Chesterton


Messy Techno.

"...until writers are an everyday occurrence on television, telephone, radio, and stages, we must rely on the object to transmit our art." --Douglas Messerli, 1984

A Brief History of Robot Birds.

"All legends and songs originating in this city are filled with nostalgia for a prophesied day when the city would be smashed to bits by five blows in rapid succession from a gigantic fist." --Kafka


(via siysradio dot xtreemhost dot com)

"...the massive gray wyvern that is the Bay Bridge rising from the mist..."


(via pre-Gebelin dot blogspot)

The history of Steampunk in one chart.

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Monday, May 27, 2013

all... these secret skills will stay

Inverted World.


Some neat Japanese steampunk pics.


"Before long the world will be cloven with a war between the telescopists and the microscopists." --Chesterton


(by David Hardy)

People getting dumber.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

feces ornithology

Imagine a country...


(pic by Jason Cohen)

a thrall
that does not remember
skeuomorph
in the shape of a man
the skies
that have rained terror elsewhere
we park up close
Cirith Ungol
Eye of Argon

Albertus Alauda.

plarring, adj. deposited or arranged in tiers (@PowerVocabTweet)

Repair Manifesto.


(via businessinsider dot com)

douteful, adj. of, pertaining to, or occurring in autumn (@PowerVocabTweet)

End of an Epoch.

ewledgeable, adj. (of twins) derived from two separately fertilized eggs (@PowerVocabTweet)

The invention of Negarestani.

gnolign, adj. like the light sharp ringing sound of a bee (@PowerVocabTweet)


"...dry and red and sweet is the skeletal panorama of the world..." --Dino Campana (tr C Wright)

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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

something down and then moved it only to discover you are left


(via architecture dot about)

"More Americans have frozen to death since the economic crisis began than have died in all terrorism attacks on U.S. soil in the last two decades—September 11th, included." --truthout dot com

"You made the fish disappear."

Bugpunk.


(via nationalgeographic dot com)

The claws that snatch.

Republican death squads.

"The future needs to be constructed." (Or not?)


(via kimdotdammit dot livejournal 5/09/13)

Esoterrorists. More.

sruma lonu.

Talking to Comrade Joe.


The loneliest star.

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Sunday, May 05, 2013

The Cannibal Puritans


i hurt in my stomach
but not from what my stomach holds

from retribution karmic
i hurt in my stomach

in this a poor mimic
of the madness that enfolds

i hurt in my stomach
but not from what my stomach holds

"When historians of the future swap their stories around the campfire, this age will be remembered for little more than all the useless movement of automobiles and the fate of the crumbling surfaces they moved about on."

"We ask ourselves: why do artists, especially the greatest, see so much dark, feel so much pain? Maybe we should reverse the polarity... Why do we, we others, refuse to embrace the world as it really is?" --Gwyneth Jones, Spirit


(vis wikipedia)

"...[T]he old model for getting films to people is breaking down for films just as much as it is for books, music and just about every other intellectual endeavor (heads up, art dealers – they’re coming for you)."

"The past is a kaleidoscope, different every time you look." --ibid

"He has a sort of genius for being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time."

"Man likes to move what is movable; and to vary what is variable; thus every age makes some mark upon language; and the continual influence of that spirit of invention which creates speech ends by corrupting it." --Joseph Joubert

"Languages are the primordial defense against the pantopia, as each language is its own chaosmos."


(via the atlantic dot com)

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