larvatus: (Default)


[info]larvatus:
    Не удивительно, конечно, но никогда не лишнее получить подтверждение догадкам, что публика — дура.
    А мы зато стоим, все в белом.

[info]sguez:
    очень жаль, что нельзя продемонстроровать, как мой второй американский босс парировал вопросы, знает ли он то, что он очевидно не знал:
    Он слегка выдвигал подбородок, вздергивал брови, слегка вылупливал глаза и позволял им остекленеть:
    — Нет, а что!?
    Так и я:
    — Да, а что!?

[info]larvatus:
    Однако, белое в крапинку.

[info]larvatus:
    Попробуем иначе.
    Я вот представил себе, что некто стоит передо мной и разглагольствует о том, что всякому пожилому человеку, всё ещё усердно работающему на своего второго (или же третьего, четвёртого, пятого, и т.д.) американского босса, надо быть жидовской мордой без страха и упрёка, пидором, выкованным из чистой стали с головы до пят. Представил себе и свою словесную и телесную реакцию на подобную тираду, никак не зависящую от моего исконного и последовательного утверждения и соблюдения её содержательной составляющей. Поскольку в предполагаемый момент я по умолчанию причисляю себя к публике-дуре, в отличие от предполагаемой референтной группы докладчика, подразумеваемой латинскими местоимениями типа “nos alteros”, “vos alteros” и “illos alteros”.

[info]sguez:
    Мысленновместе.
    Дорогой мой. Я понимаю ваш пафос демократического централизма, и осмеливаюсь возражать только чтобы не осрамиться перед тенью полководца Суворова, который говорил “Смелость города берет”.
    Видите ли, говоря “публика дура”, я могу причислять себя к ней, или нет, - утверждение остается в силе. Мы же термодинамики с вами. В чем тогда состоит моя ошибка, сахиб?

[info]larvatus:
    Сила Вашего первоначального утверждения, в отличие от значения его истинности, зависит от области его применимости. Дабы не выставить себя на чужое посмешище своим «odi profanum vulgus et arceo», требуется быть если не Квинтом Горацием, то по крайней мере Жорой Байроном или Осей Бродским. В Живом же Журнале подобных ораторов пока не наблюдается.

[info]sguez:
    Знание - сила.
    Знать бы в чем значение, пересилил бы любую область применимости.
    Думал я запираться и тушеваться — типа, я такая же дура, как и публика, мы с ней два сапога пара. И вообще я ее часть, даже не лучшая. Но вы уже потратили столько усилий, чтобы доказать мне, что я поставил себя над ней, одевшись в нарядное белье, что я вынужден соответствовать:
    Да, я не принадлежу к “публике”. Я из другого теста.
    Ну выставьте же меня на посмешище, чтобы другим неповадно было.
    Что же до бытия Квинтом ли Терцием ли, нет, я не Байрон, я другой, и что — уже и в туалет по большому не сходить?

[info]larvatus:
    Ну и прекрасно, что Вы не принадлежите к “публике”, и что Вы из другого теста. Выставлять же я Вас никуда не стану, ибо сказано “iussisti enim et sic est, ut poena sua sibi sit omnis inordinatus animus.
No wonder that Frank reacted as he did at the Albert Hall, with a rejoinder that found its way onto Burnt Weeny Sandwich and into Zappa folklore. When attendants hustled fans invading the stage at the end of the performance back to their seats, bovine voices from the back of the hall shouted, amongst other things, “Get the uniforms off the stage, Frank!” His reply, “Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform and don’t kid yourself,” drew applause but didn’t silence the lowing cattle.
—Neil Slaven, Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story of Frank Zappa, Omnibus Press, 2003, p. 138
А про вписание в квадрат прогрессивной общественности всё написано здесь.

[info]sguez:
    Вы не можете не признать (даже без моей голодовки), что я спорю с вами скорее для роскоши человеческого общения.
    Давайте же оставим в покое мою географию по отношению к народу — или не оставим:
    Мне предстаявляется, что отношения с народом у личности складываются на нескольких уровнях. Про биологический, этнический, социальный, экономический, политический говорить особенно не нужно — это все нюансы массовой психики, взгляд на отношения с точки зрения народа. Иное дело психология этого отношения, взгляд со стороны личности. Здесь ничего не усредняется и не взвешивается. И на мой взгляд, если личность начинает взвешивать свои психические особенности, подгонять их под народные, то потеряет в результате народ.
    Что на эту тему думает Св.Августин?

