Here’s the Beeb on that story about the advanced geometry of Islamic art I was flappin’ my gums about at Greg and Stacey’s t’other day. The coverage doesn’t capture the “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK” sense I had as I listened to the coverage, but the last time I really had the same sense of the obvious was listening to Colin Powell lie his head off about WMD in Iraq to the UN. In each instance I was shouting at the radio.
Vampire's Kiss redeems Skull Cyclist
E. Steven chez SIFFBlog stands the fuck up for Nick. The New Yorker review (I think, can’t recall exactly) celebrated the performance as well. Citing other reviewers’ appreciation of my own fave Cage vehicle, the gotta-see-it-to-beleive-it-Vampire’s-Kiss (best if watched as the lead-in on a double bill with Repulsion), he builds to this inescapable, irrefutable truth:
Lastly, and most importantly, despite all its shortcomings, the film is basically a bunch of images of a demonic, flaming skull-guy on a motorcycle. Maybe it’s the Scorpio Rising fan in me, but that right there is pretty much a movie.
I’ll buy that for a dollar!
Fez Domination
Let the predominance of the League be known amongst the fez wearers of our land!
Fezzicists
Tom noticed this too: League: Rize up!!! [del.icio.us].
Being over 40, I dinna see how a barin mought add to the party, alas. I’ll dredge my age-weakened brain-cells thru the intrickacy of a weekend.
Roolay
Happily, Bart found Another Day in NOLA to be heartening this week. Here in Seattle, I merely served red beans and rice followed a day later by some truly astounding salmon, but you fucking bet i was thinking of the Crescent City all week. And not only Baghdad – I also thought of New Orleans and her import to that nation!
See ya, Doctor
The Stranger: RIP, Charles Gocher of Sun City Girls
(Confidential to Alice Dee: oddly, I don’t think I woulda linked to this if we’d not spoken. It’s the first day of Lent, and all day I have been plotting a delicious fish feast. Perhaps this relates to the untimely passing of Dr. Gocher, fellow venturist.)
UPDATE: A commenter on the Line Out post above links to this fantastic picture of Charlie, one of the ways I will always remember him.
TERRIBLE SEMANTIC CONFUSION IMPERILS MILLIONS
It seems that the International Atomic Energy Agency has determined that it must needs stand up for terrible design and design by committee with the release of the eye-poppingly fucked-up ‘improvement’ to the extant rediation symbol. Seriously, how stupid can an international bureaucracy be?
The long-held symbol, the well-known three-wedge-on-yellow design, effectively combined the four dark areas of a death’s head with a clear and elegant visualization of both radiation and half-life, the dark areas occupying one half of the radiating circle about the node’s center point.
The ‘improved’ symbol places a much-reduced-in-size old symbol (presumably the source of the agency’s design need, as incomprehensible or insufficient) at the apex of a less-generally-known sign shape, ‘hazard triangle,’ against an unfamiliar red background, lessening the contrast between the darker and lighter areas of the symbol at the same time as the overall size of the emblem is reduced by about three quarters.
Then the rest of the triangle is filled with a cornucopia of inharmoniously-combined elements. From top to bottoms and left to right, the old radiation symbol at the apex of the triangle sheds a bouquet of downward-pointing spermatozoa, which menace to the leaft of the triangle a peculiarly-spindly-boned jolly roger (black bones on a red field, certain to confuse aline intellegences, vast, cool, and unsympathetic who will note that most mammal bones are greyish white), an international dot-head figure in flight, apparently from the giant black skull, and an arrow rendered at the same density as the running dot-head figure and possibly indicating that one should flee large black skulls when menaced from the sky by wriggling arrowhead spermatozoa.
Seriously, this is the most terrible international signage ever envisioned. If they really thought the old symbol was no good, why the fuck would you bother to keep it in the new ‘improved’ symbol?
The new, uh, design, combines no fewer than SIX (hazard triangle, radiation badge, rays, death’s head, running man, arrow) independently existing symbols and changes the color scheme of the existing and most effective symbol to a less effective scheme. Furthermore, presumably someone on the committee that came up with this horrible menace to communication is at least familiar with the transition, 20 years gone, from the death’s head to Mr. Yuk?
Honestly, if that’s the quality of work that comes out of the IAEA these days, then I can state that the GWB objective of hollowing out the agency in order to enable more plausible invasion scenarios in Iran and Korea is well in hand. An agency that promulgates this logo has the credibility of a hungry toddler and the threat capacity of an enraged grizzly bear.
It’s so awful, in fact, that I suspect a hoax.
