2011

You are currently browsing the yearly archive for 2011.

Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: They Came Back (2004)

July 11, 2011 in Film, Videos | Permalink

Ambling clumsily, languorously, emotionlessly from graveyards all over the world, seventy million corpses have suddenly, inexplicably risen from the dead, filled their lungs with oxygen after an extended exhale and shuffled back into their mortal coils. Roughly 13,000 of these taciturn zombies slowly stream back into the small French city which was formerly their home, and the locals have to figure out how to accommodate the return of their dearly departed. “The unthinkable has happened,” says a bureaucrat, stating the obvious, to his colleagues. The newly immortal, disoriented and barely capable of speech, are warehoused in empty government buildings until they can be re-acclimated and reclaimed. But most people aren’t eager to reunite, even the aforementioned official whose wife is returned to his care. “I can’t stand her sweet smiles anymore,” he guiltily admits. “They scare me.”

In his 2004 avant zombie film, Robin Campillo turns out an arch allegory about how relationships can stagnate and love run cold, but he’s also examining the nature of neurology, how the brain adjusts to surprising situations and creates new realities as a means of survival. Scientists (and art critics) have noticed that the first time someone hears atonal music or sees a surrealist painting, the experience can cause emtional turmoil. But after the initial jolt, what’s unthinkable becomes acceptable. First you shock them, and then they put you in a museum. The same goes for shocking emotional episodes. In these cases, the brain is its own electrician, rewiring our ability to view the world.

The movie, while suitably somnambulant, doesn’t fully exploit its fantastic set-up, but it does make some provacative points, most notably that the zombies aren’t the only ones who’ve been altered by death. The survivors have grieved and mourned and moved on. Even if they were stuck in the past, that past isn’t what came home to them. That’s gone forever.

“His reality will never be yours,” says a doctor to a woman who is having trouble adjusting to her returned husband’s cold embrace. But you can’t really blame the zombies. They simply aren’t who they were. None of us are.•

Tags:

“Far Stranger Fighting Machines Are In The Works, Like Swarms Of Lethal ‘Cyborg Insects'”

July 11, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From Barbara Ehrenreich’s new Guernica piece on whether the human face of warfare has reached a point of obsolescence:

“An alternative approach is to eliminate or drastically reduce the military’s dependence on human beings of any kind. This would have been an almost unthinkable proposition a few decades ago, but technologies employed in Iraq and Afghanistan have steadily stripped away the human role in war. Drones, directed from sites up to 7,500 miles away in the western United States, are replacing manned aircraft.

Video cameras, borne by drones, substitute for human scouts or information gathered by pilots. Robots disarm roadside bombs. When American forces invaded Iraq in 2003, no robots accompanied them; by 2008, there were 12,000 participating in the war. Only a handful of drones were used in the initial invasion; today, the U.S. military has an inventory of more than 7,000, ranging from the familiar Predator to tiny Ravens and Wasps used to transmit video images of events on the ground. Far stranger fighting machines are in the works, like swarms of lethal ‘cyborg insects’ that could potentially replace human infantry.

These developments are by no means limited to the U.S. The global market for military robotics and unmanned military vehicles is growing fast, and includes Israel, a major pioneer in the field, Russia, the United Kingdom, Iran, South Korea, and China. Turkey is reportedly readying a robot force for strikes against Kurdish insurgents; Israel hopes to eventually patrol the Gaza border with ‘see-shoot’ robots that will destroy people perceived as transgressors as soon as they are detected.”

••••••••••

Cyborg insect demonstration:

Tags:

“But What Could Ever Be Half So Mad As A Dash-Mounted Turntable?”

July 11, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"There is quite possibly only one man left in the world still pressing records for the Highway Hi-Fi." (Image by Bill McChesney.)

