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Post by neil on Jul 30, 2021 15:41:15 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Jul 30, 2021 16:18:18 GMT -5
Roberto MATTA - Chile - The Earth Is A Man - 1940
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Post by neil on Jul 30, 2021 17:36:12 GMT -5
cow/flat rock
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Post by neil on Aug 3, 2021 19:59:41 GMT -5
THE INFLATABLE VOLUNTEER Steve Aylett 1999
What I told the shrink
We’ll skip the childhood bollocks and cut to the mayhem eh? England’s a shower curtain for the modest butcher, as you know. Minotaur’s always saying so long as you evade the spotlight you can learn all you want. ‘Too much bleating and the true spice becomes a bright stew of obsolete crossways,’ he reckons—so in the Shop o’ Fury he hammers tears into coins and spoons strange, articulated soup all the time. ‘Prayer loves detail—slows you down.’
‘And delays the disappointment?’ I offered once, but he just stared at me—face like a scone, you know. There he was, like, surrounded by radiator soil and little self-assembly resentment generators, accusing me.
But I didn’t have anything better to do so I watched him prepare an ache channel in the sick air. ‘Later I soak the bone in the dark,’ he said, ‘failing in rain and silently wheeling my hand, like so—that’s to attract the inhabitants.’
‘In—inhabitants?’
‘Of fiendhouse—there’s one in here.’—And he held up the bone like a telescope to my eye—I saw rich illness and screaming smoke, yellow minds withdrawing and infinite.
‘A crumb is logical, though discarded. Life is life.’
In the dark room ruins entire rushed up the walls, a distance quivering in old windows—then he slammed the bone down like an inverted glass, cutting off the process.
‘Pour ill fate in their face and sew the wound alive.’
I’d heard of this before as Empty Fred had used a similar principle to etherically cut-and-paste a sort of horse stable on to some wasteland near his gaff. It was meant as a place for Godber’s Troops to hide when the cops were after them. Empty Fred had joined the Troops because they were the only bastards distracted enough to ignore him. The downside was at regular intervals he’d be hauled out of bed and propelled through a hull door with only a parachute between him and the slamming palm of god. Reluctantly wore the uniform sometimes, blank epaulets staple-gunned to his shoulders—inverted commas I suppose, raised eyebrows, irony. That’s how he meant it but they looked like banana peel to me, or the aura stain of his imminent death.
‘What did you see in the betsy stick brother?’ he asked, drinking.
‘Scalped abdomen, hypodermic chaos, brains aborted, rope darkness, charring avatars. Mechanical canyon lined with waitresses. Anything pales after that, brother. Stay away.’
And he planted oh so subtly the notion to boost the bone. ‘Boost the bone,’ he said. ‘We’ll be rich. Lobster lunches with the dead etc.’
But when the time came he was off on some practice drop into New Cross—bloody nightmare apparently. Parachutes everywhere, troops sobbing, screech of cars, twenty people dead.
Anyway so I got Eddie into the scam. Him, me and the Rubitron went into town to test the wares in a cinema showing a director’s balls-up of something that had been fine to begin with. No need for remorse if things went to hell.
‘What did you see in the betsy stick brother?’ Eddie asked, drinking.
‘Only beauty,’ I said.
‘That’s nuthin’,’ he laughed as we neared the venue. ‘I once pressed the cheek of a cat and it let out a sort of laugh, like a chuckle or something.’
‘Or something? Don’t you know?’
‘I sort of can’t say if it was exactly—’
‘Was it a snigger then?’
‘Look it was a chuckle okay.’
‘You getting all this Rube?’
‘Every word.’
‘You aren’t a cop right Miss Ruby?’
‘What’s it to you? And anyway I’m not interested in.’ And she fixed me with a stare and said:
‘Little boys’ games.’
Then she strutted off till the magnetic pull to follow her diminished.
‘Suspect convenience re the knife Eddie.’
‘“I had it because I love it.”’
‘That’s your get-out eh? An invertebrate compensates for his lack with a sudden lunge. You’ll fry.’
‘Seated?’
‘I imagine so.’
‘So long as I’m seated.’
‘It’s curious how different fools are when completely toasted.’
‘Different how.’
‘More character. Variegation.’
‘And corrugation?’
‘You’ve got the idea. Darkness to show there’s something unrevealed—like that dog over there. Keeps its mouth closed. So when it springs at you for no reason, gob railed with teeth, you know it all at once through the sudden contrast.’
‘You mean it’s holding something back.’
‘For greater impact at the fine hour, that’s right sonny jim.’
Inside we dunked the frightener in a juice bucket, planted it near the speakers and waited for a reborn breeze to bless the cobwebs. Almost immediately spinelight circled the room and there swooped the downside. Abscess puppets resplendent in trailing gore, each skull as individual as a snowflake. A massive igneous brain dragging wires dumped itself on the front row. The air segmented, squirting blur-trains of spooky muscle toward us, which landed as crone-throated corpses in our laps. Dimmer ones were prowling up the aisle, I could see. The stench of fear and poached blood. Swooping shreds shrieked over our heads.
‘Rude aren’t they?’
But parts were already redissolving to leave only some hardening connective tissue on the walls.
Sniggering on the way out we were brought up sharp by the bloke on the door. There he was, punctate gill flanges and all. ‘Bones is nuthin’,’ Eddie squawked but I shut him up—I could deal with this.
Tried a sort of punching gambit, with shouts and a murderous expression. Stood up to think it over again. Eddie dabbed gore from his muzzle and tried to see.