[info]larvatus:
    Взвешивать свои особенности—ещё не значит, что должно или можно подгонять их под народные. В этом вопросе народ разберётся намного раньше и лучше личности. А в личном плане, даже если не всякому офицеру мундир к лицу, отнекивание от подразумеваемого обмундирования не освобождает служащего от бремени очевидной подобострастности. В противном случае, народ потеряет больше всего в результате прихода к власти голимой матери-героини в порядке массового противодействия политике личной особенности.
larvatus: (Default)
It is entirely appropriate that the Army never acted upon suspicions raised by [Maj. Nidal Malik] Hasan’s earlier, perhaps troubling to some, behavior. It is appropriate because—and we must continually restate this as almost a mantra until progressivism sets our collective heart in the right place—he is an American whose very presence completes our national identity. And although we deplore the acts of violence Hasan allegedly committed, we deeply cherish his contribution to America’s diversity.
—Doug van Gorder, Stars and Stripes, 28 December 2009


…Some propose overturning laws that made schools gun-free zones even for teachers who may be licensed to securely carry concealed firearms elsewhere. They argue that barring licensed-carry only ensures a defenseless, target-rich environment.
    But as a progressive, I would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime.
—Doug van Gorder, Boston.com, 28 December 2009


Learn from a master…
larvatus: (Default)
It is near future, and our planet is proliferating with humanity. You are a 28 year old man fleeing the roving bands of cannibals. Your only refuge is an uninhabited tropical island copiously supplied by coconuts and circled by schools of fish. Your only remaining concern is to satisfy your raging heterosexual libido in a politically correct fashion. Alas, you have no condoms, and your scruples debar you from orthogenital intercourse on pain of aggravating the global catastrophe. You must choose an unfailingly stimulating companion for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, your choices are limited.

[Poll #1495193]
larvatus: (Default)
Ага, строчить кляузу на Марс—намного стрёмнее, чем писать предъяву Её Величеству. Одно дело—мирская владыка, другое—небесное светило.
larvatus: (Default)
A LITTLE BOOK IN C MAJOR

H.L. MENCKEN

NEW YORK
JOHN LANE COMPANY
MCMXVI



I

Commissaire, commissaire,
Colin bat sa ménagère;
C’est un beau jour pour l’amour!
Pierre Jean de Béranger


§1
    Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another. Read more... )

THE END
larvatus: (Default)
All appropriations and transfers of conventionally valued goods or services, be they consensual or coerced, are essentially self-regarding as regards their cost, but essentially other-regarding as regards their value. For consumable goods, the relevant distinction between their consumption and socially warranted dominium arises from Deuteronomy 23:24-25, as explained by John Kilcullen. To the extent that sex is valued conventionally rather than intrinsically, all varieties of sexual intercourse are likewise essentially other-regarding. In particular, while no one is qualified to speak for all sadomasochists, the following passage from a review by Charles Rosen is very much to the point:
When I was writing a review of Alban Berg’s correspondence, I remarked to an elderly and very distinguished psychoanalyst that I was surprised by how many of Schoenberg’s students seemed to enjoy being so badly treated and humiliated by him. She replied, “I have no time to explain this just now, but I can assure you that there are a great many masochists and not nearly enough sadists to go around.”
What is valued in all kinds of sex, as in all other kinds of conversation, is not the mere brunt of its experience, but also its mutuality.

Market exchanges of all sorts of goods or services are essentially other-regarding, not in regard of obtaining them at the lowest possible cost, but in regard of establishing and maintaining their value. In so far as an analogous situation obtains in communication, this is a matter of conventional values in the conventional Lewisian game-theoretic construal of convention as coordination. Notwithstanding any misgivings concerning the expense of spirit in a waste of shame, market exchanges are expected to leave each party with the impression that what they received in the exchange is worth more than what they gave up. In the normal course of events, a notional impression of increase in value would serve as well as, or even better than, an actual increase therein. Thus Max Weber’s criticism of Benjamin Franklin in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, that the appearance of honesty serves the same purpose as honesty itself, and hence an unnecessary surplus of this virtue would appear to Franklin’s eyes as unproductive waste. Weber concludes that Franklin purveys a strict utilitarianism, whereby the mere appearance of honesty (der Schein der Ehrlichkeit) is always sufficient when it accomplishes the end in view. But in the long run, such appearances can only be sustained by tacit collusion of both parties. The butcher who places his finger on the scale enters in a relation of mutual dependency with the carnivore who averts his eyes from this petty subterfuge. Likewise the wife who shores up her sex appeal with face paint and foundation garments, colluding with the husband who bears mute witness to her daily embellishments.

Consider sexual politics. In the context of a long-term romantic relationship, reciprocal constructive ambiguity manifests in the woman wondering whether the man is just using her for sex, while he wonders how long he can keep her guessing. The maintenance of this equilibrium depends on a delicate balance between competition and coordination, negotiated among the parties. This is where David Lewis’ analysis of convention may pay off. Lewisian conventions exemplify two main conditions:
  1. Convention is a strict Nash equilibrium with no gain realizable from unilateral deviation by any party thereto, and a loss realized by any deviating party, with an additional coordination proviso that all parties prefer universal compliance in the convention, on condition that at least all but one comply to it.
  2. Convention is arbitrary in having an alternative that could serve equally well in its place.
Consider the case of corporate employment, where the corporation is tasked with creating the appearance of improvement in the lot of its employees over the scenario of their free agency. As explained by Ronald Coase, this improvement is due to amortizing the transaction costs of their initial association. The appearance of extra value accruing to the employees in this association, depends on coordination among its parties in representing real or imaginary long-term benefits of sticking together. Correlatively, the appearance of extra value accruing to the employer from the employees is a matter of coordinating their appearance of hard work sustained through brown-nosing and back-biting, and relieved by the meremost minimum of discreet sexual harassment and persiflage around the water cooler. And so on.