Starting in the mid-50s, some Chryslers had record players on the dashboard, called the Highway Hi-Fi, as chronicled in a new piece in the Believer. Of course the discs skipped no matter how good the car’s shock absorbers, and the automaker ceased manufacturing them in the 1960s. But some car collectors have maintained the systems, even though only one person still creates the special records they require. An excerpt:

“In the end, the RCA Victor Auto Victrola had an even shorter run than the Highway Hi-Fi, vanishing by 1961. The following year would bring the next serious attempt at car audio, a precursor to the 8-track deck by inventor Earl Muntz—’Madman’ Muntz, as he was known. But what could ever be half so mad as a dash-mounted turntable?

 There is quite possibly only one man left in the world still pressing records for the Highway Hi-Fi, and he lives in Minneapolis.


‘I first had a guy come to me years ago who had an old Highway Hi-Fi, asking about making a record,’ says Kim Gutzke of Custom Records. Vintage car owners email Gutzke a music file, and he custom presses whatever they want onto a 16 2⁄3 rpm acetate disc. And what they want, he says, is simple: ‘’50s rock and roll. Not the crappy music Hi-Fi put out.'”

••••••••••

1960 Plymouth Fury with a Highway Hi-Fi:

Tags:

“David. Leaving Work. Home In 45 Minutes. Sophia Comes To Dinner At Eight.”

July 11, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

David’s appliances function without him. (Thanks Krulwich Wonders.)

Futuristic Firing Range In Germany

July 11, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Ridiculously, chillingly elaborate.

“The Players Personal Lives Are Their Own”

July 11, 2011 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

One of the strangest chapters in baseball history took place during the early ’70s when Yankee pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich swapped families–wives, children and dogs. The episode has been revisited recently because Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are trying to make a movie about the tabloid-ready trade. An excerpt from the March 5, 1973 Toledo Blade:

Teammates Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich of the New York Yankees have “traded lives” through a mutual agreement that calls for the pitchers to exchange wives and families.

“It was not a wife swap,” said Peterson, “but a life swap.”

The situation developed last summer when the Petersons, Fritz and wife, Marilyn, and the Kekiches, Mike and his wife, Susanne, were drawn together and began discussing the possibility of an exchange.

‘There have been laughs, screams and tears throughout this whole thing,’ said Kekich.

Marilyn “Chip” Peterson and her two sons, Greg 5 1/2, and Eric, 2 1/2, changed places with Susan Kekich and her two daughters, Kristen, 6, and Reagan Leigh, 2 1/2. The arrangement apparently has worked for Peterson and Mrs. Kekich who are still together, but not for Kekich and Mrs. Peterson, who have separated.

In Rockford, Ill., Mrs. Arthur Monks, Marilyn Peterson’s mother, said: “Marilyn is not happy about this at all. She has started proceedings for a divorce, but only because he (Fritz) wanted her to. Mike Kekich has made no plans for a divorce.”

“Susanne was a perfect person for me,” said Peterson. “We will file for divorce in New Jersey under the no fault clause.”

“Pete and Susanne are great for each other,” said Kekich.

“I thought Chip and I were perfectly suited but things developed and we began to butt heads. She would have been the first of her family to get a divorce. It became too much for her and she began to worry.”

The two families switched places at the end of last season and then briefly returned to their original situations. After about 10 days they exchanged places again, this time permanently.

“The point of no return was reached December 14,” said Peterson. “Marilyn and our boys flew West to join Mike in California and Susan and the girls flew East to me. They must have passed mid-air.

“This was the biggest decision of my life,” he continued. “I’m not going back. I can’t go back.”

Peterson and Kekich have been Yankee teammates for four years and the two families have always been close.

When the exchange developed the two players advised the Yankees of the situation and General Manager Lee McPhail asked if they felt they could still function as teammates. They said they did and that satisfied the club.

“The players personal lives are their own,” said Manager Ralph Houk.•

Willie McCovey hits a frozen rope against Peterson at the 1970 All-Star Game.

Tags: ,

“As A Child, I Was Impressed By Machines That Try To Explain The World Around Us”

July 10, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Vincent Fournier makes amazing space-travel–themed photos.

Tags:

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

July 10, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"I can't pay pigloads of dosh for one."

Anyone want to sell me a decent starter ukulele?

