Coming Soon: Airbag Suits For Motorcyclists

May 3, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The Dainese D-Tec, available this year. (Thanks Reddit.)

From a 2000 Popular Mechanics article about Dainese getting involved with the design of space suits: “Dainese may be known for its luxe motorcycle helmets and leathers, but the Italian company recently displayed two pieces of decidedly futuristic apparel at the 2008 Legend of the Motorcycle Concours d’Elegance.

In anticipation of NASA’s down-the-road Mars landing missions, Dainese has teamed up with MIT for an ambitious project that intends to pressurize an astronaut’s body without the usual bubble of air that creates bulky spacesuits. We’ve seen the suit concept before, but bringing on these bike gurus is just cool—and smart.

Ditching the old-school ‘Moon Man’ image, Dainese’s futuristic space duds feature a fitted design strung with intertwining black-and-gold filaments. It may look like a sleek bodysuit by Armani, but the filaments actually serve a crucial purpose: They run along Lines of Non Extension (LoNEs) on the human body, which according to chairman Lino Dainese ‘remain stationary even when we move. If these points are united,’ he explains, ‘the same pressure is established throughout the body.’

Oddly enough, Dainese insists that this concept of ‘adherent suits’ originated in the 1950s, but was abandoned because prototypes were too stiff. While the suit has been in development for several years, Dainese hopes the suit will be used when NASA finally sets foot on the Red Planet sometime around the year 2030.”

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“What You Are About To Hear Today Is Revolutionary”

May 3, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Lost in the collateral damage of the 1973 coup d’etat in Chile that toppled Salvador Allende was Project Cybersyn, a singular computerized business control management system set up by British organizational guru Stafford Beer. “Cybersyn,” a portmanteau for Cybernetic Science, was an odd mélange of socialism, biology, business dynamics, computer science and space-age accoutrements. Telex machines in a Santiago-based control room (which seemed straight out of Star Trek) were used to sync up Chilean factories and provide real-time management for them. Its goal was no less than to regulate the entire national economy. It seems like a terrible and fascinating idea.

The control center was destroyed during the coup, but Beer’s influence went far beyond Chile or the business world; Brian Eno, an acolyte, wrote the forward to a collection of Beer essays. The following is an excerpt of Beer’s writing about Project Cybersyn at its outset:

“Dear friends, I should like to greet you personally to this place, in the development of which I have taken enormous personal interest, and for this reason I am asking you to take a special interest in it. What you see is the outcome of 18 months of hard work on the part of a group of extremely professional Chilean engineers who have devoted their efforts to solving corporate management problems. They have created for us  a series of tools to help us in the task of controlling the economy. Modern science, and specifically electronic  computer science, offers the Government a new opportunity to address modern economic problems. We have seen that the power of this science has not  yet been used in the so-called developed countries. We have developed a system on our own. What you are about to hear today is revolutionary – not only because this is the first time that this is applied in the world –  it is revolutionary because we are making a deliberate effort to give the people the power that science gives to us, enabling them to use it freely.”

••••••••••

Beer briefly explains feedback:

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“The Republicans Won’t Try To Beat [Obama] From The Center And Will Thus Nominate A More Extreme Candidate”

May 3, 2011 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Damn, those Kenyans are good. (Image by Pete Souza.)

Economist Tyler Cowen’s instant reaction to the political ramifications of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, posted at 11:30pm on May 1:

“My quick take is that that Obama will be re-elected (getting Osama is way more important than Iraq, or Saddam in the American mind, attacks on American soil, etc.), at this point the Republicans won’t try to beat him from the center and will thus nominate a more extreme candidate and lose badly, and the most important effects will be on Pakistan, not this country.”

 

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Locomobile Comes To Riverhead, Long Island (1902)

May 3, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

 

From the April 23, 1900 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“The first horseless carriage to make its appearance in Riverhead arrived here yesterday by way of Quogue. It is the property of Richard Lawrence. Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence rode out from the city on the machine and say they had a delightful trip, covering the distance to Westhampton to excellent time, with no mishaps, the first day, and coming across the plains to their home the next morning. This latter section of the trip, covering twelve miles, was made in a trifle over an hour, which is excellent time considering the sandy road. The machine is a handsome road wagon, propelled by gasoline and is known as a locomobile. It attracted a large crowd at every place it stopped at in the village and several of the staid old farm horses went into fits at its approach.”