Reasoned with the bloke man-to-man. ‘So there’s corpses at large,’ I began matter-of-factly. ‘You’ll have a paper face and eyelids like the wings of a moth before you really understand what happened just now. And so what? Spectres echo here anyway don’t they?’
The doorman clutched his speech in bared teeth. ‘Gorillas!’ he said, and immediately said it again louder. He was the sort. Boot you in the gob and bye-bye accent. Luckily just then a few strays whistled out of a vent and tore off part of his forehead. Who had the whip hand on these mothers? Not me. Gave me the heeby-jeebies. Cosmic sepsis, ghost-stream, jellyheads—well that’s all right if you can stand the pace. Everyone reckons spirits are a right laugh to flurry and snort over the houses—don’t you believe it.
‘So you used the core stick eh?’ Bob rumbled later, glaring. ‘There you go again agog at the wrong marvels. Know what I’d have done at your age if a being like Minotaur showed me the way?’
‘Carve your initials on his face? Ha ha ha.’
Bob’s eyes rolled up into his mind.
Of course we stay friends despite all this—just the other day me and the others were in the bar talking about Carver I think it was. ‘The point is,’ I said, ‘a wrinkled brain like his is a geological mystery, rubber and passive.’
‘For your sake,’ Minotaur remarked, ‘I hope it’s that and nothing more.’
‘And just what the hell do you mean by—’
—and Bob slammed in through the flap-dramatic door. ‘I wish it was autumn, your race weeping by night, embraces up its sleeve and a knife in its hand. Goats stop talking, goats stop talking.’
‘You all right Bob?’
‘Do I look all right.’
‘A drink for my friend Bob here—and one for yourself, we’re all friends here aren’t we?’
‘For a week we are. Then…’
‘Then?’
‘Then spiders flex in the dark.’
‘In the dark eh,’ I said, nodding intensely. ‘Spiders. Well now it’s all becoming clear to me. Isn’t it Eddie. Becoming clear.’
‘Oh yes, clear all right.’
‘Well that shows how much you know Eddie. It’s as clear as my arse, that’s what we know here though none of us has the balls to admit it. Bob here, this man here, he’s as barking mad as anyone I’ve looked at in my life, and I for one—’
‘Yes?’ said Minotaur.
‘You think I’ll be held back now? I was about to say, yes, I for one am getting just the hell out of here before we’re all of us, yes everyone, sucked into this bastard’s game. Out of my way.’
‘You’ll pay for this.’
‘Will I. We’ll understand later who’ll pay, sonny jim.’
So there I was in front of the firing squad and they asked me as they do about the last notion—have you any final notions they asked as they were strapping on the old blindfold.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’d like to tell you about the time I rode on a dog and thought for a moment I was a better man than I am.’
‘Well don’t keep us poised here all afternoon,’ they said, ‘it’s not healthy for any of us.’
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Post by neil on Aug 9, 2021 18:13:17 GMT -5
bury me in Iceland and i'll be happy for the rest of my life
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Post by neil on Aug 9, 2021 18:18:02 GMT -5
excerpt from THE INFLATABLE VOLUNTEER
‘Ah now I differ there—I recall an occasion I was a world-class hero and lovely boy. It began in the metallic reign of hypocrisy, all gaudy and bejewelled with tumbling midgets. Advantages in operation, Eddie ventured into the traffic…’ And here I told a tale so full of wonder and magic I nearly blinded myself. Whole empires were rendered in fly-leg detail, mangrove domes sweating rain, enchantments nabbed amid the closed snores of the innocent, balloon-trousered princes punching like a girl, convict voyages to temperatures unknown, expensive wounds inflicted by nutters, dogs wearing lipstick, litter temples and sacrifice. Hours had passed and I was just getting into the swing. ‘So there I was, ringside in a scuba mask, a gimmick I thought would distract the victor from punching Eddie. “Stay down Eddie, stay down! Everyone’s laughin’ at ya!” Eddie looked up with an unseeing eye. His cauterised innocence was still smoking, as you can imagine. And—’
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Post by neil on Aug 20, 2021 16:15:08 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Sept 17, 2021 9:37:28 GMT -5
FRIDAY VERSE OF FIRE ARCHIVES theprojects.proboards.com/thread/2932/friday-verse-fire-archiveswandering around trying to find my way on the screen of my Paleolithic cellophane telephonic device theprojects.proboards.com/thread/2078/true-northApr 13, 2008 at 11:35pm true north Africa wears veldt Argentine pampas Kubrick knew something about monolith leaning tower Washington monument Code of Hammurabi on its stele one finite vertical element one not quite finite horizontal plane either or both may burn mountains come close but no cigar a finger under certain circumstances if a basalt column went for a walk forgetting dependence moved behind a mirage to avoid alarming anyone found the place its shadow fit merged back into solid and sensible Easter Island still innocent of faces not requested although the silence is appropriate trees left by forest fires popsickle sticks / frozen ropes working backward from the beginning ends in feet in shoes in decision
font = trebuchet ms color = abcdef
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Post by neil on Sept 17, 2021 10:49:14 GMT -5
. . . Mavis Ruel_06.21.08 Lemon Stedder keyed the side door, twist, and entered. Chuck Taylors make little sound of themselves prescribing a biomechanical curve. Toland Valence had said that a proper person could tell the sound of red Chucks from white. Toland was of course welcome to opine as he might. The two hundred fifty eight pounds thus carried would sometimes register shots of complaint depending on the robustness of surface. Across the floor of 'Stedder's Place' there was an accompaniment of growly boards and fractious joints. Lemon stood by the double front doors and decided to hold a space of watch behind their square panes. Mavis Ruel and Ad Shook marked the thatched front mat, backs to him. Mavis was 81 years old. Ad was 77. Lemon's 54 briney years were yet a bucket stout enough for the marathon friendship of the two women. Ad and Mavis did not necessarily face one another when speaking. Neither were given to decoration. This morning they were north-north east and north-west to Lemon's north, steady working a staccato convocation that wore Studebaker mileage through road grime and frequent oil changes. Lemon was playing, but not by much. Mavis had reached the terminus of an appreciative horizon speculus when her peripheral vision hinted a sentience.