Hey, I’m looking for a decent, workable ukulele suitable for a beginner. I do genuinely want to learn, rather than plonk around randomly on it when bored and/or drunk. I can’t pay pigloads of dosh for one – maybe up to $75?

One thing I will say is that I’d rather not get one that’s pink or that has flower decals or any of that nonsense on it.

Old Print Article: “Captain Warren Killed By A Whale In The North Pacific,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1896)

July 10, 2011 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

Captain Thomas P. Warren, 1852-96.

Even for the most experienced whaler, life on the sea trying to capture the gigantic mammals was a risky business. That lesson was learned the hard way by Captain Thomas P. Warren of Long Island, as evidenced by an article in the December 6, 1896 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. An excerpt:

“Southampton, L.I.–The news of the sudden death of Captain Thomas P. Warren of this village, while on a whaling voyage in the North Pacific, which reached here yesterday, has caused great sorrow among his many friends. The only details of the sad accident are contained in a letter received from one of his ship mates of the steam whaler Belvidere, who says that the remains will be sent home for burial in the family plot at Yaphank.

Captain Warren left for what he said would be his last whaling trip in 1892 and at its close he intended to come home and settle down for good, as he had a great attachment to his native place. With this end in view he planned the expedition of 1892. Taking as companions James and Steven Larry, whalemen from this village, whom he had known from boyhood, he engaged a vessel to leave them, with the necessary outfit, on St. Lawrence Island, near the mouth of the Behring Straits. It was their plan to whale from the shore, employing the native Esquimaux to assist them, but the natives took no interest in whaling and did not care to be employed, nor did whales come that way, so that when at the end of the season, the vessel returned by appointment to take them off, it found the men and their apparatus but no oil or bones to bring away.

"The whale struck and killed Captain Warren."

After the unsuccessful expedition Captain Warren and his friends decided to make one more venture. He left Southhampton with his two friends February 4, 1895, reaching Honolulu the 18th of the same month, where he joined the whaling steamer Belvidere of New Bedford bound for the Arctic Ocean. They wintered with the rest of the whaling fleet at the Herschel Islands off the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Late in July the ice broke up and they began their second season’s work. In the early fall they returned through the straits and cruised toward home, the hearts of all on board being made glad by a prosperous catch of ten good whales and the price of whalebone higher than ever before. Probably happiest among them was the boatheader, Captain Warren, now returning from his last voyage and bound home to his family to plan with them a convenient house to build and to stay at home with them hereafter. On October 14, the last before reaching port, another whale was captured to add to the good catch already on board but by some unlucky accident, the details of which have yet been learned, the whale struck and killed Captain Warren. Life lingered a few hours, long enough to send a last word to his family and to give directions as to the disposal of his remains.”

“The Focused Worship…Affects Real-World Events By Weakening The Demons And Strengthening The Angels That Swirl Among Us”

July 10, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"The incantations, multiplied worldwide, may help usher in the long-awaited final days."(Image by Jonathan Baldwin.)

Strip mall turned faith center, the International House of Prayer in Kansas City is an evangelical and charismatic haven that was founded in 1999 by a self-styled reverend named Mike Bickle. At the heart of the growing perpetual prayer movement in America, IHOP has been criticized for its cultish end-of-days prognostications. An excerpt from an Erik Eckholm article in the New York Times:

“The International House of Prayer is ‘an important example’ of the proliferating nondenominational charismatic churches, said Catherine C. Bowler, a religious historian at the Duke University Divinity School. From megachurches with tens of thousands of members to more intense and unusual ministries like Mr. Bickle’s, these churches, which practice faith healing and speaking in tongues, make up one of the fastest-growing segments of American Christianity, attracting millions.

The staff and students here are required to spend at least 25 hours a week in the prayer room, and they also engage in weekly fasts of a day or more. The focused worship, Mr. Bickle says, affects real-world events by weakening the demons and strengthening the angels that swirl among us. Most important, he says, the incantations, multiplied worldwide, may help usher in the long-awaited final days: seven years of bloody battles and disasters that will end with the Second Coming, with true Christians spirited to eternal bliss and everyone else doomed to hellfire.