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“I Live Out On A Farm, Do Yoga In A Barn”

May 3, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Yoga + farming + dubious adult supervision. (Thanks Reddit.)

Mayor LaGuardia Outweighed By A Halibut (1939)

May 2, 2011 in Excerpts, Photography, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The "Little Flower," as the Mayor was known, with a big fish. (Image by C. M. Stieglitz.)

C.M Stieglitz of the long-defunct World Telegram took this classic 1939 photograph of New York’s Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia with a 300-pound halibut. LaGuardia, a commanding presence to say the least, was famous for everything from being one of Hitler’s earliest and most outspoken critics to reading comic strips to local children on the radio. He was also known to not be allergic to cameras. LaGuardia passed away from pancreatic cancer eight years after this photo was snapped. An exceprt from his New York Times obituary:

“A city of which he was as much a part as any of its public buildings awoke to find the little firebrand dead. Its people had laughed with him and at him, they had been entertained by his antics and they had been sobered by his warnings, and they found it difficult to believe that the voice he had raised in their behalf in the legislative halls of city and nation, on street corners and over the radio, was stilled forever.

Mayor O’Dwyer, his successor, expressed this feeling. Although Mr. La Guardia’s death was expected, the Mayor said, his passing brought with it ‘a shock of awful finality.’

‘In his death the people of the city, the State and nation have lost a great, patriotic American citizen,’ the Mayor said.”

••••••••••

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“She Was Looking Forward To ‘Earning Her Ears'”

May 2, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"Each year, between 7,000 and 8,000 college students and recent graduates work full-time, minimum-wage, menial internships at Disney World." (Image by NASA.)

From “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom,” Ross Perlin’s fun inside look at the Disney World intern program, just published in Guernica:

“At Disney World, interns are everywhere. The bellboy carrying luggage up to your room, the monorail ‘pilot’ steering a train at forty miles per hour, the smiling young woman scanning tickets at the gate. They corral visitors into the line for Space Mountain, dust sugar over funnel cakes, sell mouse ears, sweep up candy wrappers. Mickey, Donald, Pluto and the gang may well be interns, boiling in their furry costumes in the Florida heat. Visiting the Magic Kingdom recently, I tried to count them, scanning for the names of colleges on the blue and white name tags that all ‘cast members’ wear. They came from public and private schools, community colleges and famous research universities, from across America. International interns, hailing from at least nineteen different countries, were also out in force. A sophomore from Shanghai greeted customers at the Emporium on Main Street, U.S.A. She was one of hundreds of Chinese interns, she told me, and she was looking forward to ‘earning her ears.’ Disney runs one of the world’s largest internship programs. Each year, between 7,000 and 8,000 college students and recent graduates work full-time, minimum-wage, menial internships at Disney World. Typical stints last four to five months, but the ‘advantage programs’ may last up to seven months.” (Thanks Longform.)

••••••••••

Mickey Mouse debuts in 1928:

The great Robert Smigel takes aim at the Mouse House:

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

May 2, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"I am willing to shave my entire head."

human hair 12.5″ – $600 (SoHo)

This is 12.5 inches of beautiful, thick, and full bodied virgin hair. My hair is generally considered to be dirty blonde. Some may consider it brown with natural blonde highlights.

I grew my hair out for the purpose of selling it. This means that it is completely virgin. My hair has never been blow dried, straightened, died, or chemically treated in anyway. I have never used any hair products in my hair aside from the very occasional use of shampoo and conditioner. I am also not a smoker.

My hair is wavy/curly and i am willing to shave my entire head.

I get constant compliments from woman about how unique and wonderful my hair is. Often times they will tell me that my hair is both the color and texture they have tried so hard coax out of their own hair using different treatments with no success.

