Showing posts with label Ancientgods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ancientgods. Show all posts
2.27.2011
2.06.2011
WALLACE SHAWN
Our capacity to fantasize about other people and to believe our own fantasies makes it possible for us to enjoy this valuable art form, theater. But unfortunately it’s a capacity which has brought incalculable harm and suffering to human beings.
It’s well known what grief and even danger can result when we make use of this capacity in our romantic lives and eagerly ascribe to a potential partner benevolent characteristics which are based on our hopes and not on truth.
And one can hardly begin to describe the anguish caused by our habit of using our fantasizing capacity in the opposite direction, that is, using it to ascribe negative characteristics to people who, for one reason or another, we’d like to think less of. Sometimes we do this in regard to large groups of people, none of whom we’ve met. But we can even apply our remarkable capacity in relation to individuals or groups whom we know rather well, sometimes simply to make ourselves feel better about things that we happen to have done to them or are planning to do.
You couldn’t exactly say, for example, that Thomas Jefferson had no familiarity with dark-skinned people. His problem was that he couldn’t figure out how to live the life he in fact was living unless he owned these people as slaves. And as it would have been unbearable to him to see himself as so heartless, unjust, and cruel as to keep in bondage people who were just like himself, he ignored the evidence that was in front of his eyes and clung to the fantasy that people from Africa were not his equals.
Well, one could write an entire political history of the human race by simply recounting the exhausting cycle of fantasies which different groups have believed at different times about different other groups. Of course these fantasies were absurd in every case.
After a while one does grasp the pattern. Africans, Jews, Mexicans, same-sex lovers, women. Hmm, after a certain period of time somebody says: well, actually, they’re not that different from anybody else, they have the same capacities, I don’t like all of them, some of them are geniuses, etc. etc. The revelations are always in the same direction. We learn about one group or another the thing that actors quickly learn in relation to themselves when they become actors: people are more than they seem to be.
...
It’s this year’s fantasies that present a difficulty.
Are we more brilliant than Thomas Jefferson? Hmm — probably not. So there’s our situation: it’s delightfully easy to see through illusions held by people far away or by members of one’s own group a century ago or a decade ago or a year ago. But this doesn’t seem to help us to see through the illusions which, at any given moment, happen to be shared by the people who surround us, our friends, our family, the people we trust.
Wallace Shawn: Why I Call Myself a Socialist: Is the World Really a Stage?
Read the whole thing it is good.
1.11.2011
A PARTIAL LIST OF THOSE WHO ARE FOLLOWING YOU (FIELD REPORT, FILE F20A6-21)
International Jewelry, AKA "The Want-Makers"
This is not a typo, nor is it some rehash of a false racist conspiracy theory.
International Jewelry is a multinational firm with holdings and agents in almost every nation. They are responsible for the sales of objects which have no worth or function other than beauty. Their goods sparkle and shine in, on, and around beautiful people. These goods elevate beautiful and non-beautiful people alike into the world above, into the sacred precincts of glamor.
It is the work of the agents of International Jewelry to advertise these objects and the depictions of the glamorous people who own them. This advertising fuels the economy of the world and dictates to us our desires.
The agents of International Jewelry follow you in the daytime to gauge your response to the wants they tell you have. These agents chart just how much time you will spend on working towards acquisition of the items which will buy you admission into the sacred precincts of the beautiful. The price they put on these items pushes you one zero at a time farther away from being able to afford your way into the higher realm.
At night, when you are asleep, is when the agents of International Jewelry do their real work. They stand over your bed, and shine a high-powered flashlight into a beautiful multi-faceted gem, making its prism lights dance on your closed eyelids and the softer parts of your skull.
Through a process developed in the 13th century, and still not adequately explained by modern science, this light enters into your mind. It does not necessarily effect your dreams as you sleep but the sparkling light stays in your mind and alights on different psychological areas in your waking hours.
The glittering light fills you with a self worth, a gleam, which tells you that you are entitled to beautiful things. Despite the defenses of your heart which tell you that you do not want things merely to have them, the light attacks you on two levels.
The first level shows you the world that you could enter if you could afford your way in. This is a world of golden rooms hidden somewhere deep behind the gray walls of cities and the miserable crossroads of small towns. These golden rooms are filled with beautiful people of many professions, but above all, their professions are to be beautiful by experiencing, appreciating, and understanding beauty. The furniture, the clothing, the settings and table-settings, everything shines. And by extension so do these beautiful people. On this first level you are a new edition to this world, and the beautiful people come to celebrate you. You are invited to fly in private planes and dine on things almost too beautiful to eat. There are beautiful women crossing and uncrossing their legs who are calling you by your full name. There are beautiful men with arms and chests which look like they were carved from stone offering to buy you a drink. There are banners hanging overhead and custom made cakes with your name written all over them. You can make love to piles of beautiful strangers on ancient rugs and animal hides while priceless artifacts and works of art watch.