A Microsoft employee takes several years to vest into his stock options. In exchange, he gives up the opportunity of higher wages in the free market. (That may no longer be the case in the current economy, but let us set that aside.) The value of this long-term benefit depends on the interim growth in the Microsoft stock price. This dependence yields a motive for all Microsoft employees to prefer universal loyalty to their employees amongst their colleagues, on which see the pep talks by Steve Ballmer, with their disparate reception among the faithful and the unaffiliated. At the same time, when and if Google gets big enough to buy Microsoft, with all outstanding stock warrants subject to universal conversion, all current Microsoft employees would prefer a universal shift in loyalty to their new employer amongst their colleagues. In short, their loyalty is stable in being motivated by a prospective gain dependent on universal compliance, but arbitrary in lacking an essential connection to the fortunes of the brand.

An analogous situation appears to arise with any construal of value motivating economic exchanges putatively benefiting both parties. Indeed, it is hard to conceive of an alternative to construing it as a matter of coordination in the foregoing fashion, given that the labor theory and other unfashionable imputations of inherent value are unlikely to yield the preponderance of the “win-win” scenario. As for the aspect of virtue playing its part in market exchanges, its role appears to be taken by Frankfurtian bullshit serving as the counterpart of the mere appearance of honesty claimed by Weber to be necessary and sufficient therefor.
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Howard M. Kaminsky of 6130 Ridge Lane, Ocean Ridge, Florida 33435 writes in a letter to the TLS regarding Bernard Wasserstein’s Commentary on Hannah Arendt:
As for his charges relating to Arendt’s use of Nazi authors and her inadequate love of the Jewish people, I admit, Jew that I am, to believing that some Nazi authors had important things to say not unrelated to their Nazism, above all the viciously anti-Semitic but incomparably brilliant Carl Schmitt (whom Arendt used even more than she says), and I also believe that Jews have created gentile hostility by demanding equal rights but refusing to surrender their ethnic integrity. Books have been written about this by a number of authors who are not overtly anti-Semitic—e.g. Kevin MacDonald and Albert Lindemann—and Arendt’s analysis of Jewish “responsibility” for anti-Semitism can hardly be dismissed as due to her “perverse world-view”, let alone her “combination of ira et studio [sic]”.
Setting aside the insinuation of covert anti-Semitism, the notion of the Jews having created gentile hostility by demanding equal rights but refusing to surrender their ethnic integrity is baffling. Is it likewise possible to blame women for having created male hostility by demanding equal rights but refusing to surrender their sexual integrity? For that matter, is it possible to blame any man for having elicited the hostility of his peers by demanding equal rights but refusing to surrender his personal integrity? If the claim is that ethnic descent or religious confession are somehow unlike biological sex and personal identity in their moral implications, why is that the case, and how so?
larvatus: (Default)
“Will we ever be able to think of Hannah Arendt in the same way again?”
—Ron Rosenbaum, “The Evil of Banality: Troubling new revelations about Arendt and Heidegger”, Slate, Friday, 30 October 2009, 12:37 PM ET
Read more... )
“…the true path to uber trolling lies in the careful study of Mikhail Zeleny.
His 1993 masterpiece, Hannah Arendt’s Wrinkled Cunt, was a milestone. Truly a Russian-American icon!”
posted by cr8dle2grave on Fri Oct 06, 2006 at 02:52:27 PM EST
larvatus: (rock)
Accounting for the fighting arts that enabled his countrymen to dominate most of the known world, Roman strategist Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus explained that a sword stroke with the edges, though made with ever so much force, seldom kills, as the vital parts of the body are defended both by the bones and armor. On the contrary, a stab, though it penetrates but two inches, is generally fatal.[1]

POMPEII-TYPE GLADIUS, TINNED BRONZE SCABBARD AND IRON SPEAR HEAD
THE AXEL GUTTMANN COLLECTION

Roman swordsmanship doctrines took root among the erstwhile barbarians dedicated to besting their cultural laggards and social inferiors. Thus the Nineteenth Century Gauls agreed with the Eighteenth Century Britons: “le tranchant blesse, la pointe tue,”[2]—“the Edge Wounds, but the Point Kills.”[3] The sword lore of the day was rife with fears of the “stabber”, a.k.a. the “rusher”, an uncouth but dangerous creature possessed but of the rudiments of sword-play, who inflicted himself upon the most prominent swordsman present, by drawing his sword-hand as far back as he possibly could, putting his head down, rushing upon his opponent, and stabbing at him with his foil as hard as he possibly could, regardless of aim or outcome.[4] Far beyond the bounds of Christendom, Japanese ronin agreed with the lesson dealt by Renatus: their swords, fashioned for expert cutting, served the novice best as stabbing implements:[5]

“…and that’s how you kill a man.”