I feel that my asking price is more than fair however I will take other offers into consideration.

Nabokov Examines Lolita Covers

May 2, 2011 in Books, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Open Culture dug up this cool, brief clip of Vladimir Nabokov perusing covers of various editions of Lolita. Has there ever been a better written novel than Lolita? Maybe Madame Bovary? I don’t know.

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“And Once A Week, On Saturday Night, Its One Great Moment Of Release, It Explodes”

May 2, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Several decades ago, Manhattan had a cachet the other boroughs didn’t enjoy, and bridge-and-tunnelers, as they were called, had one strike against them based on their home address. But during the 1970s, when class was a real and palpable thing in NYC, the outsiders from the outer boroughs began storming the city on Saturday nights and made it their own with the help of leisure suits and strobe lights. Nik Cohn captured the class consciousness of the city’s disco revolution in “Tribal Rites of a New Saturday Night,” an article in the June 7, 1976 issue of New York magazine, although he later acknowledged falsifying facts. At any rate, it became the basis of Saturday Night Fever, and that sensation made disco explode all over again. The opening of Cohn’s article:

“Within the closed circuits of rock & roll fashion, it is assumed that New York means Manhattan. The center is everything, all the rest irrelevant. If the other boroughs exist at all, it is merely as a camp joke—Bronx-Brooklyn-Queens, monstrous urban limbo, filled with everyone who is no one.

In reality, however, almost the reverse is true. While Manhattan remains firmly rooted in the sixties, still caught up in faction and fad and the dreary games of decadence, a whole new generation has been growing up around it, virtually unrecognized. Kids of sixteen to twenty, full of energy, urgency, hunger. All the things, in fact, that the Manhattan circuit, in its smugness, has lost.

They are not so chic, these kids. They don’t haunt press receptions or opening nights; they don’t pose as street punks in the style of Bruce Springsteen, or prate of rock & Rimbaud. Indeed, the cults of recent years seem to have passed them by entirely. They know nothing of flower power or meditation, pansexuality, or mind expansion. No waterbeds or Moroccan cushions, no hand-thrown pottery, for them. No hep jargon either, and no Pepsi revolutions. In many cases, they genuinely can’t remember who Bob Dylan was, let alone Ken Kesey or Timothy Leary. Haight Ashbury, Woodstock, Altamont—all of them draw a blank. Instead, this generation’s real roots lie further back, in the fifties, the golden age of Saturday nights.

The cause of this reversion is not hard to spot. The sixties, unlike previous decades, seemed full of teenage money. No recession, no sense of danger. The young could run free, indulge themselves in whatever treats they wished. But now there is shortage once more, just as there was in the fifties. Attrition, continual pressure. So the new generation takes few risks. It goes through high school, obedient; graduates, looks for a job, saves and plans. Endures. And once a week, on Saturday night, its one great moment of release, it explodes.” (Thanks to The Electric Typewriter.)

••••••••••

Steve Rubell tries to cash in with an album called A Night at Studio 54:

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It All Started When We Were Caught Off Guard

May 2, 2011 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

And so it ends, to some extent, in the same way. At long last.

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Old Print Article: “A Brooklynite Buncoed,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1890)

May 1, 2011 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"An undersized Italian and a fairly prosperous junkman a few days ago went to New York to deposit $217 of his earnings in a Broadway bank."

Swindles in New York didn’t start with Bernie Madoff, as the following story from the bunco files of the July 21, 1890 Brooklyn Daily Eagle proves. An excerpt:

“Caromo De Vitto, of 43 Williams street, an undersized Italian  and a fairly prosperous junkman, a few days ago went to New York to deposit $217 of his earnings in a Broadway bank. He fell into the hands of a bunco man and now mourns the loss of his money. It was in front of old St. Paul’s Church that the junkman was accosted by a suave Italian. This Italian said he was a German, that his name was Romaldo Marano and that he had been in the mines in Virginia. He was generous and confiding. The Brooklynite was asked to join him in a drink and the invitation was accepted. On the way down to a barroom on West street, the two men unbosomed themselves to each other, particularly as to their financial standing, De Vitto truthfully. The man who had been in the mines in Virginia said he had a lot of currency which he had brought up from Virginia. He did not know how to dispose of the stuff.