Even better is the time when you bother to cross back from the beautiful world into our gray world. You can find your family, childhood friends, and tormentors stuck between the machinery of this gray world, and they will not recognize you for your beauty. When the recognition of who you are and how you have changed washes over them, they will shatter. In the light that emanates from you they will be further fixed to their worthless shadows which hold them in their gray world.
The second level in which the glittering light attacks you appeals to your better nature. This is not your physical desires or your vanity but your actual want to be a better person. If you truly had the money and the abilities which beauty and the golden world would afford you, then you would not only be a better person, but you could help the people you love and make the world a better place.
You could travel the world and bring about social change for the better. You could make and fund art. You could provide for the people you love and raise a family.
The agents of International Jewelry gauge these feelings inside of you and set prices accordingly.
A Bird, A Dog, and A Cat
These three animals follow you, one at a time. Their schedule rotates depending on the month and the day of the week. They keep their distance.
The Specter of Sickness
Emaciated and sexless, its palsied hands outstretched from under its shroud, it walks like an amputee with all of its limbs intact. It leaves a thin layer of grime in its wake. On its person are a series of photographs in diptych. On one side of the hinge is a smiling person and on the other the same person hooked up to a machine.
The chambers of its heart are a glowing antiseptic white.
Glory In a Crowd of Glories
Glory is an angel in flowing robes. She is bathed in light and she holds in her right hand a long golden trumpet. She holds her left hand in front of her as she walks on tenuous steps, her eyes shut tight. (Tucked into her robes, somewhere, is a photograph of her dead sister Victory.)
When, if ever, she finds you everything will change. She will blow on her trumpet. Everything you have ever done will be re-contextualized. Every mistake you have made in the long chain of mistakes leading to the present day will now be seen as necessary steps. You will be successful and all criticism you have ever suffered will fall off of you like dead skin. Every promise you have made under duress in this shitty world will be broken, they will no longer have to be honored.
Here's the trouble. Glory herself walks deep in a crowd of identical and false glories. There are hundreds of angels. Each has the same beautiful robes, wings, and trumpet. But these other angels have ulterior motives. Some would talk you into self-actualization and dietary cults. Some represent chauvinist and ultra-nationalist groups. Some represent the international miracle-drug snake-oil concerns. Some are advocates of deep tissue massage and orientalist muscle stretching cadres. One or two work for a family neighborhood product placement pyramid swap scheme. A growing number are recruiters for the armed forces. A few represent apocalyptic meditation cults and sell portable gongs shaped like natural and man-made disasters. More than five are paid agents of the Specter of History.
Your Biggest Fans, AKA The Mother and Father of a Better You:
A man and a woman. Individually they had loved you from afar. When they were younger they were timid, and their slavish love for you made you even more unapproachable. Perhaps at one time one of them approached you and declared this love. And maybe you spurned them. Maybe they never bothered to declare their love. As they watched you and fell deeper in love your distance only grew in their eyes, and through simple arithmetic, the space they would have to cross to reach you only widened, you can substitute any ancient Greek hero and amphibian combination to explain this.
So the man and woman met each other at the edge of an uncrossable abyss of love. The two of them on one side, and you a distant figure on the other. It is doubtless that you were unaware of their existence and their love.
When they first met, they bonded over conversations about you. They traded surveillance equipment and stories about you. They grew closer by comparing telescopes and telephoto lenses which held you in their sights. They both shared their scrapbooks full of your minor victories which were magnified in their love. They competed with each other in exaggerated stories in which they pretended to have a close personal relationship with you.
And at night they made love. The man and the woman made love, each imagining the other was you. They devised strange sexual positions and called out your name at the moment of climax.
Then they moved in together. At first they devoted all of their time and resources to following you, sharing surveillance and recording equipment.
But their need to follow you diminished. Their love for each other grew into the comfortable rhythm between the sounds of a home. The smells of cooking, the sounds of the plumbing and heating, the quiet moments of the man and the woman at a table holding hands and reading the newspaper. The love they shared, they both believed, was born from their love for you. And in these quiet moments, in every touch and glance, they thought of you.