The pen is mightier than the sword,” gushed Cardinal Richelieu in the eponymous play penned by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839. But could the same be said of the pencil with its ephemeral traces? Lord Coke, treating of a deed, wrote: “And here it is to be understood, that it ought to be in parchment or in paper. For if a writing be made upon a peece of wood, or upon a peece of linen, or in the barke of a tree, or on a stone, or the like, &c. and the same be sealed or delivered, yet it is no deed, for a deed must be written either in parchment or paper, as before is said, for the writing upon these is least subject to alteration or corruption.”[6] For the same reasons, argued his successors, a writing ought to be made with materials least subject to alteration or corruption. Yet this presumption was rebutted when the Court of King’s Bench ruled on 6 February 1826, that “a bill or note may be drawn or indorsed in pencil as well as in ink.”[7] Thus the stage was set for the lowly pencil besting the noble sword.
***
On 30 March 1858, U.S. Patent Office issued Patent Number 19,783 for the combination of the lead and india-rubber or other erasing substance in the holder of a drawing-pencil, to Hymen L. Lipman of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1862 Lipman sold his patent to Joseph Reckendorfer of New York City, New York, for $100,000. On 4 November 1862, Reckendoffer received another patent for an improvement upon the invention of Lipman.

He then sued the pencil manufacturer Faber for infringement.[8] In 1875 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Reckendorfer in Reckendorfer v. Faber, 92 U.S. 347 (1875) declaring the patent invalid because the invention was actually a combination of two already known things with no new use. As Justice Ward Hunt put it on behalf of the Court:
A combination, to be patentable, must produce a different force, effect, or result in the combined forces or processes from that given by their separate parts. There must be a new result produced by their union; otherwise it is only an aggregation of separate elements.
    A combination, therefore, which consists only of the application of a piece of rubber to one end of the same piece of wood which makes a lead pencil is not patentable.
But contrary to this ruling of the highest court in our land, a conspicuous new result was indeed produced by the union of a piece of rubber with the piece of wood that made a lead pencil. This novelty was to manifest itself in the wake of a case that came up before the U.S. Supreme Court over eighty years later.
***
It is said that early in the XXth century, when The Times invited several eminent authors to write essays on the theme “What’s Wrong with the World?”, the contribution of Gilbert Keith Chesterton took the form of a letter:[9]
Dear Sirs,
I am.
Sincerely yours,
G. K. Chesterton
Not satisfied with exhausting the subject matter by a pithy witticism, Chesterton followed up his missive with a book-length treatment that included a fantasy of “the Universal Stick”:
Cast your eye round the room in which you sit, and select some three or four things that have been with man almost since his beginning; which at least we hear of early in the centuries and often among the tribes. Let me suppose that you see a knife on the table, a stick in the corner, or a fire on the hearth. About each of these you will notice one speciality; that not one of them is special. Each of these ancestral things is a universal thing; made to supply many different needs; and while tottering pedants nose about to find the cause and origin of some old custom, the truth is that it had fifty causes or a hundred origins. The knife is meant to cut wood, to cut cheese, to cut pencils, to cut throats; for a myriad ingenious or innocent human objects. The stick is meant partly to hold a man up, partly to knock a man down; partly to point with like a finger-post, partly to balance with like a balancing pole, partly to trifle with like a cigarette, partly to kill with like a club of a giant; it is a crutch and a cudgel; an elongated finger and an extra leg. The case is the same, of course, with the fire; about which the strangest modern views have arisen. A queer fancy seems to be current that a fire exists to warm people. It exists to warm people, to light their darkness, to raise their spirits, to toast their muffins, to air their rooms, to cook their chestnuts, to tell stories to their children, to make checkered shadows on their walls, to boil their hurried kettles, and to be the red heart of a man’s house and that hearth for which, as the great heathens said, a man should die.
    Now it is the great mark of our modernity that people are always proposing substitutes for these old things; and these substitutes always answer one purpose where the old thing answered ten. The modern man will wave a cigarette instead of a stick; he will cut his pencil with a little screwing pencil-sharpener instead of a knife; and he will even boldly offer to be warmed by hot water pipes instead of a fire. I have my doubts about pencil-sharpeners even for sharpening pencils; and about hot water pipes even for heat. But when we think of all those other requirements that these institutions answered, there opens before us the whole horrible harlequinade of our civilization. We see as in a vision a world where a man tries to cut his throat with a pencil-sharpener; where a man must learn single-stick with a cigarette; where a man must try to toast muffins at electric lamps, and see red and golden castles in the surface of hot water pipes.
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1910, pp. 146-148
In at least one of its respects, Chesterton’s adaptationist vision was not too long in coming. Not a half century later, in a case styled Scales v. United States (1958-1962), the U.S. Supreme Court considered the membership clause of the Smith Act, which prohibited membership in organizations advocating the violent or forceful overthrow of the United States government. Junius Scales was criminally charged with membership in the Communist Party of the United States. The criminal charge arose because the Communist Party advocated the overthrow of the government “as speedily as circumstances would permit.” Challenging his felony charge, Scales claimed that the Internal Security Act of 1950 stated that membership in a Communist organization shall not constitute a per se violation of any criminal statute. After failing in both a district and appellate court, Scales’ appeal to the Supreme Court was granted certiorari to consider the question of whether or not a Communist Party member’s conviction under the Smith Act, which made a felony the knowing membership in organizations advocating the violent or forceful overthrow of the United States government, violated the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause in light of the apparent protections afforded to such members under the Internal Security Act. In a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that the Security Act protected “per se” members of an organization from criminal prosecution. By contrast, the Smith Act went beyond “per se” participation by targeting those, whose membership in an organization entailed their knowing and deliberate participation in criminal activity. In light of this distinction, the Court noted, the two Acts were not conflicted. Since Scales, at the very least, knew, encouraged, and provoked illegal Party activities over the course of his eight year membership, he became the only American ever to be convicted under the Smith Act’s membership clause, of complicity in the commission of criminal activity.