‘It’s all in this handkerchief,’ said Marano, as he pulled a soiled package from an inner pocket. De Vitto agreed to assist him in having the currency exchanged for more desirable money, but just then a pressing engagement at the Italian consul’s office would prevent him. They agreed to meet again, and an hour later, as De Vitto came out of the Chesebrough building, State street, the stranger with the soiled package was the first to greet him. The package was placed in De Vitto’s hands, and as a guarantee he tendered Marano the $217 he had intended to deposit.

"The package contained a small sack of Carolina tobacco."

‘I have not the slightest doubt as to your honesty and integrity,’ said the bunco man, as he sat down on the stoop of the Chesebrough building, while the junkman scurried off to an exchange office with the currency package in his hand.

A few minutes later De Vitto broke open the package in an exchange office in West street. The package contained a small sack of Carolina tobacco. The shock was great and De Vitto fainted. When he recovered he hurried over to the Cheseborough building, but the Virginian miner from Germany had disappeared.

The police of the Church street station were apprised of the swindling transaction and last night Detective Flynn arrested the bunco man. At the Tombs police court this morning Marano was held in $1,000 to answer at the court of general sessions.”

 

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Wired For Thought With Smart-Home Appliances

May 1, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The NOUS (Neuro-Operated Utility System) allows disabled people control over their homes. (Thanks Singularity Hub.)

“I Have Been Shot At, Without Being Hit, Much More Seriously”

May 1, 2011 in Excerpts, Film, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“You may speculate as much as you want.” (Image by erinc salor.)

As Werner Herzog takes an unlikely step into the world of 3-D with Cave of Forgotten Dreams, he receives a smart profile in GQ courtesy of Chris Heath. The opening of “Mad German Auteur, Now in 3-D!“:

“Today Werner Herzog has chosen to be interviewed indoors. Perhaps it’s for the best. One of the more puzzling and improbable moments in the legendary 68-year-old German director’s career, and there have been many, came when he was doing a filmed interview for a BBC program called The Culture Show in 2006. He was standing a few miles from here on some barren scrubland in the Hollywood Hills, chosen so that the city of Los Angeles would be the backdrop falling away behind him, and he was explaining how nobody seems to care about his films in Germany when an unexpected noise interrupted him. Herzog flinched. Understandably so, because he had just been shot.

It has never been established who was doing the shooting—if it was more than just someone with an air rifle taking a random pop at a stranger for fun, it may have been because Herzog and the film crew were trespassing. Afterward, Herzog refused to call the police, fearing a SWAT-type overreaction, and he also declined, for the same reason, to seek medical help. Still, the pellet made its mark—under his mauve and pink windmill-motif boxer shorts, now blood-blotted, was a seeping entry wound near Herzog’s groin.

This shooting is an event he still chooses to play down—’It was kind of insignificant’—although I get the sense he also quite likes the opportunity to play it down. ‘It was just very silly,’ he insists. ‘I have been shot at, without being hit, much more seriously. What I experienced here was completely harmless.’ Barely worth noting. Though when I persist in challenging him to name one other person who has ever been shot in this way while doing a TV interview in America, he naturally has no answer. ‘The funny thing is, people sometimes believe I make things up, and nobody would believe it if it hadn’t been caught on tape. Nobody would have believed it.’

He is right. It seemed so unlikely, so preposterous, and yet somehow so perfectly Herzog. So much so, I tell him, that I think some people still suspect it was a great stunt he’d somehow arranged.

‘You may speculate as much as you want,’ says Herzog, a man whose own work frequently involves fascinating juxtapositions of fact and fantasy, and who is long accustomed to drawing such suspicions.”

••••••••••

“It is not a significant wound.”

••••••••••

Other Werner Herzog posts:


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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

May 1, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"Overwhelmed by all of this technology."