Ad.
Alright.
Mavis bent down and inward to inspect a mud that wasn't on the heel of her boot. Lemon was not surprised to see her face return climbing up the panes eyes on him. He was surprised to see Mavis' fingers articulate a ribald signal clearly bearing his address. Lemon's diaphragm spasmed and his shoulders wobbled in small arcs. He turned his head to set his jaw into a collarbone that his eyes be no traitors. With a faux composure Lemon returned unprepared for either woman, their smooth grey eyes and now four hands blue veined quadrupling the same philippic that had unmanned him as a singlet. Always they won these two, not that there was doubt. Lemon opened the front doors as an usher.. . .
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Post by neil on Sept 17, 2021 10:50:48 GMT -5
above font color = fuschia
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Post by neil on Oct 6, 2021 8:26:58 GMT -5
a PM? for me? gee-whizz ...
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Post by neil on Oct 6, 2021 8:54:36 GMT -5
HIT LIST Dec 14, 2006
rust-free hypocrisy back masked a track sublimated and insinuated into a Van de Graaff generator perpetuating a chime that Jimmy Page could only dream in Zoso stereo \ better than before bad as a bullet in the chamber hammer down N fire ball flowering beauty before the beastliness \ habit hangs its hat on a threadbare cliche heavy on the mayonnaise little dimples spangle those floating lily eyes garnishing the moat around Shirley's temples \ congratulations were back-ordered overlooked in the out box under invoices for sea monkeys and glue-on sideburns sell only seventy seed packets to win back the next ten years of your twenty-five to life \ attack frogs hung coagulated at the corner leather collars turned up against the liberal backlash muffins hot as chrome toasters tease a target under the street lamp lay the crosshairs on a frown line and easy squeeze goodnight \ TragedyAndy smacked the door clapper clogging while he trick or treaty treated with a bag half full of ignorance and completely empty often derelict badgeless in an unmarked taco stand swinging from the bucket of a brontosaurus crane-neck rolling the wrecking ball in pink tissue paper \ blue for boys holding your breath while she slips her coat on over a layer of primer PrimaDonna and PollyAnna hand in hand on the front porch swing fluorescing their Pepsodent smiles a million miles from Kansas and Toto too resplendent in perfect indifference even a blind pig can find an acorn now and then
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Post by neil on Oct 10, 2021 12:13:33 GMT -5
3 years ago I hit a plateau; a place where my health was no longer what it was. Recently I've decided it was PTSD from the Trump administration, which makes sense. Combine 30 years worth of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), the first 16 years of which had cost me the ability to work, with significant emotional stressors and difficulty for a healthy person could (did) become a significant setback. Planning has never been my forté. Any chronic condition will teach you about planning: how to adapt, how to calibrate, how to live hour to hour, when and to what extent plans even make sense. One thing I can almost always do is write, as in poetry, though I haven't. Mostly reading. Head down, digging a furrow through book after book. If, suppose, I had begun at this time last year to write a poem a day, there would now be 365 reasonably fresh arrows in my poetic quiver. Eric has moved to live with his mother, so I inherit his perfectly servicable Tiny-House® which I have not used and for which I have formulated no plans. Perhaps I should locate "The-Key®." Sweet D justed asked me to tote a laundry bale. Guess I will.
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Post by neil on Oct 12, 2021 18:54:27 GMT -5
Aldous Huxley freighted the world with much rubbish, not least of which a tome entitled THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY. Aldous being not wise enough to eschew authoring books for which he was not fit. Donald Trump has yet to author his masterwork, THE PERINEAL PHILOSOPHY. Hear! Hear!
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Post by neil on Oct 14, 2021 13:16:42 GMT -5
Edit Attachments 3/3 files 1 MB max per attachment Attachments not manually inserted in your post will be appended to the end
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Post by neil on Oct 14, 2021 13:22:07 GMT -5
www.livescience.com/51399-eulers-identity.htmlEuler’s Identity: 'The Most Beautiful Equation' By Robert Coolman July 01, 2015 (excerpt) Euler’s identity is an equality found in mathematics that has been compared to a Shakespearean sonnet and described as "the most beautiful equation." It is a special case of a foundational equation in complex arithmetic called Euler’s Formula, which the late great physicist Richard Feynman called in his lectures "our jewel" and "the most remarkable formula in mathematics." In an interview with the BBC, Prof David Percy of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications said Euler's Identity was “a real classic and you can do no better than that … It is simple to look at and yet incredibly profound, it comprises the five most important mathematical constants.” Euler's Identity is written simply as: eiπ + 1 = 0 The five constants are: The number 0. The number 1. The number π, an irrational number (with unending digits) that is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It is approximately 3.14159… The number e, also an irrational number. It is the base of natural logarithms that arises naturally through study of compound interest and calculus. The number e pervades math, appearing seemingly from nowhere in a vast number of important equations. It is approximately 2.71828…. The number i, defined as the square root of negative one: √(-1). The most fundamental of the imaginary numbers, so called because, in reality, no number can be multiplied by itself to produce a negative number (and, therefore, negative numbers have no real square roots). But in math, there are many situations where one is forced to take the square root of a negative. The letter i is therefore used as a sort of stand-in to mark places where this was done. Prolific mathematician Leonhard Euler was an 18th-century Swiss-born mathematician who developed many concepts that are integral to modern mathematics. He spent most of his career in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians of all time, according to the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA), with 886 papers and books published. Much of his output came during the last two decades of his life, when he was totally blind. There was so much work that the St. Petersburg Academy continued publishing his work posthumously for more than 30 years. Euler's important contributions include Euler's Formula and Euler's Theorem, both of which can mean different things depending on the context. According to the USNA, in mechanics, there are "Euler angles (to specify the orientation of a rigid body), Euler's theorem (that every rotation has an axis), Euler's equations for motion of fluids, and the Euler-Lagrange equation (that comes from calculus of variations)."