‘The Second Coming will probably happen within the lifetime of people living today,’ Mr. Bickle said in an interview — the sort of prediction that leads some pastors to say he is overstepping and using apocalyptic predictions to seduce eager young believers. Mr. Bickle adamantly rejects such charges, as do followers like Mai Fink, a woman in her early 20s who was helping to run the church summer camp. She and her husband moved to Kansas City, she said, because ‘the prayer makes our hearts come alive.'”

••••••••••

IHOP, where the prayer never ends:

Tags: , ,

Robot Soccer Is Pretty Incredible Now

July 10, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Formerly lame, now amazing. (Thanks Singularity Hub.)

“The British Graffiti Artist Banksy Likes Pizza, Though His Preference In Toppings Cannot Be Definitively Ascertained”

July 10, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The perfect opening of “Banksy Was Here,” Lauren Collins’ excellent 2007 New Yorker article about the inscrutable artist:

“The British graffiti artist Banksy likes pizza, though his preference in toppings cannot be definitively ascertained. He has a gold tooth. He has a silver tooth. He has a silver earring. He’s an anarchist environmentalist who travels by chauffeured S.U.V. He was born in 1978, or 1974, in Bristol, England—no, Yate. The son of a butcher and a housewife, or a delivery driver and a hospital worker, he’s fat, he’s skinny, he’s an introverted workhorse, he’s a breeze-shooting exhibitionist given to drinking pint after pint of stout. For a while now, Banksy has lived in London: if not in Shoreditch, then in Hoxton. Joel Unangst, who had the nearly unprecedented experience of meeting Banksy last year, in Los Angeles, when the artist rented a warehouse from him for an exhibition, can confirm that Banksy often dresses in a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. When Unangst is asked what adorns the T-shirts, he will allow, before fretting that he has revealed too much already, that they are covered with smudges of white paint.

The creative fields have long had their shadowy practitioners, figures whose identities, whether because of scandalous content (the author of Story of O), fear of ostracism (Joe Klein), aversion to nepotism (Stephen King’s son Joe Hill), or conceptual necessity (Sacha Baron Cohen), remain, at least for a time, unknown. Anonymity enables its adopter to seek fame while shielding him from the meaner consequences of fame-seeking. In exchange for ceding credit, he is freed from the obligations of authorship. Banksy, for instance, does not attend his own openings. He may miss out on the accolades, but he’ll never spend a Thursday evening, from six to eight, picking at cubes of cheese.

Banksy is a household name in England—the Evening Standard has mentioned him thirty-eight times in the past six months—but his identity is a subject of febrile speculation. This much is certain: around 1993, his graffiti began appearing on trains and walls around Bristol; by 2001, his blocky spray-painted signature had cropped up all over the United Kingdom, eliciting both civic hand-wringing and comparisons to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Vienna, San Francisco, Barcelona, and Paris followed, along with forays into pranksterism and more traditional painting, but Banksy has never shed the graffitist’s habit of operating under a handle. His anonymity is said to be born of a desire—understandable enough for a ‘quality vandal,’ as he likes to be called—to elude the police. For years now, he has refused to do face-to-face interviews.”

••••••••••

Banksy’s very dark Simpsons couch gag:

Another Banksy post:

Tags: ,

Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla!

July 10, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The greatest electrician of them all, who died poor and alone at the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan in 1943, was born on July 10, 1856.

More Nikola Tesla posts:

Tags:

This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

July 10, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

 

Some search-engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:

 

Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

July 9, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Receiving looks of rebuke from mimes since 2009.

  • Douglas Adams wrote a perceptive piece about the Internet in 1999.
  • Ted Conover reports on a murderer who became a tech millionaire in prison.
  • Before there was the Internet, there was the Mundaneum.

Classic Film: The Rapture (1991)

July 9, 2011 in Film, Videos | Permalink

What if yet another seeming half-mad charlatan announced that the end of days were upon us but that person was actually correct? That’s the premise of writer-director Michael Tolkin’s fearless 1991 drama, The Rapture,  one of the most uncompromising films to ever come out of Hollywood.