Wanted – a seasoned techie (Manhattan/Brooklyn)

I am a middle aged man who is overwhelmed by all of this technology. I am looking for someone to come to my home and assemble and connect my printer/fax/scanner to my new PC. As well, while you’re here, please help me download music to my IPOD. These are all Christmas presents, but I’ve been too daunted to tackle them and I really don’t have the head for it. I am offering $150 CASH on the barrel head, so if you want to make some fast cash, hit me up. Thanks.

“You’ll Be So Happy With The Results, You Won’t Even Notice My Withering, Hairless Boy”

May 1, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

All kinds of special. (Thanks to The Late Live Show.)

Afflictor Nation: Great Britain Is The Greatest

May 1, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

Nuts in a vise now. (Image by Alexandre Goulet.)

Even the royal wedding couldn’t distract Britain from Afflictor for too long, as that country remained Afflictor Nation champ in April, sending this site more unique visitors than any other foreign country. I would make fun of Britain for still having a royal family in this day and age, but I live in a country where the Kardashians are the royal family, so I’ll shut up.

Top 5 Finishers in April:

  • Great Britain
  • Canada
  • Germany
  • Netherlands
  • Spain

Jack Kerouac At His Absolute Loopiest (1966)

May 1, 2011 in Books, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Italian journalist Fernanda Pivano conducted this interview with the Beat writer. He died three years after the segment was recorded. Cause of death was cirrhosis, unsurprisingly. Pivano passed away at age 92 in 2009.

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“Maybe Knowing More About The World Is So Scary That Everyone Wishes They Had A Brother, Even If It’s Big Brother”

May 1, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Old Media gradually surrendered its omnipotence for a series of short-term financial gains, as technologies introduced from the 1960s forward slowly destroyed the accepted business model, and put people in control of the information. New Media isn’t accepting any such cheap payoff. We’ll get more for free, but, paradoxically, the price will be higher. Much to the good, the power to actively disseminate and question information is in the hands of the people as there is little or no barrier to publication. But there are costs. Social networks, search engines and smart phones want to analyze us, track us, crunch us and commodify us. Some people object to the intrusion greatly, even violently, and they will unfortunately be heard from. But the surprising thing is, most people in this age appear to actually want to be watched–or noticed, at least. Our ballooning authority seems to have inflated our egos, and those egos demand attention. Or maybe knowing more about the world is so scary that everyone wishes they had a brother, even if it’s Big Brother.

••••••••••

Home video recorders diminish the importance of appointment television:

Information and entertainment need to be portable:

Remote control lets you mute commericals:

This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

April 30, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

 

“Highlights” From Another Week Of Afflictor Crap

April 30, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Focusing on the big picture since 2009.

  • Classic Film: Smile (1975)
  • Joan Didion looking at the dark side of California Dreaming in 1966.
  • Nick Sagan sent a message into outer space when he was a child.
  • David Hockney becomes obsessed with creating art on the iPhone.

Robert Goddard Makes Rockets In Roswell (1940)

April 29, 2011 in Excerpts, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Goddard, far left, was a rocket man. (Image by National Geographic Society.)

Known as the “Father of American Rocketry,” Dr. Robert H. Goddard believed even before the 1920s that we could reach the stars, though some scoffed at him. In this classic 1940 photograph, Goddard and his team labor over a rocket with turbopumps in his workshop in Roswell, New Mexico. An excerpt from a Time article about the naysayers who took aim at Goddard’s far-flung ambitions:

“Robert Goddard was not a happy man when he read his copy of the New York Times on Jan. 13, 1920. For some time, he had feared he might be in for a pasting in the press, but when he picked up the paper that day, he was stunned.

Not long before, Goddard, a physics professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., had published an arid little paper on an outrageous topic, rocket travel. Unlike most of his colleagues, Goddard believed rocketry was a viable technology, and his paper, primly titled ‘A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes,’ was designed to prove it. For the lay reader, there wasn’t much in the writing to excite interest, but at the end, the buttoned-up professor unbuttoned a bit. If you used his technology to build a rocket big enough, he argued, and if you primed it with fuel that was powerful enough, you just might be able to reach the moon with it.