Attention Seafarers and Chanteyists
I regret to report that the New Yorker double-issue of this week, Feb. 19-26, 2007 contains a dynamite main course in Mark Singer’s long piece, The Castaways. Why the regret for a terrific piece? Well, it ain’t online, so I can’t extract or link. You, dear reader, will be forced to the extremis of commerce to chime with or reject my observations on the composition.
The issue is the annual Eustace Tilley cover number, for those taking note. Act now, supplies are limited.
In the article, Singer recounts the tale, verging on a year gone, of the Mexican Pacific Coast fishermen found over nine months adrift and five thousand miles west of their port, San Blas, Mexico. I recall reading the initial coverage of the rescued men and the nearly-immediate skepticism of the men’s tale in the press. Reading a long-form sympathetic retelling of the men’s months adrift is nothing sort of remarkable even if it does not provide a prescriptive verdict on the truth or fiction of aspects of the tale. The men appear to be the exception to those we build mariners’ memorials to, and the detailed recounting of their time adrift may serve as proxy for the countless others never found out upon the trackless main.
Laughter ensued
nyt_02162007.jpg 1008×1117 pixels (via BB): Oh, they don’t look all THAT divided. Perhaps some fresh black metal ‘zine subscriptions would pick them right up.
Bumpy Headed Greek
Nouri posted an intriguing look at Alcibiades that caught my attention. I wrote this as a comment for his blog, but my age must be showing as the spam-defeating measures were beyond my patience. I emailed it to him and eventually decided it was a blog post in-and-of, etc. I assume the essay is something he posted in the just pride of scholastic accomplishment. I was engaged by it, as I enjoy the classics very much and always appreciate a contrary view. As the response below was composed as a comment, please forgive any pompous blowharding. 😉
Indeed, there is a fiercely individualistic character to this robe-dragging, lisp carrying Athenian, but, at the root, this is all a mask for the imperatives of the city-state of Athens.
I’m intrigued by Nouri’s choice of subject for contrarian rehabilitation. Taking it as granted that we might challenge the narrative of Plutarch, a first point of consideration might be that an advisable course of challenge would be grounded in direct sources apart from that well-beloved talespinner. Granted that resources may be tight, I’ll adopt a primary-sourced close-reading model and proceed in yoke with him.
First, it interests me that Nouri might choose to view the life choices of a man that clearly valued both dominant cultures of his socioeconomic circle as worthy of service such that the Athenian traitor (the conventional position on Alcibiades’ Athenian and later Trojan political service) becomes the Athenian patriot rather than considering or expounding the possiblity that Alcibiades’, um, flexibility of mind might have led him to serve each in turn and both at the same time, and just possibly, himself before either (my own opinion).
I do grant that my view supports the conventional verdict on the man; but I must confess, when I review what know of his character I also find many compelling things about him and his acts in Athens. However, I wholeheartedly endorse the viewpoint that Alcibiades’ foolish and self-serving interest in an imperial Athens essentially destroyed the city-state (plague or no plague – if there had been no plague, the undermined economy would have failed at the next catastophe), and I certainly do draw the lessons for today that one might expect.
One wonders if exile might not be well-suited in today’s world, for the evidence is that it broadens the mind, yes?
But I tease. I love the classics, and I love them for the very reasons the plays remain important to us today: studying the events of the past and the personalities involved can give us a wonderful set of tools for interpreting the events of today. I hope Nouri keeps that eye on the classics, and keeps looking for a contrary interpretation.
With regard to celebrating Alcibiades’ imperial vision as patriotic, though, in my view, since his time (and undoubtedly before – alas for the undeciphered, lost, or nonexistent tablets of Mojeno-Daro and Catal Hyuk) each deployment of that vision has been by self-serving criminals, and the cost of that vision has exceeded its’ benefits since at least the time of Athens. The cost upfront is to the contested locale in blood and economic opportunity and the longer-term cost has been the ultimate failure of both the social and economic structures of the wannabe empire. I am sure that we all concur on this, although I admit my certainty stems from an inability to understand how a reasonable person can view the facts otherwise.
On a side note, may I suggest for your amusement that you seek out the Cartoon History of the Universe, Vols I and II? The author is very amusing and his scholarship – and enthusiasm for Petrarch – is strong. He generally presents the recieved wisdom / standard interpretation, followed by his own take, often quite original and always originally presented.
I’m embarking on the Fagles Aenid this week and expect to be really pissed off every week I explore it. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
On another side note, Nouri’s (and later the pros’) news of resurgent bombings in the Kabilye has me heartsick. Your own trajectory, on the other hand, lightens my day even when I suspect we may not share political perspectives in every detail. Hope you’re doing well.