headline of the day, II
Woman Cuts Off Husband’s Penis with 10-inch Knife
Dear Clusterflock
86-ed?
from the comments
Elvish anger has been mounting for centuries. By the late nineteenth century, it had risen to a fair pitch. Those twee illustrations in all of those books kept under glass on shelves in the parlor. And it just got worse and worse. By the middle of the twentieth century they had Disney and Golden Books to contend with, so the only real mystery is how they were able to keep a lid on their fury till now.
code as a weapon
Is Tropical – The Greeks
I was completely drawn in by this home video music video for Is Tropical’s “The Greeks,” which leads you in with promises of charming neighborhood children playing war games, before blowing your mind with its unexpected integration of animation and effects.
(Maxlab)
the shot that nearly killed me
I’d been in Afghanistan for a month when I stepped on the landmine. I was the third man in line, and as I put my foot down, I heard a metallic click and I was thrown in the air. I knew exactly what had happened. As the soldiers dragged me away from the kill zone, I took these pictures. When people around me have been hurt or killed, I’ve recorded it. I had to keep working. The soldiers were yelling for the medics. I knew my legs had gone, so I called my wife on the satellite phone and told her not to worry. The pain came later, back in intensive care, when infections set in and they nearly lost me a couple of times.
This is a quote from photographer João Silva in a longer article about photojournalists who document war. Many of the images and recollections are difficult, so be warned. I’m realizing Silva is one of the photographers in a transcript from NPR I used in Mockingbird.
(via the browser)
Vegan Black Metal Chef
The Mothball Fleet
Getting inside the ships was usually not straightforward, and sometimes impossible. MARAD locks them down tight, but there are so many possible entrances that persistence often paid off. One of the first orders of business each trip was finding a place to sleep. The ships are often stinky from mold, mildew, PCBs, and decay, so a room with windows that opened was preferable. We typically slept in the captain’s room where we found comfy couches, convertible beds, lots of space, and plenty of light during the daytime.
I was probably 9 or 10 the first time I asked about the Mothball Fleet (which in my family was just known as the Moth Fleet). It’s most likely we were driving to visit a friend of mine who’d moved to Vacaville. Warships aren’t particularly appealing to me, but I’m pretty sure 9 year-old me would have jumped at the chance to spend a weekend on the decaying ships – heck, I’m pretty sure 30 year-old me would jump at the chance to spend a weekend on the decaying ships, but I’d want to bring Phil.
It happened at A-Kon
So, I crouched behind a pyramid of plastic cups to photograph a foam-sword battle when a young man with a quiet voice said, excuse me, sir, this is my practice area.
R.I.P. Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011)
‘A dangerous mixture of sophistication and recklessness’: Patrick Leigh Fermor in Saint Malo, France, in 1992. Photograph: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images
Not unexpected. And he led a long and wonderful life. But I am tearing up. This is someone I never met who meant a lot to me in ways that are hard to explain just now. So here is the Guardian obituary. And I hope you will read at least one of his books.
Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has died aged 96, was an intrepid traveller, a heroic soldier and a writer with a unique prose style. His books, most of which were autobiographical, made surprisingly scant mention of his military exploits, drawing instead on remarkable geographical and scholarly explorations. To Paddy, as he was universally known, an acre of land in almost any corner of Europe was fertile ground for the study of language, history, song, dress, heraldry, military custom – anything to stimulate his momentous urge to speculate and extrapolate. If there is ever room for a patron saint of autodidacts, it has to be Paddy Leigh Fermor.
headline of the day
Indian guru threatens to form yoga militia
The Life Zone
Three women have been kidnapped from abortion clinics and are being held for seven months–until they all give birth. The film, which appears to cut right down the middle, examining the topic from both sides, offers a powerful, anti-abortion climactic twist.
And no, this isn’t satire.
headline of the day
How Nazi Scientists Tried to Create an Army of Talking Dogs
first person view of an Afghanistan firefight
I have watched a lot of war footage and simulations in my day, but I have never seen anything like this.
(via ★robinsloan)
Although this connect-the-dots U.F.O. thesis is only a hasty-sounding addendum to an otherwise straightforward investigative book about aviation and military history, it makes an indelible impression
Ms. Jacobsen, a national security reporter and contributing editor to The Los Angeles Times Magazine, happened to be at a 2007 family dinner with her husband’s uncle’s wife’s sister’s 88-year-old husband, the physicist Edward Lovick, when Mr. Lovick leaned over and said, “Have I got a good story for you.”
From a New York Times book review of Area 51, An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen.
In case you are inclined not to click the link because of an assumption about her thesis, believe me, never in a million years.