But this love had prematurely aged them. The man and the woman were slower, quieter, in some way sated. They no longer follow you and film you from across a street. They go about their lives quietly. And before they kiss goodnight they speak about you, and when they are asleep they dream of you.
Who you are to them is further abstracted. Because they no longer need to see and follow you, because their love for each other is hopelessly tangled in their idea of you, who you are to them is magnified and beautiful.
Through this a better you has been born.
A Better You
This is you but better. This is definitely you, but a successful version of you, an effective you. This is you but free of any doubt, weakness, sadness, etcetera. This version of you was born yesterday, so this you has none of the accumulated defeats and pains of an average lifetime. This you has not yet had hopes and feelings blunted on the ugly data of life experience, and never will. This you has perfect posture and a correct style of walking, to avoid pitfalls and shrug off any airborne detritus.
This you has a city in its mind, a home in its heart, and a song its throat.
The city in your better version's mind is bright. All of the doors and windows are open, all over the city. The rooms, restaurants, and stores which would normally be closed are open, and inside strangers wait with open arms. The city is large enough that one could walk its streets forever and always find new neighborhoods. Everything is painted in exciting colors. There are parks and trains full of expectant strangers, waiting to love this better version of you. When night falls, the streets are illuminated with warm light coming down from apartments and rooms where strangers wait by the window to invite the better version of you up for nonstop sexual intercourse and interesting conversations about art.
The home that waits in the heart of this better you is a warm place in winter. It is furnished with old and gently worn things. Inside someone waits long into the night to welcome the better version of you home after a long journey. There is something cooking on a stove.
The song that issues from the throat of the better version of you is about the four seasons and it is not very well written. Maybe you could call it sincere. I don't know, I'm not a fan.
The better version of you follows you at a distance and picks up things you dropped, and takes advantage of opportunities you missed. The better version of you seems to be unaware of you, but follows your footsteps exactly.
The Old Man with a Television Set in a Wheelbarrow
Who is he? He seems to call all women "Louise". From the unadulterated stream of nonsense that comes out of his mouth anyone can see that he has gone senile. He wears a soiled old jumpsuit like a mechanic. He's pretty strong to be carrying that television around all of the time, it's gotta be at least a 32 inch. And the TV is somehow always on despite the fact that it isn't plugged in. The cord drags along the ground and is frayed from being stepped on. At night he cuts a pretty terrifying figure, walking through the dark, his face illuminated in the blue light.
Shadows That Resemble Your Mother and Father:
They do in fact look like your mother and father. But they are shadows, and their edges are tattered. They hover close to you and blend in with the other shadows.
Why do they follow you? Maybe because they love you. I'm not sure, your relationship with your parents seemed pretty complicated and I never wanted to get involved.
Maybe their presence makes you feel guilty, but above all else their presence is embarrassing. Looking deep into their shadowy forms you can see the ranks of generations. These are the deeply-nested and recursive tiers of ancestors who begat and begat until your parents and then you were begat. This long parade of ancestors staring back at you is an unbroken line to the "Old Country"(AKA the World of the Dead). And you can see them as they were, slaves covered in manure crushed under boot-heels, Holy men, idealists settling down to squabble in cramped kitchens, explorers, sufferers of madness and other venereal disease, heroes in burning cities, and so on in that fashion. Staring too long only invites the attention of The Specter of History.
The Specter of History and His Retinue: The Sphinx, The Fact, The Advocate, and The Scarecrow
The Sphinx leads the retinue and is leashed to the left hand of the Specter of History. It is not a proper sphinx, but a small lapdog with a man's face. The Sphinx has the disgusting nakedness of a shaved animal. It has the jowly face of a politician with the glasses to match. Its incessant yapping and snapping of its little teeth clears crowds from the retinue's path.
The Specter of History (previously known as "The Bloody Specter of History") has a long coat and a serene smile. The light of the concealed weapons and photographs which line the inside of his overcoat is reflected in his metal teeth. He has a hat which appears to be military but has no insignia. Embroidered into it are the laurels of a poet. His clothing is impeccably clean except for his boots which are covered in mud and ash. His left hand holds the Sphinx's leash and his right is thrust into his pocket, where the clinking of coins and medals can be heard. He has the face of a young man lined and cracked with age. His eyes are cloudy.
The Fact and The Advocate follow the Specter closely. The Fact resembles the Specter almost identically except that he wears the cheap suit of a professor and carries a valise. The fact is usually silent and only whispers to The Advocate when he is handing him graphs from his valise. The Fact's face betrays no emotion.