Sharon (Mimi Rogers) is a Los Angeles telephone operator who interrupts the mundanity of her life with lascivious outings with Vic (Patrick Bauchau), an operator of a different kind. Vic is a sleazy swinger who looks like he makes his money by selling Amway to pornographers. He trolls airport bars to find couples that want to get down and dirty. The amoral encounters begin to take their toll on Sharon, though, and her suicidal thoughts are only put to rest when she has a religious awakening and is born again. But born into what?

Sharon becomes a part of a quiet but intense Jesus cult that believes the end is near and has members that babble incessantly about “the Boy” and “the Dream” and “the Pearl.” She marries one of her former hook-ups (David Duchovny) and the pair raise a daughter while they wait for the four horseman to ride into town.

Six years pass and the Boy announces to the followers that the end of days is finally arriving. A true believer, Sharon gathers her daughter and heads to the desert to await God. But their wanderings in the desert are disatrous and Sharon’s faith runs dry just as the Rapture truly does arrive.

Tolkin, who also singed Los Angeles life as screenwriter of The Player, understands the pseudo-religious fringe of the city and recreates it with a flesh-crawling verisimilitude. But while the film gets its milieu from L.A., it boldly looks for universal truths. While Sharon is an anti-hero, the villain, audaciously, is a needy, vicious God who demands a faith that has not been earned.•

••••••••••

Recent Film Posts:

Tags: , , ,

“Soon They Will Sell All Kinds Of Wearable Computing Devices”

July 9, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A discussion about wearable computing from Andrew Goldman’s smart interview with Silicon Valley bigwig Marc Andreessen, in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine:

“People view you as an oracle in the valley. I was hoping you’d blow my mind with something you see in the future. 

Gordon Bell at Microsoft is working on wearable computing, where it literally records everything around you all the time — video, your conversations. He wants to get to where it’s like a pendant around your neck. We also have a company called Jawbone that makes peripherals for smart phones and tablets. Today, they sell Bluetooth headsets and speakers, but soon they will sell all kinds of wearable computing devices.

Will we soon be dealing with antigaming laws so that drivers can’t play wearable video games while driving down the highway?

That assumes they’re driving. Google is working on self-driving cars, and they seem to work. People are so bad at driving cars that computers don’t have to be that good to be much better. Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you’re like, Oh, my God, I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers. Ten to 20 years out, driving your car will be viewed as equivalently immoral as smoking cigarettes around other people is today.”

••••••••••

Gordon Bell records his whole life:

Tags: , ,

“We Would Always Have The Option Of Bailing Out On Our Lives With Each Other”

July 8, 2011 in Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Sherry Turkle, who is fond of robots, opines on identity in the Internet Age.

Tags:

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

July 8, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Is anyone else freaked out about stem cells in face creams?"(Image by Tomas Castelazo.)

Stem cells in a face cream!?

Is anyone else freaked out about stem cells in face creams? What if there were a way to get the benefits of stem cells… without actually putting them on your face… that would do something about the wrinkles this polluted, stressful city gives us?

••••••••••

Old Print Article: “Mrs. Reather’s Cactus,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1890)

July 8, 2011 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"It was an exceptionally valuable plant and could not be bought for its weight in gold."

Cactus thieves ran wild in Brooklyn back in the day, as a story filed in the May 15, 1890 Brooklyn Daily Eagle proves. An excerpt:

“John G. Reather, a retired German manufacturer, occupies, with his family, a neat frame cottage, surrounded with well kept lawns and flower beds, on Pacific Street, between Troy and Albany Avenues. Mrs. Reather is noted for her fondness for choice plants. In her garden are some of the rarest and most expensive varieties of flowers. Held up against the front of the house with a galvanized trellis was, until a few days ago, a valuable cactus. It was an exceptionally valuable plant and could not be bought for its weight in gold. Mrs. Reather had cultivated it from a slip obtained in Europe twenty-five years ago. It stood over 5 feet in height, and bore a flower over eight inches in diameter. Before removing to the Twenty-fifth Ward the family lived at the corner of Bergen Street and Carlton Avenue, and Mrs. Reather’s cactus was the subject of admiration to the residents generally thereabouts.