Adam Curtis, It Felt Like a Kiss
Sheila suggested I check out documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis’s found footage montage, It Felt Like a Kiss. A collaboration between Curtis and improvised theater company Punchdrunk, I’m not quite sure what the immersive experience would have been like, but I have rounded up the various pieces of it available on YouTube, and if you are interested — you’ll only need to watch a few minutes to know if it’s right for you — you can take a look.
Here is what the Guardian’s Charlie Brooker had to say:
One particular segment, set to River Deep, Mountain High, feels like being repeatedly stung on the mind by a hallucinogenic jellyfish while inhaling huge clouds of history through a pipe. The marriage of Phil Spector’s wall of sound and Curtis’s wall of images is so perfect, so strange and striking, it jangled around my head for hours afterward. And I only saw it in a tiny window on an Apple Mac, in a corner of Curtis’s tape-strewn “lair” at BBC Television Centre. God knows what it’ll be like on a big screen as part of a live-action, funhouse-style experience. It’ll probably kill people.
“This film is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters gallant people of Afghanistan.”
It’s not clear from this trailer for Rambo III (1988), but when Rambo goes into Afghanistan to rescue his buddy Colonel Sam Trautman from sadistic Soviets . . .
he allies himself with the Mujahideen, the brave “freedom fighters” extolled by Ronald Reagan and saluted in the film’s original closing credits.
I can’t imagine what brought this to mind today.
quote out of context
I think there should be holy war against yoga classes. It detours us from real thinking.
a thought in process
The celebration of Osama bin Laden’s death is not what’s offensive; the death of a man so clearly evil ought to bring emotional relief. The offense is how much of the celebration expressed just how few people have any substantive sense or scope of what happened on September 11, 2001. Schlock begets stupidity.
live tweeting the raid on Osama Bin Laden
When 33-year-old Sohaib Athar began sending out live Twitter messages detailing a mysterious blast, shaking windows, and a helicopter hovering above Abbottabad, Pakistan, he had no idea he was apparently documenting the U.S. military attack that took down al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Beginning at 3:58 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, which was past midnight in Pakistan, Athar wrote, “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).”
He went on to write about “a huge window shaking bang” and says “it was too noisy to be a spy craft, or a very poor spy craft it was.”
(via marginal revolution)
Osama bin Laden Killed: ‘Justice Is Done,’ President Says
Choose your source.
Law librarian out of context
From the law librarian’s life-life rather than her work life:
Daddy [pointing to the border collie which he has lost faith in]: “Tha’ dumbass ain’t got no more sense than a turnip. He ain’t no more a registered border collie than I am.”
Librarian: “Whad’ee do this time?”
Daddy: “Aaawww, ‘ee went down the road t’ Joyce’s house, where them new renters is livin and got t’fightin eez dog. An tha fool tried t’ pull em apart an got eez arm ripped up.” [look of contempt] “I mean, goddamn. Yer a grown ass man. An’ you doan know not to git between two dawgs? Shit.”
Librarian: “So then wha happened?”
Daddy: “Well, tha stupid sumbitch kep callin me an callin me can leavin messages on m’phone whinin bout rabies. So I got sicka tha shit an I drove over there.”
Librarian: “Yeah.”
Daddy: “An win I got over there ‘ee said ‘I’m sorry we have to be introduced in this situation.’ I said, ‘I ain’t got no situation. I tole ya over the phone tha eez gotta rabies shot. So I kin either leave ‘eem ‘ere fer you t’see if ‘ee develops rabies, er I kin put im in the truck an drive home.”
Librarian: “So thin what happened?”
Daddy: “I grabbed im an wint home.”
Librarian: “Did tha guy keep callin ya? What happened t’ him?”
Daddy: “I doan know. Eee coulda died a rabies fer all the fuck I know. I jus wanted to make sure tha he knew tha I was not concerned about it.”
Cinema Komunisto
From Cinema Komunisto, a documentary about the Yugoslav film industry. Directed by Mila Turajlic.
quote out of context
DARPA says a discussion of narrative psychology will lead to a “better understanding of the thoughts and feelings of others.”
from the comments (a long time ago)
I read a story long ago — I think it was in Witness or maybe Grand Street — that was about a small town in Germany during the second world war that did its duty and camouflaged a defunct vegetable canning factory. The factory was out at the far edge of town, and the idea was to tempt allied bombers to drop bombs on a worthless target, which would reduce the number of bombs headed for “important” cities. One night a person who lived near the factory was awakened by a muffled crashing sound. At first light everybody went to investigate, and they discovered that a huge log had been dropped directly on the factory. It was roughly carved into the shape of a bomb, and carved into the side of it was the word: BOOM! The people all shook their heads in wonder that anybody would go to the trouble to do such a thing, and one of them said, “Good God, what sort of people are we dealing with here?!” I have thought since reading this that perhaps the only redeeming feature of Americans is the fact that we value a bizarre sense of humor.