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Post by neil on Oct 14, 2021 13:30:35 GMT -5
Euler’s Pioneering Equation: The most beautiful theorem in mathematics Robin Wilson
In 1988 The Mathematical Intelligencer, a quarterly mathematics journal, carried out a poll to find the most beautiful theorem in mathematics. Twenty-four theorems were listed and readers were invited to award each a 'score for beauty'. While there were many worthy competitors, the winner was 'Euler's equation'. In 2004 Physics World carried out a similar poll of 'greatest equations', and found that among physicists Euler's mathematical result came second only to Maxwell's equations. The Stanford mathematician Keith Devlin reflected the feelings of many in describing it as "like a Shakespearean sonnet that captures the very essence of love, or a painting which brings out the beauty of the human form that is far more than just skin deep, Euler's equation reaches down into the very depths of existence."
What is it that makes Euler's identity, e]iPi + 1 = 0, so special?
In Euler's Pioneering Equation Robin Wilson shows how this simple, elegant, and profound formula links together perhaps the five most important numbers in mathematics, each associated with a story in themselves: the number 1, the basis of our counting system; the concept of zero, which was a major development in mathematics, and opened up the idea of negative numbers; Pi an irrational number, the basis for the measurement of circles; the exponential e, associated with exponential growth and logarithms; and the imaginary number i, the square root of -1, the basis of complex numbers. Following a chapter on each of the elements, Robin Wilson discusses how the startling relationship between them was established, including the several near misses to the discovery of the formula.
Year: 2018 Publisher: Oxford University Press Language: english Pages: 200 / 171 ISBN 10: 0198794924 ISBN 13: 9780198794929
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Post by neil on Oct 14, 2021 13:39:19 GMT -5
ibid Coolman
The polar form requires that φ be measured in radians. One radian (1rad) is approximately 57.3 degrees; it’s the measure of angle made when a circle’s radius is wrapped against that circle’s circumference. A measure of π radians wraps half way around a circle; a measure of 2π radians wraps a full circle.
Stop, stop, stop what you're doing right there. That, that what it is right there on this very page, makes exactly zero sense. Did someone get the idea that arbitrary complexity was a thing? Apparently. No, no, no pathetic excuses.
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Post by neil on Oct 15, 2021 19:46:25 GMT -5
FARMER REPORTS CROP CIRCLES All livestock had been arrayed within the design in alphabetical order by species; within species group from least to most heavy; all equidistant from the sides of the pattern and equally spaced from each other. Each animal was standing, in REM sleep.
Farmer was heard to mutter, "Dope shit fareal."
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Post by neil on Oct 17, 2021 10:53:23 GMT -5
For brunch we are having Swedish Metaphors, tossed, lasagna layered, Klein bottle complicated : MY NIGHT, by Asa Younts, 3rd grade, Mr. Fulsumme, 2nd period My night was like: 1) being bounced down a spiral marble staircase 2) inside a Slinky® 3) inside a dryer with a wonky drum
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pinball kinesiology with either strange or charm spin
searching for previous chords, tangents, and perpendiculars
ultraviolet leaves, infrared invisible crayons
groupers migrate in chevrons orienting along ley lines
a busted flush is perfection less one card you seemed to say
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Post by neil on Nov 3, 2021 18:03:51 GMT -5
Conrad held us captive with his plectrum and raw stick expropriating our attention while our boots dried around the fire and our feet within them steamed in anticipation of the excess of Conrad's characters amid the drownings of their mythic thickets. Bray not, yet poke my eye!
Constance was on the front porch swing breaking her knees against the ceiling and bustling bitterly about the déja vu conundrum wrapped among the boxwoods and their shuddering wolf warbles balancing imprecations against the influence of Horst Müeller and his stegonopticon funk.
Ley lines, pressed dates, cotter pins made of feng shui remnants, the entire paddock remarkable in knife-creased slacks, lock jawed cupboards and esplanades folded like knock kneed accordions. John Smallberries, John Yahyah, the invictus sisters & their tub of Vicks Vape-O-Rub.
Jets and Sharks? JETS AND SHARKS??