Witnesses to Scales’ complicity in the commission of criminal activity included a certain Charles Childs, a paid informer of the FBI from the age of 18. Childs testified that he had been taught at a Party school how to kill a man with a sharpened pencil. In 1952, Childs attended a “Party Training School” of which Scales was a director. The school was given “for outstanding cadres in the North and South Carolina and Virginia Districts of the Communist Party.” It was held on a farm and strict security measures were taken. The District Organizer of Virginia instructed at the school. He told the students that “the role of the Communist Party is to lead the working masses to the overthrow of the capitalist government.” With respect to the preliminary task of gaining the “broad coalition” necessary to achieve this task, he stated that,
… the Communist Party has a program of industrial concentration in which they try to get people, that is, people who are Communist Party members, into key shops or key industries which the Party has determined or designated to be industrial concentration industries or plants. This is so that the Communist Party members in a particular plant will be able to have a cell, or a Communist Party group in which they will be able to more effectively plan for such things as attempting to control the union in that particular plant.
And, in a compulsory recreation period, this same instructor gave a demonstration of jujitsu and, explaining that the students “might be able to use this on a picket line,” how to kill a person with a pencil. According to Childs’ testimony,
what he showed us to do was to take our pencil, … just take the pencil and place it simply in the palm of your hand so that the back will rest against the base of the thumb, and then we were to take it, and the person, and give a quick jab so that it would penetrate through here [demonstrating], and enter the heart, and then if we could not do that, we just take it and grab it at the base of the throat.
Thus the Communist homicide technology repurposed and redeployed the lowly pencil after the fashion of Chesterton’s Universal Stick. Regrettably, the record of Childs’ testimony left the details of this deployment to the readers’ imagination. It took several more decades for detailed instructions to surface in the U.S. media. No one was better qualified to spell them out, than G. Gordon Liddy.