Last Saturday morning the cactus was found to have disappeared. It had evidently been dug up and removed during the night. A trail of dirt and particles of the plant led from the front yard of the house along the sidewalk toward Albany Avenue. The theft was reported to the police of the Twelfth Precinct and an advertisement offering a reward for information that would lead to its recovery was published in last night’s Eagle. Thus far no trace of the thief or thieves has been discovered. A possible clew is furnished the police by Mrs. Reather. She states that on Saturday morning a street vendor with a wagon load of plants drove up to her door. The peddler had two assistants who, in light of recent events, she recalls, expressed great admiration for the cactus. They asked Mrs. Reather the value of the plant and she replied that money could not buy it. She purchased one or two plants and the wagon drove off. Beside the cactus several other plants were stolen on the same night from the Pacific Street garden. Mrs. Reather stated yesterday evening that it was her firm belief that the peddler referred to came back after nightfall on Saturday and robbed her garden.”

Tags: ,

“Inmates And Their Guests Jostle To Place Bets At The Prison’s Raucous Cockfighting Arena”

July 8, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Margarita Island: Trouble in paradise. (Image by Spazzaven.)

Venezuelan prisons are often run by well-armed inmates, but the San Antonio penitentiary on Margarita Island is essentially Spring Break with Uzis and cockfights. The opening of Simon Romero’s stunning New York Times report:

“On the outside, the San Antonio prison on Margarita Island looks like any other Venezuelan penitentiary. Soldiers in green fatigues stand at its gates. Sharpshooters squint from watchtowers. Guards cast menacing glances at visitors before searching them at the entrance.

But once inside, the prison for more than 2,000 Venezuelans and foreigners held largely for drug trafficking looks more like a Hugh Hefner-inspired fleshpot than a stockade for toughened smugglers.

Bikini-clad female visitors frolic under the Caribbean sun in an outdoor pool. Marijuana smoke flavors the air. Reggaetón booms from a club filled with grinding couples. Paintings of the Playboy logo adorn the pool hall. Inmates and their guests jostle to place bets at the prison’s raucous cockfighting arena.”

Tags:

Sorry About The Site Being Down On Friday

July 8, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

The “main disk partition had fallen down.” Or so I’m told. My apologies.

“We Ought To Start Teaching Velázquez, Degas, And Matisse To Young Technologists”

July 8, 2011 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In his 1998 book, Machine Beauty: Elegance And The Heart Of Technology, David Gelernter implored technologists to study art history and create more pleasing products. It would seem his hopes have been realized, but not because of some academic intervention. It’s simply because of the iPod and subsequent Apple products which offered great external aesthetics and software to match. Competitors were forced to try to keep pace. An excerpt from Gelernter’s book:

“Great technology is beautiful technology. If we care about technology excellence, we are foolish not to train our young scientists and engineers in aesthetics, elegance, and beauty. The idea of such a thing happening is so far-fetched it’s funny — but, yes, good technology is terribly important to our modern economy and living standards and comfort levels, the ‘software crisis’ is real, we do get from our fancy computers a tiny fraction of the value they are capable of delivering…. We ought to start teaching Velázquez, Degas, and Matisse to young technologists right now on an emergency basis. Every technologist ought to study drawing, design, and art history…. Art education is no magic wand. But I can guarantee that such a course of action would make things better: our technology would improve, our technologists would improve, and we would never regret it.”

Tags:

Charles Bukowski Distrusting The Neighbors

July 7, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"There is enough genius in their hatred to kill you." (Image by Commonurbock23.)

THE GENIUS OF THE CROWD

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

Aftershave Commercial By Jean-Luc Godard

July 7, 2011 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The most unlikely and politicized Schick ad ever. (Thanks Open Culture.)

Another Jean-Luc Godard post:

Tags:

« Older entries § Newer entries »