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Post by neil on Nov 4, 2021 11:40:14 GMT -5
HORIZONTAL GRAVITY playlist - March 12, 2021 01 Electric Light Orchestra - Illusions in G Major 02 The Swirling Eddies - Like Lazarus 03 Antenne - Gloves On 04 Dixie Dregs - Long Slow Distance 05 R.L. Burnside - Don't Stop Honey 06 77s - Rocks In Your Head 07 Hella - Republic of Rough and Ready 08 Battles - Tonto 09 Snarky Puppy - Shofukan 10 Don Caballero - World Class Listening Problem 11 Fridge - The Sun 12 Soul Coughing - Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago 13 Morphine - Early To Bed 14 Frank Zappa - The Gumbo Variations 15 Mars Ill - Stand Back and Watch 16 Blackalicious - First in Flight 17 The Blacksoil Project - Universal Blackness 18 Sintax the Terrific - Crowbar Method 19 Rod Laver - Visual Rap Credential (Remix) 20 Do Make Say Think - Goodbye Enemy Airship 21 Mogwai - Auto Rock 22 Miriodor - Envoutement 23 Dionysos - Surfin' Frog 24 Laurie Anderson - Sharkey's Day 25 Annette Peacock w/ Coldcut - Just for the Kick 26 The Cinematic Orchestra - To Build a Home 27 Philip Glass - Mad Rush 28 Kreng - "Lowlife" OST Theme
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Post by neil on Nov 7, 2021 16:09:30 GMT -5
ZOMBIE BOMB-CHUCKERS Playlist
01 AUDIO ADRENALINE Some Kind of Zombie 02 BLACK DIAMOND HEAVIES Fever In My Blood 03 SAVOY BROWN Street Corner Talking 04 THE 77s Honesty 05 OMAR & THE HOWLERS Black Bottom 06 THE KILIMANJARO DARKJAZZ ENSEMBLE The Nothing Changes 07 FRANK ZAPPA Chunga's Revenge 08 CAPTAIN BEEFHEART Pachuco Cadaver 09 RANDY CALIFORNIA Downer 10 JAMES GANG Funk #49 11 JOE ELY Musta Notta Gotta Lotta 12 BO DIDDLEY Bo Diddley 13 DEAD CAN DANCE Yulunga 14 MOUNTAIN Never In My Life 15 PROJECT 86 Stein's Theme 16 SPIRIT Morning Will Come 17 MILES DAVIS Pharaoh's Dance 18 PROCOL HARUM Whiskey Train 19 DAUGHTERS The Reason They Hate Me 20 EXTOL Inferno 21 BLINDSIDE Teddy Bear 22 ZAO Ship of Theseus 23 EMBODYMENT Cruise Control 24 DEAD POETIC Burgundy 25 NO INNOCENT VICTIM Degeneration 26 SKINDRED Set It Off 27 ROD LAVER The Kind That Could 28 PELICAN City of Echoes 29 TORTOISE Glass Museum 30 MASERATI Inventions 31 VALUE PAC Nothing 32 THE O.C. SUPERTONES Little Man 33 THOUSAND FOOT KRUTCH Rhime Animal 34 RUSSIAN CIRCLES Geneva 35 DON CABALLERO In The Absence of Strong Evidence to the Contrary 36 EL TEN ELEVEN Triangle Face 37 TRANS AM Megastorm 38 THE FUCKING CHAMPS A Forgotten Chapter in the History of Ideas 39 LIVING SACRIFICE Bloodwork 40 CUT & RUN Murder in the Jamrock
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Post by neil on Nov 7, 2021 17:23:27 GMT -5
THEbarelyUNHEARDmumbleWARBLESstaccatoDRAINstoppagesHUMMMburbleTWICE flipTHEbackBURNERsettleISSUEShummmSTAINLESSbraceletsBINGEtwistHALF stepFULLstopHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlather RINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMM latherRINSErepeatMOTHERfartherANKLEhummmm
THEbarelyUNHEARDmumbleWARBLESstaccatoDRAINstoppagesHUMMMburbleTWICE flipTHEbackBURNERsettleISSUEShummmSTAINLESSbraceletsBINGEtwistHALF stepFULLstopHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlather RINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMM latherRINSErepeatMOTHERfartherANKLEhummmm
THEbarelyUNHEARDmumbleWARBLESstaccatoDRAINstoppagesHUMMMburbleTWICE flipTHEbackBURNERsettleISSUEShummmSTAINLESSbraceletsBINGEtwistHALF stepFULLstopHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlather RINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMM latherRINSErepeatMOTHERfartherANKLEhummmm
THEbarelyUNHEARDmumbleWARBLESstaccatoDRAINstoppagesHUMMMburbleTWICE flipTHEbackBURNERsettleISSUEShummmSTAINLESSbraceletsBINGEtwistHALF stepFULLstopHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlather RINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMM latherRINSErepeatMOTHERfartherANKLEhummmm
THEbarelyUNHEARDmumbleWARBLESstaccatoDRAINstoppagesHUMMMburbleTWICE flipTHEbackBURNERsettleISSUEShummmSTAINLESSbraceletsBINGEtwistHALF stepFULLstopHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlather RINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMM latherRINSErepeatMOTHERfartherANKLEhummmm
THEbarelyUNHEARDmumbleWARBLESstaccatoDRAINstoppagesHUMMMburbleTWICE flipTHEbackBURNERsettleISSUEShummmSTAINLESSbraceletsBINGEtwistHALF stepFULLstopHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMMlather RINSErepeatHUMMMlatherRINSErepeatHUMMM latherRINSErepeatMOTHERfartherANKLEhummmm
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Post by neil on Nov 7, 2021 17:24:37 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Nov 8, 2021 22:20:57 GMT -5
CACTUSstrungWITHpopcornANDcranberriesRESTLESSroversNESTLEDheadUNDER wingMUMBLINGpsycobabbleSYNTHPOPjungLUNGFISHmudSKIPPERSkestrelsON danishCRUMBShalterLEDdripfeedCASTROLfortyWEIGHTpencilSHAVINGSby DAYLIGHTmothsROBBINGgraveWIGHTSgnomonsGROUNDfor LENSpatternsBARKINGyardDARTSandBURRITOS
BELLYupAwhaleISanISLANDsetUPONaCLUTTEREDhorizonCALLINGdownDWARF starsMIDGETbowspritsSNIPEbasketsBUFFALOharpsOMAHAsauceCUCUMBER marinadeMUSSELshoalsZYDECOrimshotsKNUCKLEdustersMARCONI zinfandelPROTRUSIONSrampantGUILDEDwithPEASANTwork PHEASANTSmadeOFbeadsANDpotashPERSIMMONpuddingGLUES
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Post by neil on Nov 17, 2021 12:01:00 GMT -5
baby grrrl chile
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Post by neil on Nov 17, 2021 13:12:47 GMT -5
2 Savannahs & 1 Large and Growly Bear
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Post by neil on Dec 22, 2021 7:54:55 GMT -5
. . .SOiASKEDtheNEARESToxymoronABOUTcapitalFLIGH TaboutABDOMINALincisionsABOUTtemporalQUANDRI ESaboutTECHTONICbifurcationsTHEIRresponseBEING hinderedBYaSUBTLEmanipulationOFetherWINDSPALL andHAPPENSTANCE"don'tTHINKthatMISALIGNMENTi sTHEsoleAGENDAofTHEdelinquents."MARGINALIAstri kesONEpercent . . .