In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal resulting in Liddy’s conviction and imprisonment, rumors of his martial prowess circulated through various channels. Muckraking journalist J. Anthony Lukas recounted his demonstrations of how to kill someone with a freshly sharpened pencil by bracing the eraser end in your palm and ramming the point into the victim’s neck.[10] Upon his release, Liddy supplemented this rumor with a boast in an interview given to Playboy:
Playboy: What are the most effective ways to kill a man without employing a conventional weapon?
Liddy: Well, they are innumerable, depending, of course, on the skill of the practitioner. For someone with no special training, our old-faithful pencil is very efficient, just your common garden-variety standard wooden pencil with a good sharp point and a strong, substantial eraser. The eraser’s quite important, actually. With those prerequisites, and if you can reach your opponent, any novice could kill his enemy in one second or less. But I don’t want to go any further into the details, lest we have a sudden rash of pencil killings in junior high schools across the country. Assuming, of course, that adolescent males concentrate on Playboy’s Interviews.
—Eric Norden, “Playboy Interview: G. Gordon Liddy”, 1 October 1980
Enterprising adolescent males were served the details in Liddy’s contemporaneously issued autobiography, which disclosed his contemplation of killing star witness for prosecution John Dean by driving up a pencil through the underside of his jaw, through the soft-palate and deep into his brain.[11] Another of his journalistic nemeses, Jack Anderson, eventually spelled out the last piece of the puzzle by quoting Liddy’s warning: “Be sure the eraser is in good condition. It will protect the palm of your hand when you drive the pencil into an attacker’s throat.”[12] Thus the patents of Lipman and Reckendorfer received their belated vindication.
***
It bears notice that the Latin term for pencil, peniculus, is a diminutive of, and a euphemism for, penis. This derivation affords an insight into wishful aggressive deployment of that modest writerly implement. Lasting cultural impact of notional penicular homicide remains periodically attested in our day. Thus in his 2008 autobiography, William Shatner recounts his summer camp meetings with “kids who had survived the Holocaust, kids who had seen their parents slaughtered, kids who just as easily could kill you with a pencil as become friends.”[13] More pointedly, Steve Geng, the brother of writer and editor Veronica Geng, writes in a memoir of his drug addiction, imprisonment, and bodily decay, intermingled with tributes to his sister, of his response to being stabbed in the calf with a pencil in the course of resisting a jailhouse rape attempt:
I knew I’d have more trouble with Slim, so I carefully plotted my revenge. That night I would take a sharpened pencil, now that I knew what an effective weapon it could be, creep up to Slim’s bunk while he slept, carefully place the point of the pencil into Slim’s ear, and drive it into whatever tiny brain he had with a quick stroke of the flat of my hand. Along about two in the morning when everyone was asleep, I actually did tiptoe over to Slim’s bunk, pencil in hand, but discovered him sleeping with a blanket over his head and I couldn’t determine exactly where his ears or eyes were. It was one of the most fearful and rage-ridden nights I ever spent, and my determination wavered as I put it off until the next night. There was an off chance that I might actually kill him, but I’d read somewhere that such an attack, if done quickly and efficiently, would produce no outcry from the victim, leaving me to creep back to my bunk undetected.
    Fortunately, my new friends from the mess hall persuaded the assignment captain to move me to another dorm before I got a chance to test that theory.
But the pride of place in imaginary penicular slaying belongs to Derek Raymond:
‘You’re not very good at it, are you?’ said Gust, ‘they ought to have sent heavies in.’ He thought the man very likely could have got a job playing Hess in this new TV series they were doing on the war, and he would have had a word with a few directors he knew in Soho if he had been a mate of his. But, as he wasn’t, Gust kicked him in the stomach as he tried to drag himself up on one leg with the help of the bar-rail, then turned back to the other man.
    ‘You all right?’ he said. ‘How are you feeling now? Chipper?’ He took one of the man’s ears in his thumb and forefinger; the ear was tiny, considering the size of his head, and it had little hairs inside it. Gust picked up a cocktail stick out of a dirty glass on the bar and jabbed it down into the eardrum as far as he could; when he pulled it out the stick was half-way red, and there was some grey stuff in it as well. He shouted down his ear: ‘I think I just broke your foot!’ but the man wasn’t making sense any more; he was wailing with his hand clapped to the side of his head, swaying up and down from the waist like a bereaved widow, or else perhaps he just didn’t hear, or maybe the music was too loud. Gust realised then that he had pushed the stick in too far and that the man would probably die. Dirty cocktail-stick in the brain? What a bleeding way to go! Now the man with the broken leg tried another naughty stroke; although he only had one hand free because he was using the other one to hold onto the rail, he still managed to smash a glass and try putting it in Gust’s face.
    ‘This is just self-defence after all,’ Gust said to himself. He stamped on the man’s feet again; this time he definitely felt bones go and the man screamed, dropped the glass and let go of the rail; but instead of letting him fall Gust took him round the waist, ripped his fly open and searched inside his pants till he found his testicles, which he yanked right out into his hand. Their owner can’t have been much into baths because they smelled like something tepid from a canteen counter. Gust wrung them like the devil having a go at a set of wedding bells with all the grip he had, until the man was shrieking on the same D minor as the music.
    ‘It’s nothing personal,’ said Gust, ‘but I’m afraid you’re going to have to learn to fuck all over again.’ He wiped the blood off the man’s prick down his face, then pulled the face towards him and drove his nose into his brain with his head. The music boosted into E major on a key change, and the man doubled up under a bar-stool, leaving a lot of blood behind him while Gust receded into the half darkness towards the black drapes on the walls.
—Derek Raymond, Not Till the Red Fog Rises, Time Warner Books UK, 1994, pp. 86–87
In the realm of homicidal devices of opportunity, there is no difference between G. Gordon Liddy’s common garden-variety standard wooden pencil with a good sharp point and a strong, substantial eraser, and Derek Raymond’s cocktail stick picked up out of a dirty glass on the bar. Indeed, both of these devices answer G.K. Chesterton’s vision of a world where a man gives up trying to cut his throat with a pencil-sharpener, to stab his neighbor’s throat with a freshly sharpened pencil. As Monty Python’s criminologist helpfully pointed out, after all a murderer is only an extroverted suicide.

And that’s all she wrote. Footnotes: )
larvatus: (Default)
YEE YON HOPPED TO BELLEVUE.

All the Way from “San Flancisclo” Looking for His Wife.

The New York Times, September 20, 1904, Tuesday

    Yee Yon Ying, gorgeous in a purple silk blouse, with tasseled cap, upon the front of which was a round, red knob that suggested a mandarin of the button, appeared at Bellevue yesterday afternoon.
Nobody knew where Yee Yon Ying came from, or how he passed the hospital gateman. His gorgeous apparel lent an air of Oriental mysticism to his appearance when he suddenly slipped from behind a tree and said to Roundsman Smith:
    “H’lo!”
    “H-h-h’lo!” gasped Smith. “Wh-where did you come from?”
    “Me?”
    “Yes, you.”
    “San Flancisclo.”
    “How did you get here?”
    “Here?” pointing to the ground.
    “Yes—here!” shouted Smith, who felt nervous.
    “Me just hoppee ’long.”
    “From San Francisco? You must be strong on hopping, or I am on the hop myself.”
    “Oh,” said Yee Yon Yin, blandly, “me hoppee all place, all tlime.”
    Smith wiped the perspiration from his brow and tried to lay the apparition to his luncheon.
    “What do you want, anyway?”
    “Me?”
    “Oh, don’t ‘me’ me any more,” Smith gasped. “Answer me direct. What do you want? Yes—you!”
    “Me lookee find me wife. Me no see her. Me hoppee back San Flansisclo.”
    “Don’t hop just yet,” Smith said. “Wait.”
    The Roundsman rushed to the psychopathic ward and found Dr, Gregory. When Smith returned, bringing the doctor, Yee Yon Ying was standing on a pathway looking at the blue sky.
    “You see that?” queried the Roundsman, anxiously.
    “The chink?” said Dr. Gregory.
    Smith heaved a sign of relief and got up enough courage to grip the solid substance of Yee Yon Ying, as the Chinaman said his name was, and take him to the pavilion.
    There the mysterious Celestial made the remark that when he did find his wife he would be obliged for the loan of a pistol. Dr. Gregory is keeping him under surveillance as to his sanity.
larvatus: (Default)
In addition to her nationalized health care, Great Britain leads the world in a healthy approach to sex. With her team of counsellors and sex therapists, Dear Deirdre replies individually to around 1,000 Sun readers a week, helping them solve their problems – including the sexual difficulties most of us run into from time to time. Inspired by this progressive populism, I pose my follow-up question to the latest Presidential address.