Goddard meant his moon musings to be innocent enough, but when the Times saw them, it pounced. As anyone knew, the paper explained with an editorial eye roll, space travel was impossible, since without atmosphere to push against, a rocket could not move so much as an inch. Professor Goddard, it was clear, lacked ‘the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.'”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

April 29, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"We can meet at a eatery in Manhattan." (Image by Alisdair McDiarmid.)

free lunch

Would you like free lunch?

I would like to treat you. We can meet at a eatery in Manhattan.

I would like to talk to you about questions every person asks in life.

Questions such as:

Why am I going through so much difficulty in life?
Why do I have so many problems and troubles?
Why am I feeling this emptyness inside?
Why am I feeling so lonely and depressed?
Is there true love out there?

If you are asking these questions, I would like to help you.

Please email me and let’s talk over lunch.

 

“Dennis Hopper Was Undisturbed. Furor Trails Him Like A Pet Anaconda.”

April 29, 2011 in Excerpts, Film, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Open Culture posted a bunch of Andy Warhol screen tests, including the Dennis Hopper one from 1965, which reminded me of “The Easy Rider Runs Wild in the Andes,” a great 1970 Life magazine article about Hopper that I came across on Google Books. At the time of the Life piece, Hopper had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted as a filmmaker thanks to the Easy Rider phenomenon. Such freedom poses dangers for a free spirit. Hopper went to Peru with a cast that included Samuel Fuller and Toni Basil, and embarked on a quixotic, confused project, eventually entitled The Last Movie, which pissed away all of his new capital. His career never completely recovered until his insane turn in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.

From Brad Darrach’s Life article: “Peru has painfully learned to live with earthquakes, avalanches, tidal waves, jaguars and poisonous snakes. But Dennis Hopper was something else. When the director of Easy Rider arrived in Lima several months ago, a reporter from La Prensa asked his opinion of marijuana (illegal in Peru) and ‘homosexualism.’ Taking a long reflective pull on an odd-looking cigarette. Dennis said he thought everybody should ‘do his thing,’ and then allowed that he himself had lived with a lesbian and found it ‘groovy.’ No remotely comparable statement had ever appeared in a Peruvian newspaper. The clergy screamed, the ruling junta’s colonels howled. Within 24 hours the government denounced the article and issued a decree repealing freedom of the press.

Dennis Hopper was undisturbed. Furor trails him like a pet anaconda. At 34, he is known in Hollywood as a sullen renegade who talks revolution, settles arguments with karate, goes to bed with groups and has taken trips on everything you can swallow or shoot.

On the other hand, in the salons and galleries of Los Angeles and New York he is recognized as a talented poet, painter, sculptor, photographer and as a leading collector of pop-art. He is also, after eight years on the movie industry’s blacklist, the hottest director in Hollywood. Easy Rider, which cost only $370,000, is rapidly approaching a projected $50 million gross. In the process it has polarized a new film audience of under-30s, generated a new school of talented young directors such as Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich, Richard Rush and Melvin Van Peebles, and established the style of a New Hollywood in which producers wear love beads instead of diamond stickpins and blow grass when they used to chew Coronoas.”

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Graham Parker On The Modeling Industry

April 29, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"She had lit a cigarette...in an aiport where you get ...all your fingers taken off for smoking."

 

“Get Started, Start A Fire”

The Mona Lisa’s sister doesn’t smile

She tried to pose but only for a while

Leonardo sent her home

Since then she has lived alone

With her few belongings and a copy

Of a painting of herself unhappy

She is going to burn it when she’s ready
 

Get started, start a fire
 

Marilyn was lying all alone

With an empty bottle by the phone

Kennedy was not around

She was cold when she was found

But she’d gone where goddesses are sleeping

Where the molten tongues of flame are leaping

Or where the angel’s hearts are heating

 

Joan of Arc was burning at the stake

Somebody had made a big mistake

She had lit a cigarette

In an aiport where you get

All your fingers taken off for smoking.

Meanwhile up the road a factory’s choking

The ones who killed her work there I’m not joking

••••••••••

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