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Post by neil on Dec 22, 2021 8:04:31 GMT -5
theguardian.com December 22, 2021 America is now in fascism’s legal phase | Jason Stanley
“Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another.”
So began Toni Morrison’s 1995 address to Howard University, entitled Racism and Fascism, which delineated 10 step-by-step procedures to carry a society from first to last.
Morrison’s interest was not in fascist demagogues or fascist regimes. It was rather in “forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems”. The procedures she described were methods to normalize such solutions, to “construct an internal enemy”, isolate, demonize and criminalize it and sympathizers to its ideology and their allies, and, using the media, provide the illusion of power and influence to one’s supporters.
Morrison saw, in the history of US racism, fascist practices – ones that could enable a fascist social and political movement in the United States.
Writing in the era of the “super-predator” myth (a Newsweek headline the next year read, “Superpredators: Should we cage the new breed of vicious kids?”), Morrison unflinchingly read fascism into the practices of US racism. Twenty-five years later, those “forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems” are closer than ever to winning a multi-decade national fight.
The contemporary American fascist movement is led by oligarchical interests for whom the public good is an impediment, such as those in the hydrocarbon business, as well as a social, political, and religious movement with roots in the Confederacy. As in all fascist movements, these forces have found a popular leader unconstrained by the rules of democracy, this time in the figure of Donald Trump.
My father, raised in Berlin under the Nazis, saw in European fascism a course that any country could take. He knew that US democracy was not exceptional in its capacity to resist the forces that shattered his family and devastated his youth. My mother, a court stenographer in US criminal courts for 44 years, saw in the anti-Black racism of the American legal system parallels to the vicious antisemitism she experienced in her youth in Poland, attitudes which enabled eastern European complicity with fascism. And my grandmother, Ilse Stanley, wrote a memoir, published in 1957, of her experiences in 1930s Berlin, later appearing on the US television show This is Your Life to discuss it. It is a memoir of the normalization years of German fascism, well before world war and genocide. In it, she recounts experiences with Nazi officers who assured her that in nazism’s vilification of Jews, they certainly did not mean her.
Philosophers have always been at the forefront in the analysis of fascist ideology and movements. In keeping with a tradition that includes the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Theodore Adorno, I have been writing for a decade on the way politicians and movement leaders employ propaganda, centrally including fascist propaganda, to win elections and gain power.
Often, those who employ fascist tactics do so cynically – they do not really believe the enemies they target are so malign, or so powerful, as their rhetoric suggests. Nevertheless, there comes a tipping point, where rhetoric becomes policy. Donald Trump and the party that is now in thrall to him have long been exploiting fascist propaganda. They are now inscribing it into fascist policy.
Fascist propaganda takes place in the US in already fertile ground – decades of racial strife has led to the United States having by far the highest incarceration rate in the world. A police militarized to address the wounds of racial inequities by violence, and a recent history of unsuccessful imperial wars have made us susceptible to a narrative of national humiliation by enemies both internal and external. As WEB Du Bois showed in his 1935 masterwork Black Reconstruction, there is a long history of business elites backing racism and fascism out of self-interest, to divide the working class and thereby destroy the labor movement.
The novel development is that a ruthless would-be autocrat has marshalled these fascist forces and shaped them into a cult, with him as its leader. We are now well into the repercussions of this latter process – where fascist lies, for example, the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, have begun to restructure institutions, notably electoral infrastructure and law. As this process unfolds, slowly and deliberately, the media’s normalization of these processes evokes Morrison’s tenth and final step: “Maintain, at all costs, silence.” Constructing an enemy
To understand contemporary US fascism, it is useful to consider parallels to 20th century history, both where they succeed and where they fail.
Hitler was a genocidal antisemite. Though fascism involves disregard for human life, not all fascists are genocidal. Even Nazi Germany turned to genocide only relatively late in the regime’s rule. And not all fascists are antisemitic. There were Italian Jewish fascists. Referring to the successful assimilation of Jews into all phases of Weimar era German life, my father warned me, “if they had chosen someone else, some of us would have been among the very best Nazis.” We American Jews feel firmly at home. Now, where the fascist movement’s internal enemies are leftists and movements for Black racial equality, there certainly could be fascist American Jews.