The Advocate resembles The Fact almost exactly except that he is balding, sweating, and he wears a cheaper suit. The Advocate publishes a newspaper, "The Advocate", which he named after himself. He carries the small hand-crank press and inks everywhere with him. The newspaper is filled with data and graphs The Fact supplies for him. The first few sections of the newspaper are dense and full of information. Because the information is expressed only in impenetrable jargon it is usually skipped. Most readers skip to the editorial and the pro ed pages both written by The Advocate. The Advocate advocates that knowledge is power, and that knowledge is engendered by facts and clean data. Therefore The Advocate sides with and advocates for power in all discussions. The Advocate is a student of history and through his editorial arguments changed The Bloody Specter of History's name to The Specter of History. On the back page of The Advocate's newspaper is the comics section. Here incorrigible tykes, tsking housewives, talking animals, and long forgotten stereotypes live out their lives frozen for centuries, sanitary and unchanged. Only the most fleeting reference to the days current events places their suspended bufoonery in our time period.
The Scarecrow follows up the rear. He is a tattered thing on a wooden pole which hops along. On his pole he is nothing but a twisted torso, two arms, a head, and a hat. He is weather-beaten and aged. The storm of years have stripped him of color and features. Yet his gray hide seems to be stuffed with something weighty, something meaty. He has the appearance of a broken and lost idol. A totem to some forgotten fear. One of his eyes is a button. The other is missing. His long arms terminate in tattered rags. His hat is only recognizable as such because it is placed on his head. As he hops a fob watch on a rusted chain swings from a rent in his chest which had probably once been a pocket. The watch's face is cracked and there is no minute hand.
END OF REPORT.
THE FOLLOWING ENTITIES WERE INTENTIONALLY LEFT OFF THE LIST FOR SECURITY REASONS:
The King of Birds, Manimal, The Artworks Gang, Handshakes, Dream Architecture, Childhood Toy, Actual Dead Man, The Friendship Bracelet Weaver, The Surgeon, Dr. Policeman, and Laundry.
With love,
No. 80
Primidi, 21 Nivôse CCXIX
Not proofread, sorry.
This is not a typo, nor is it some rehash of a false racist conspiracy theory.
International Jewelry is a multinational firm with holdings and agents in almost every nation. They are responsible for the sales of objects which have no worth or function other than beauty. Their goods sparkle and shine in, on, and around beautiful people. These goods elevate beautiful and non-beautiful people alike into the world above, into the sacred precincts of glamor.
It is the work of the agents of International Jewelry to advertise these objects and the depictions of the glamorous people who own them. This advertising fuels the economy of the world and dictates to us our desires.
The agents of International Jewelry follow you in the daytime to gauge your response to the wants they tell you have. These agents chart just how much time you will spend on working towards acquisition of the items which will buy you admission into the sacred precincts of the beautiful. The price they put on these items pushes you one zero at a time farther away from being able to afford your way into the higher realm.
At night, when you are asleep, is when the agents of International Jewelry do their real work. They stand over your bed, and shine a high-powered flashlight into a beautiful multi-faceted gem, making its prism lights dance on your closed eyelids and the softer parts of your skull.
Through a process developed in the 13th century, and still not adequately explained by modern science, this light enters into your mind. It does not necessarily effect your dreams as you sleep but the sparkling light stays in your mind and alights on different psychological areas in your waking hours.
The glittering light fills you with a self worth, a gleam, which tells you that you are entitled to beautiful things. Despite the defenses of your heart which tell you that you do not want things merely to have them, the light attacks you on two levels.
The first level shows you the world that you could enter if you could afford your way in. This is a world of golden rooms hidden somewhere deep behind the gray walls of cities and the miserable crossroads of small towns. These golden rooms are filled with beautiful people of many professions, but above all, their professions are to be beautiful by experiencing, appreciating, and understanding beauty. The furniture, the clothing, the settings and table-settings, everything shines. And by extension so do these beautiful people. On this first level you are a new edition to this world, and the beautiful people come to celebrate you. You are invited to fly in private planes and dine on things almost too beautiful to eat. There are beautiful women crossing and uncrossing their legs who are calling you by your full name. There are beautiful men with arms and chests which look like they were carved from stone offering to buy you a drink. There are banners hanging overhead and custom made cakes with your name written all over them. You can make love to piles of beautiful strangers on ancient rugs and animal hides while priceless artifacts and works of art watch.