Glitter Graphics


[Poll #1455829]
larvatus: (Default)



MICROCOSMOGRAPHIA
ACADEMICA


BEING A GUIDE FOR THE YOUNG ACADEMIC POLITICIAN


F.M. CORNFORD




Published by Bowes & Bowes Publishers Ltd, Cambridge


First published

1908


ORIGINAL EDITION PRINTED IN CAMBRIDGE BY METCALFE & COMPANY LTD


TO EDWARD GRANVILLE BROWNE

ADVERTISEMENT

If you are young, do not read this book; it is not fit for you;
If you are old, throw it away; you have nothing to learn from it;
If you are unambitious, light the fire with it; you do not need its guidance.
But, if you are neither less than twenty-five years old, nor more than thirty;
And if you are ambitious withal, and your spirit hankers after academic politics;
Read, and may your soul (if you have a soul) find mercy!

I
WARNING

‘Any one of us might say, that although in words he is not able to meet you at each step of the argument, he sees as a fact that academic persons, when they carry on study, not only in youth as a part of education, but as the pursuit of their maturer years, most of them become decidedly queer, not to say rotten; and that those who may be considered the best of them are made useless to the world by the very study which you extol.
‘Well, do you think that those who say so are wrong?
‘I cannot tell, he replied; but I should like to know what is your opinion?
‘Hear my answer; I am of opinion that they are quite right.’
PLATO, Republic, vi [487a-c]

My heart is full of pity for you, o young academic politician. Read more... ) Farewell!

larvatus: (Default)
Harper’s Magazine breathlessly informs its readers that “Italian urologists increased the size and improved the function of test subjects’ penises with a device called the Andropenis.” By all appearances a simple traction implement, it does not seem to be eligible for patent protection. In this connection, herewith a choice of patents pertaining to the material bodily lower stratum:ποιήσει δὲ αὐτήν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἡμετέρα χρεία.
larvatus: (rock)
ОТ ГРАЖДАНИНА В.И. УФЛЯНДА ТОВАРИЩУ УФЛЯНДУ В.И.

“Марусь!
Ты любишь Русь?”
Леонид Виноградов
«Книга эпиграфов»


В ушанке, сдвинутой на лоб.
Руководимый человеколюбцами.
Так русский выглядит народ,
великий мастер революций.
Он мастер делать также просто бунты.

Обычно же он занят хлебопашеством.

Случайным наблюдателям как будто
спокойным и беспечным он покажется.
Пускай он занят, как и весь Союз,
от понедельника вплоть до субботы,

я все равно ни капли не боюсь,
что потеряет он хоть часть свободы.
Она — его черта фамильная.
Его главнейший и особый признак.
Иметь ее всегда и в изобилии
самой своею сущностью он призван.

Владимир Иосифович Уфлянд, 1957
CITIZEN V.I. UFLIAND TO COMRADE UFLIAND V.I.

“Natasha!
Do you cherish Mother Russia?”
Leonid Vinogradov
The Book of Epigraphs


A fur hat furrowing his brow,
superintended by philanthropists,
stalwart withstander of catastrophes,
the Russian bears on his plow.

His Revolutionary mastery
befits as well a free-for-all,
coming ahead in every brawl.

But most of his affairs are pastoral.

Though he might seem obtuse and indolent,
and every day his lot is put upon,
I rest secure in docile unconcern
that he might lose his freedom’s warrant,
his primary and vital quality,
innately treasured as a family trait.
He’s licensed by a deed of fate
to cherish it in lasting plenitude.

―traduced by MZ, 31 June 2009

Vassily Shulzhenko, “The Fallen”, 1990, 200x150cm
larvatus: (Default)
Russian people pride themselves on their worldliness and tolerance. They are eager to point out their priority in having appointed as the head of their government a dark-skinned specimen from an oppressed colony. Such worthy sentiments underlie their recent ice cream advertising campaign:
READ THEIR LIPS: DARK IN WHITE!

AWESOME! GIMME!

Most memorably, Vladimir Ufliand anticipated progressive developments in American racial politics fifty years prior to Barack Obama’s election to our highest political office:
МЕНЯЕТСЯ ЛИ АМЕРИКА?
(вопрос радиослушателя)

Комментатор:

Меняется страна Америка.
Придут в ней скоро Негры к власти.
Свободу, что стоит у берега,
под негритянку перекрасят.
Начнут посмеиваться Бедные
над всякими Миллионерами.
А некоторые будут Белые
пытаться притвориться Неграми.
И уважаться будут Негры.
А Самый Чёрный будет славиться.
И каждый Белый будет первым
при встрече с Негром
Негру кланяться.