Germany’s National Socialist party did not take over a mainstream party. It started as a small, radical, far-right anti-democratic party, which faced different pressures as it strove to achieve greater electoral success.
Despite its radical start, the Nazi party dramatically increased its popularity over many years in part by strategically masking its explicit antisemitic agenda to attract moderate voters, who could convince themselves that the racism at the core of Nazi ideology was something the party had outgrown. It represented itself as the antidote to communism, using a history of political violence in the Weimar Republic, including street clashes between communists and the far right, to warn of a threat of violent communist revolution. It attracted support from business elites by promising to smash labor unions. The Nazis portrayed socialists, Marxists, liberals, labor unions, the cultural world and the media as representatives of, or sympathizers with, this revolution. Once in power, they bore down on this message.
In his 1935 speech, Communism with its Mask Off, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels described Bolshevism carrying “on a campaign, directed by the Jews, with the international underworld, against culture as such”. By contrast, “National Socialism sees in all these things – in [private] property, in personal values and in nation and race and the principles of idealism – these forces which carry on every human civilization and fundamentally determine its worth.”
The Nazis recognized that the language of family, faith, morality and homeland could be used to justify especially brutal violence against an enemy represented as being opposed to all these things. The central message of Nazi politics was to demonize a set of constructed enemies, an unholy alliance of communists and Jews, and ultimately to justify their criminalization.
Contrary to popular belief, the Nazi government of the 1930s was not genocidal, nor were its notorious concentration camps packed with Jewish prisoners, at least until the November pogrom of 1938. The main targets of the regime’s concentration camps were, initially, communists and socialists. The Nazi regime urged vigilante violence against its other targets, such as Jews, separating themselves from this violence by obscuring the role of agents of the state. During this time, it was possible for many non-Jewish Germans to deceive themselves about the brutal nature of the regime, to tell themselves that its harsh means were necessary to protect the German nation from the insidious threat of communism.
Violent militias occupied an ambiguous role between state and non-state actors. The SS began as violent Nazi supporters, before becoming an independent arm of the government. The message of violent law and order created a culture that influenced all the Nazi state’s institutions. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder writes in On Tyranny, “for violence to transform not just the atmosphere but also the system, the emotions of rallies and the ideology of exclusion have to be incorporated into the training of armed guards.”
In the US, the training of police as “warriors”, together with the unofficial replacement of the American flag by the thin blue line flag, auger poorly about the democratic commitments of this institution. For a far-right party to become viable in a democracy, it must present a face it can defend as moderate, and cultivate an ambiguous relationship to the extreme views and statements of its most explicit members. It must maintain a pretense of the rule of law, characteristically by projecting its own violations of it on to its opponents.
In the case of the takeover of the mainstream rightwing party by a far-right anti-democratic movement, the pretense must be stronger. The movement must contend with members of that party who are faithful to procedural elements of democracy, such as the principle of one voter one vote, or that the loser of a fair election give up power – in the United States today, figures such as Adam Kinzinger and Elizabeth Cheney. A fascist social and political party faces pressure both to mask its connection to and to cultivate violent racist supporters, as well as its inherently anti-democratic agenda.
In the face of the attack on the US capital on 6 January, even the most resolute skeptic must admit that Republican politicians have been at least attempting to cultivate a mass of violent vigilantes to support their causes. Kyle Rittenhouse is becoming a hero to Republicans after showing up in Kenosha, WI as an armed vigilante citizen, and killing two men. Perhaps there are not enough potential Kyle Rittenhouses in the US to justify fear of massive armed vigilante militias enforcing a 2024 election result demanded by Donald Trump. But denying that Trump’s party is trying to create such a movement is, at this point, deliberate deception. Black rebellion, white backlash
Street violence proved invaluable to the National Socialists in their path to power. The Nazis instigated and exacerbated violence in the streets, then demonized their opponents as enemies of the German people who must be dealt with harshly. Trump’s rise followed Black protest, at times violent, of police brutality in Ferguson and Baltimore. More recently, the murder of George Floyd and a historic protest movement in the US in the late spring has given fuel to fascist misrepresentation.
All of these recent developments take place as only the latest in a long US history of Black rebellion against white supremacist ideology and structures, and a parallel history of white backlash.
White vigilante groups regularly formed in reaction to Black rebellions, to “defend their families and property against Black rebellion”, the historian Elizabeth Hinton writes in her recent history of these rebellions. Hinton shows that police often acted in concert with these groups. For decades, the instigator of these rebellions has typically been an incident or incidents of police violence against members of the community, following a long period of often violent over-policing that exacerbated these communities’ grievances.
Street movements in the US have often been accompanied by vigorous campus protests, from the protests against the Vietnam war of the 1960s, to recent campus protests for racial justice that attracted media rebuke (paradoxically, for “chilling free speech”). Politicians in both parties have feasted on these moments, using them to troll for votes. During these episodes of protest and rebellion, US politicians from Barry Goldwater onwards, placing campus protests together with Black rebellion against over-policing, have encouraged harsh law and order policing and crackdowns on leftists. John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon’s top advisers, said that Nixon’s campaign and administration “had two enemies: the anti-war left and Black people”, and invented the drug war to target both:
You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
Politicians have shown less interest in addressing the underlying conditions that lead to violence in poor Black urban communities – the widespread availability of guns, the massive and persistent racial wealth gap and the effects of violent policing and mass incarceration. And why should they? As long as these underlying conditions persist, politicians of either party can run for office by milking fear and promising a harsh law and order response. Morrison’s 1995 address is a warning that these conditions are ripe for harnessing by a fascist movement, one targeting democracy itself.