Even better is the time when you bother to cross back from the beautiful world into our gray world. You can find your family, childhood friends, and tormentors stuck between the machinery of this gray world, and they will not recognize you for your beauty. When the recognition of who you are and how you have changed washes over them, they will shatter. In the light that emanates from you they will be further fixed to their worthless shadows which hold them in their gray world.
The second level in which the glittering light attacks you appeals to your better nature. This is not your physical desires or your vanity but your actual want to be a better person. If you truly had the money and the abilities which beauty and the golden world would afford you, then you would not only be a better person, but you could help the people you love and make the world a better place.
You could travel the world and bring about social change for the better. You could make and fund art. You could provide for the people you love and raise a family.
The agents of International Jewelry gauge these feelings inside of you and set prices accordingly.
A Bird, A Dog, and A Cat
These three animals follow you, one at a time. Their schedule rotates depending on the month and the day of the week. They keep their distance.
The Specter of Sickness
Emaciated and sexless, its palsied hands outstretched from under its shroud, it walks like an amputee with all of its limbs intact. It leaves a thin layer of grime in its wake. On its person are a series of photographs in diptych. On one side of the hinge is a smiling person and on the other the same person hooked up to a machine.
The chambers of its heart are a glowing antiseptic white.
Glory In a Crowd of Glories
Glory is an angel in flowing robes. She is bathed in light and she holds in her right hand a long golden trumpet. She holds her left hand in front of her as she walks on tenuous steps, her eyes shut tight. (Tucked into her robes, somewhere, is a photograph of her dead sister Victory.)
When, if ever, she finds you everything will change. She will blow on her trumpet. Everything you have ever done will be re-contextualized. Every mistake you have made in the long chain of mistakes leading to the present day will now be seen as necessary steps. You will be successful and all criticism you have ever suffered will fall off of you like dead skin. Every promise you have made under duress in this shitty world will be broken, they will no longer have to be honored.
Here's the trouble. Glory herself walks deep in a crowd of identical and false glories. There are hundreds of angels. Each has the same beautiful robes, wings, and trumpet. But these other angels have ulterior motives. Some would talk you into self-actualization and dietary cults. Some represent chauvinist and ultra-nationalist groups. Some represent the international miracle-drug snake-oil concerns. Some are advocates of deep tissue massage and orientalist muscle stretching cadres. One or two work for a family neighborhood product placement pyramid swap scheme. A growing number are recruiters for the armed forces. A few represent apocalyptic meditation cults and sell portable gongs shaped like natural and man-made disasters. More than five are paid agents of the Specter of History.
Your Biggest Fans, AKA The Mother and Father of a Better You:
A man and a woman. Individually they had loved you from afar. When they were younger they were timid, and their slavish love for you made you even more unapproachable. Perhaps at one time one of them approached you and declared this love. And maybe you spurned them. Maybe they never bothered to declare their love. As they watched you and fell deeper in love your distance only grew in their eyes, and through simple arithmetic, the space they would have to cross to reach you only widened, you can substitute any ancient Greek hero and amphibian combination to explain this.
So the man and woman met each other at the edge of an uncrossable abyss of love. The two of them on one side, and you a distant figure on the other. It is doubtless that you were unaware of their existence and their love.
When they first met, they bonded over conversations about you. They traded surveillance equipment and stories about you. They grew closer by comparing telescopes and telephoto lenses which held you in their sights. They both shared their scrapbooks full of your minor victories which were magnified in their love. They competed with each other in exaggerated stories in which they pretended to have a close personal relationship with you.
And at night they made love. The man and the woman made love, each imagining the other was you. They devised strange sexual positions and called out your name at the moment of climax.
Then they moved in together. At first they devoted all of their time and resources to following you, sharing surveillance and recording equipment.
But their need to follow you diminished. Their love for each other grew into the comfortable rhythm between the sounds of a home. The smells of cooking, the sounds of the plumbing and heating, the quiet moments of the man and the woman at a table holding hands and reading the newspaper. The love they shared, they both believed, was born from their love for you. And in these quiet moments, in every touch and glance, they thought of you.
But this love had prematurely aged them. The man and the woman were slower, quieter, in some way sated. They no longer follow you and film you from across a street. They go about their lives quietly. And before they kiss goodnight they speak about you, and when they are asleep they dream of you.
Who you are to them is further abstracted. Because they no longer need to see and follow you, because their love for each other is hopelessly tangled in their idea of you, who you are to them is magnified and beautiful.
Through this a better you has been born.