Владимир Иосифович Уфлянд, 1958
IS AMERICA CHANGING?
(as asked by a radio listener)

Radio announcer:

As Russian people ought to see
America is ripe for change.
It’s poised to rouse Negrocracy,
all ranks and powers to derange.

Dame Liberty will darken trait,
inspiring Proles to jive and smirk
at Wiggers that proliferate,
and Fat Cats living off their work.

As Negroes prosper and prevail,
The Blackest One will kiss the sky,
And Sallow Masses without fail
Will bow to Black Folks passing by.

―traduced by MZ, 28 June 2009
larvatus: (Default)

Are Paleskin Coppers stupid or insensitive? No matter.
A Wise Latina quells a raging Black Man better.
larvatus: (Default)


Foreign Opportunity
The Home Front

larvatus: (Default)
Inspired by his skills as an escape artist, Harry Houdini sought to help deep sea divers unable to extricate themselves from a pressure suit upon finding themselves in trouble. On 1 March 1921, he received U.S. Patent Number 1,370,316 for an new and improved diver’s suit. By comprising two halves with a locking joint in the middle, Houdini’s invention enabled the trapped deep sea diver to slip out of the suit quickly, while submerged. He would then have a chance to escape and reach the surface without assistance. The construction also enabled the diver to don and doff the suit without assistance.

Text not available


A more intimate application of Houdini’s invention went unappreciated heretofore:
Уже давным-давно замечено,
как некрасив в скафандре Водолаз.
Но несомненно есть на свете Женщина,
что и такому б отдалась.

Быть может, выйдет из воды он прочь,
обвешанный концами водорослей,
и выпадет ему сегодня ночь,
наполненная массой удовольствий.
(Не в этот, так в другой такой же раз).
Та Женщина отказывала многим.
Ей нужен непременно Водолаз.
Резиновый. Стальной. Свинцовоногий.

Вот ты,
хоть не резиновый,
но скользкий.
И отвратителен, особенно нагой.

Но Женщина ждет и Тебя.
Поскольку
Ей нужен именно Такой.

Владимир Иосифович Уфлянд, 1959
Well known by folk forever and a day
is the deformity of Diver in his suit.
It’s just as true, and well beyond dispute,
that Woman dreams of him, having his way.

Consider him,
sprung up in fetid spray,
festooned and fringed in glutinous seaweed.
He’s looking forward to a night of sensual play.
(If not this once, just down the road he will succeed.)
The Woman who a myriad wooers mooted,
she needs her Diver, not some substitute.
So rubbery, so steely, so lead-footed.

You there,
if not so rubbery,
yet clammy,
and sickening, seen tumid, pale and nude.

But Woman yearns for You,
craving your whammy,
for only your Kind puts her in the mood.

―traduced by MZ, 29 April 2009

Vladimir Ufliand, 21 January 1937 – 14 April 2007
larvatus: (Default)
Keen observer of Italian realities, Perry Anderson pointed out a few years back:
In diametric contrast [to the fond dicta of foreigners] stands the characteristic tone of native commentary. Most languages have some self-critical locution, usually a wordplay or neologism, to indicate typical national defects. Germans can cite Hegel’s contemptuous description of local identity politics, Deutschdumm; the French deplore the vauntings of franchouillardise; Peruvians term a hopeless mess una peruanada; Brazilians occasionally mock a brasileirice. England seems to have lacked such self-ironic reflexes: ‘Englishry’ – the gift of Tom Nairn, a Scot – is without currency in its land of reference. Italy lies at the opposite pole. In no other nation is the vocabulary of self-derision so multiple and so frequent in use. Italietta for the trifling levity of the country; italico – once favoured by Fascist bombast – now synonymous with vain posturing and underhand cynicism; bitterest of all, italiota as the badge of an invincible cretinism. It is true that these are terms of public parlance, rather than of popular speech. But, as the familiar contempt of the phrase all’ italiana (divorce etc) testifies, the lack of self-esteem they express is widespread. The good opinion of others remains foreign to the Italians themselves.
It appears that England’s lack of terms for national self-deprecation extends both to Russia and the United States. To be sure, neither land comes short in the production of mockery either non-verbal or all too prolix. This week alone, on April Fool’s Day Russia’s performance artists rewarded their incorruptible leader Vladimir Lenin with a gaping hole in his rear, and on the next day an American jury awarded $1 to a professor fired for an essay that characterized the 9/11 attacks against the United States as defensive acts of war. But pithy epithets seem to be in short supply. On the Russian side, one finds alienated cavils concerning “this country” («эта страна») and liberal mockery of “kvass patriotism” («квасной патриотизм»). But the land of the free and the home of the brave is suspiciously bereft of such terms. We fall short of spoofing ourselves, as witness Roy Blount’s lack of traction in disparaging the Supporters of Our Troops as “flaggots” and Team America’s failure to brand its anthem, “America, Fuck Yeah!” While this country still goes without a good five-cent cigar, what it needs is a garland of four-letter words to leaven its embattled self-esteem. Any suggestions?

Update: Russian national self-loathing is well captured by the hypocoristic toponym Рашка and obscurely expressed by Judaeo-Bolshevik epithets руссопят / руссопятство.

Crossposted to [info]larvatus, [info]linguaphiles, and [info]ru_translate.

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