In its most recent iteration, in the form of the reaction against Black Lives Matter protesters and the demonization of antifa and student activists, a fascist social and political movement has been avidly stoking the flames for mass rightwing political violence, by justifying it against these supposed internal enemies.
Rachel Kleinfield, in an October 2021 article, documents the rise of the legitimation of political violence in the US. According to the article, the “bedrock idea uniting right-wing communities who condone violence is that white Christian men in the United States are under cultural and demographic threat and require defending – and that it is the Republican Party and Donald Trump, in particular, who will safeguard their way of life.”
This kind of justification of political violence is classically fascist – a dominant group threatened by the prospect of gender, racial and religious equality turning to a leader who promises a violent response. How to topple a democracy
We are now in fascism’s legal phase. According to the International Center for Not for Profit Law, 45 states have considered 230 bills criminalizing protest, with the threat of violent leftist and Black rebellion being used to justify them. That this is happening at the same time that multiple electoral bills enabling a Republican state legislature majority to overturn their state’s election have been enacted suggests that the true aim of bills criminalizing protest is to have a response in place to expected protests against the stealing of a future election (as a reminder of fascism’s historical connection to big business, some of these laws criminalize protest near gas and oil lines).
The Nazis used Judeo-Bolshevism as their constructed enemy. The fascist movement in the Republican party has turned to critical race theory instead. Fascism feeds off a narrative of supposed national humiliation by internal enemies. Defending a fictional glorious and virtuous national past, and presenting its enemies as deviously maligning the nation to its children, is a classic fascist strategy to stoke fury and resentment. Using the bogeyman of critical race theory, 29 states have introduced bills to restrict teaching about racism and sexism in schools, and 13 states have enacted such bans.
The key to democracy is an informed electorate. An electorate that knows about persisting racial injustice in the United States along all its dimensions, from the racial wealth gap to the effects of over-policing and over-incarceration, will be unsurprised by mass political rebellion in the face of persistent refusal to face up to these problems. An electorate ignorant of these facts will react not with understanding, but with uncomprehending fear and horror at Black political unrest.
Sometimes, you trace a fascist movement to its genesis in Nazi influence on its leaders, as with India’s RSS. In the United States, the causal relations run the other way around. As James Whitman shows in his 2017 book, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, the Jim Crow era in the United States influenced Nazi law. In 2021, legislators in 19 states passed laws making access to the ballot more difficult, some with specific (and clearly intentional) disparate impact on minority communities (as in Texas). By obscuring in our education system facts about this era, one can mask the reemergence of legislation that borrows from its strategies.
Indeed, the very tactic of restricting politically vital information to schoolchildren is itself borrowed from the Jim Crow era. Chapter 9 of Carter G Woodson’s 1933 book, The Mis-Education of the Negro, is called Political Education Neglected. In it, Woodson describes how history was taught “to enslave the Negroes’ mind”, by whitewashing the brutality of slavery and the actual roots and causes of racial disparities. In Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, Jarvis Givens documents the strategies Black educators used to convey real history in the constricted environments of Jim Crow schools, strategies that, tragically, will again become necessary for educators to take up again today.
Fascist ideology strictly enforces gender roles and restricts the freedom of women. For fascists, it is part of their commitment to a supposed “natural order” where men are on top. It is also integral to the broader fascist strategy of winning over social conservatives who might otherwise be unhappy with the endemic corruption of fascist rule. Far-right authoritarian leaders across the world, such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, have targeted “gender ideology”, as nazism targeted feminism. Freedom to choose one’s role in society, when it goes against a supposed “natural order”, is a kind of freedom fascism has always opposed.
According to National Socialist ideology, abortion, at any point in pregnancy, was considered to be murder. Just as it was acceptable to murder disabled people and other groups whose identities were considered dangerous to the health of the “Aryan race”, it was acceptable to perform abortions on members of these groups. In the first six years of Nazi rule, from 1933 to 1939, there was a harsh crackdown on the birth control movement. Led by the Gestapo, there was a punitive campaign against doctors who performed abortions on Aryan women. The recent attack on abortion rights, and the coming attack on birth control, led by a hard-right supreme court, is consistent with the hypothesis that we are, in the United States, facing a real possibility of a fascist future.
If you want to topple a democracy, you take over the courts. Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by almost 3m votes, and yet has appointed one-third of supreme court, three youthful far-right judges who will be spending decades there. The Roberts court has for more than a decade consistently enabled an attack on democracy, by hollowing out the Voting Rights Act over time, unleashing unlimited corporate money into elections, and allowing clearly partisan gerrymanders of elections. There is every reason to believe that the court will allow even the semblance of democracy to crumble, as long as laws are passed by gerrymandered Republican statehouses that make anti-democratic practices, including stealing elections, legal.
There has been a growing fascist social and political movement in the United States for decades. Like other fascist movements, it is riddled with internal contradictions, but no less of a threat to democracy. Donald Trump is an aspiring autocrat out solely for his own power and material gain. By giving this movement a classically authoritarian leader, Trump shaped and exacerbated it, and his time in politics has normalized it.
Donald Trump has shown others what is possible. But the fascist movement he now leads preceded him, and will outlive him. As Toni Morrison warned, it feeds off ideologies with deep roots in American history. It would be a grave error to think it cannot ultimately win.
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