A Better You
This is you but better. This is definitely you, but a successful version of you, an effective you. This is you but free of any doubt, weakness, sadness, etcetera. This version of you was born yesterday, so this you has none of the accumulated defeats and pains of an average lifetime. This you has not yet had hopes and feelings blunted on the ugly data of life experience, and never will. This you has perfect posture and a correct style of walking, to avoid pitfalls and shrug off any airborne detritus.
This you has a city in its mind, a home in its heart, and a song its throat.
The city in your better version's mind is bright. All of the doors and windows are open, all over the city. The rooms, restaurants, and stores which would normally be closed are open, and inside strangers wait with open arms. The city is large enough that one could walk its streets forever and always find new neighborhoods. Everything is painted in exciting colors. There are parks and trains full of expectant strangers, waiting to love this better version of you. When night falls, the streets are illuminated with warm light coming down from apartments and rooms where strangers wait by the window to invite the better version of you up for nonstop sexual intercourse and interesting conversations about art.
The home that waits in the heart of this better you is a warm place in winter. It is furnished with old and gently worn things. Inside someone waits long into the night to welcome the better version of you home after a long journey. There is something cooking on a stove.
The song that issues from the throat of the better version of you is about the four seasons and it is not very well written. Maybe you could call it sincere. I don't know, I'm not a fan.
The better version of you follows you at a distance and picks up things you dropped, and takes advantage of opportunities you missed. The better version of you seems to be unaware of you, but follows your footsteps exactly.
The Old Man with a Television Set in a Wheelbarrow
Who is he? He seems to call all women "Louise". From the unadulterated stream of nonsense that comes out of his mouth anyone can see that he has gone senile. He wears a soiled old jumpsuit like a mechanic. He's pretty strong to be carrying that television around all of the time, it's gotta be at least a 32 inch. And the TV is somehow always on despite the fact that it isn't plugged in. The cord drags along the ground and is frayed from being stepped on. At night he cuts a pretty terrifying figure, walking through the dark, his face illuminated in the blue light.
Shadows That Resemble Your Mother and Father:
They do in fact look like your mother and father. But they are shadows, and their edges are tattered. They hover close to you and blend in with the other shadows.
Why do they follow you? Maybe because they love you. I'm not sure, your relationship with your parents seemed pretty complicated and I never wanted to get involved.
Maybe their presence makes you feel guilty, but above all else their presence is embarrassing. Looking deep into their shadowy forms you can see the ranks of generations. These are the deeply-nested and recursive tiers of ancestors who begat and begat until your parents and then you were begat. This long parade of ancestors staring back at you is an unbroken line to the "Old Country"(AKA the World of the Dead). And you can see them as they were, slaves covered in manure crushed under boot-heels, Holy men, idealists settling down to squabble in cramped kitchens, explorers, sufferers of madness and other venereal disease, heroes in burning cities, and so on in that fashion. Staring too long only invites the attention of The Specter of History.
The Specter of History and His Retinue: The Sphinx, The Fact, The Advocate, and The Scarecrow
The Sphinx leads the retinue and is leashed to the left hand of the Specter of History. It is not a proper sphinx, but a small lapdog with a man's face. The Sphinx has the disgusting nakedness of a shaved animal. It has the jowly face of a politician with the glasses to match. Its incessant yapping and snapping of its little teeth clears crowds from the retinue's path.
The Specter of History (previously known as "The Bloody Specter of History") has a long coat and a serene smile. The light of the concealed weapons and photographs which line the inside of his overcoat is reflected in his metal teeth. He has a hat which appears to be military but has no insignia. Embroidered into it are the laurels of a poet. His clothing is impeccably clean except for his boots which are covered in mud and ash. His left hand holds the Sphinx's leash and his right is thrust into his pocket, where the clinking of coins and medals can be heard. He has the face of a young man lined and cracked with age. His eyes are cloudy.
The Fact and The Advocate follow the Specter closely. The Fact resembles the Specter almost identically except that he wears the cheap suit of a professor and carries a valise. The fact is usually silent and only whispers to The Advocate when he is handing him graphs from his valise. The Fact's face betrays no emotion.
The Advocate resembles The Fact almost exactly except that he is balding, sweating, and he wears a cheaper suit. The Advocate publishes a newspaper, "The Advocate", which he named after himself. He carries the small hand-crank press and inks everywhere with him. The newspaper is filled with data and graphs The Fact supplies for him. The first few sections of the newspaper are dense and full of information. Because the information is expressed only in impenetrable jargon it is usually skipped. Most readers skip to the editorial and the pro ed pages both written by The Advocate. The Advocate advocates that knowledge is power, and that knowledge is engendered by facts and clean data. Therefore The Advocate sides with and advocates for power in all discussions. The Advocate is a student of history and through his editorial arguments changed The Bloody Specter of History's name to The Specter of History. On the back page of The Advocate's newspaper is the comics section. Here incorrigible tykes, tsking housewives, talking animals, and long forgotten stereotypes live out their lives frozen for centuries, sanitary and unchanged. Only the most fleeting reference to the days current events places their suspended bufoonery in our time period.
The Scarecrow follows up the rear. He is a tattered thing on a wooden pole which hops along. On his pole he is nothing but a twisted torso, two arms, a head, and a hat. He is weather-beaten and aged. The storm of years have stripped him of color and features. Yet his gray hide seems to be stuffed with something weighty, something meaty. He has the appearance of a broken and lost idol. A totem to some forgotten fear. One of his eyes is a button. The other is missing. His long arms terminate in tattered rags. His hat is only recognizable as such because it is placed on his head. As he hops a fob watch on a rusted chain swings from a rent in his chest which had probably once been a pocket. The watch's face is cracked and there is no minute hand.
END OF REPORT.
THE FOLLOWING ENTITIES WERE INTENTIONALLY LEFT OFF THE LIST FOR SECURITY REASONS:
The King of Birds, Manimal, The Artworks Gang, Handshakes, Dream Architecture, Childhood Toy, Actual Dead Man, The Friendship Bracelet Weaver, The Surgeon, Dr. Policeman, and Laundry.
With love,
No. 80
Primidi, 21 Nivôse CCXIX
Not proofread, sorry.
10.07.2010
PULLING A FULL FRANKLIN
Courtesy of G. "Jeeves" Leach.
Bigups to luminaries dying of syphilis everywhere.
8.26.2010
THE SECRET GENEALOGY OF THE BOSS PART I
THE SECRET GENEALOGY OF "THE BOSS":
Transmission of the Cursed Blood in the Ancient World; From Adam:
Adam Ruhani -(pre-curse)-> Homo Habilis -(half-curse)-> Cain -(full curse)-> Patient Zero -(identity unknown, attacked under a naked, black tree)-> The Hunter, Gracchus-(the curse came alive in his blood when he was struck down by the gods for hunting a sacred bird. Alive, in his coffin he still navigates the waterways of the underworld)-> Frinklaan Malone -(deceased and then reborn, building collectible antiques and buying them centuries later)-> a nameless ape -(left-handed, likes: The colors brown and red, fucking, killing. Dislikes: Light, the seasons, clouds, the sun, unblemished skin.)-> Gilgamesh I -(after he played a drum solo on the bones of Enkidu, while crying in seamstress's house, over a crack in the floor which lead directly to the netherworld)-> Puru-ravas Aila I -(Smiling as he dipped his hand in salt and then slapped his grandfather to death)-> Nimrod -(caught the bad gene from his mother, not by birth but later when he had sex with her)-> Laomedon --> Jade Emperor of Yu Huang -(when he buried a gaggle of children up to their necks in his courtyard and and ate a banquet in front of them, and later, when he washed his hands with vinegar)-> Sargon I of Akkad -(the curse was awakened in his blood when he took a shit on his astrolabe and then ate the flesh of a woman)-> Emperor Qin Shi Huang -(Attacked at age 49, awoke covered in blood surrounded by his terracotta army, now with a stutter in his heart and fangs)-> Dangun Wanggeom's bastard son by a women with a tattoo-(His blood boiling as he kicked a horse to death at a country fair)-> Abydos II-(Attacked while dancing in the shadow of a cracked boulder)-> Royal Shoemaker for Emperor Jimmu -(the curse awoke in him when the three-legged crow pecked out his left eye, while the Emperor laughed and spanked a consort with his longbow)->Ham -(In anger as he stood on a barren beach and thought about his father drunkenly brushing a giraffe)-> Lestek I -(Attacked by his wife while he was asleep, dreaming about a big fish eating a little fish)-> Kashekhemwy -(Inside a stone crypt thinking about loud music in the cold silence)-> King Parahu's Nameless Son-(in a cloud of incense, shut up in a crypt made of mud and stone, listening to the drums outside)-> Clodion de Chevelu-(Shut up in a crypt, trying to cut his hair with blunt rocks)-> Acestorides -(with eyes half closed, watching his banished enemy becoming a speck on the horizon, furiously masturbating)-> Simeon I of Bulgaria -(on the toilet, or, what passed for a toilet back then)-> Pepin the Hunchback -(In the doorway of a monastery, his hands becoming claws)-> Frederick I Barbarossa -(from birth)-> Charles IV --> Tewodros -(after a battle pulling the teeth out of the enemy corpses, he pricked his finger on a fang) -> Pipo of Ozora -(In a ceremony for the Order of the Dragon, where he made love to a masked woman and then was showered with cattle guts)-> THE BOSS
NOTE: Though The Boss' initials are "VD", the curse is in no way a venereal disease
Transmission of the Cursed Blood in the Ancient World; From Adam:
Adam Ruhani -(pre-curse)-> Homo Habilis -(half-curse)-> Cain -(full curse)-> Patient Zero -(identity unknown, attacked under a naked, black tree)-> The Hunter, Gracchus-(the curse came alive in his blood when he was struck down by the gods for hunting a sacred bird. Alive, in his coffin he still navigates the waterways of the underworld)-> Frinklaan Malone -(deceased and then reborn, building collectible antiques and buying them centuries later)-> a nameless ape -(left-handed, likes: The colors brown and red, fucking, killing. Dislikes: Light, the seasons, clouds, the sun, unblemished skin.)-> Gilgamesh I -(after he played a drum solo on the bones of Enkidu, while crying in seamstress's house, over a crack in the floor which lead directly to the netherworld)-> Puru-ravas Aila I -(Smiling as he dipped his hand in salt and then slapped his grandfather to death)-> Nimrod -(caught the bad gene from his mother, not by birth but later when he had sex with her)-> Laomedon --> Jade Emperor of Yu Huang -(when he buried a gaggle of children up to their necks in his courtyard and and ate a banquet in front of them, and later, when he washed his hands with vinegar)-> Sargon I of Akkad -(the curse was awakened in his blood when he took a shit on his astrolabe and then ate the flesh of a woman)-> Emperor Qin Shi Huang -(Attacked at age 49, awoke covered in blood surrounded by his terracotta army, now with a stutter in his heart and fangs)-> Dangun Wanggeom's bastard son by a women with a tattoo-(His blood boiling as he kicked a horse to death at a country fair)-> Abydos II-(Attacked while dancing in the shadow of a cracked boulder)-> Royal Shoemaker for Emperor Jimmu -(the curse awoke in him when the three-legged crow pecked out his left eye, while the Emperor laughed and spanked a consort with his longbow)->Ham -(In anger as he stood on a barren beach and thought about his father drunkenly brushing a giraffe)-> Lestek I -(Attacked by his wife while he was asleep, dreaming about a big fish eating a little fish)-> Kashekhemwy -(Inside a stone crypt thinking about loud music in the cold silence)-> King Parahu's Nameless Son-(in a cloud of incense, shut up in a crypt made of mud and stone, listening to the drums outside)-> Clodion de Chevelu-(Shut up in a crypt, trying to cut his hair with blunt rocks)-> Acestorides -(with eyes half closed, watching his banished enemy becoming a speck on the horizon, furiously masturbating)-> Simeon I of Bulgaria -(on the toilet, or, what passed for a toilet back then)-> Pepin the Hunchback -(In the doorway of a monastery, his hands becoming claws)-> Frederick I Barbarossa -(from birth)-> Charles IV --> Tewodros -(after a battle pulling the teeth out of the enemy corpses, he pricked his finger on a fang) -> Pipo of Ozora -(In a ceremony for the Order of the Dragon, where he made love to a masked woman and then was showered with cattle guts)-> THE BOSS
NOTE: Though The Boss' initials are "VD", the curse is in no way a venereal disease
8.12.2010
6.14.2010
"FUCK Y'ALL™" C.1908
Amongst the evils of a penal colony is the society of those who form it; and if the reader is worthy of better company, he will need no words from me to remind him of what he has to put up with at present. If he has a soul above the common, or if he is a man of genius, he will occasionally feel like some noble prisoner of state, condemned to work in the galleys with common criminals; and he will follow his example and try to isolate himself.
3.25.2010
WHAT IS ANIME FOUL IS ANIME FAIR
So I am working at the 2010 Tokyo Anime Fair today through Sunday, doing English interpreting for my friends' three man animation studio.
What can I say?
If I knew at age 12 I would one day be working in the belly of the anime beast, the age 12 me would be elated.
(feel free to skip this next section, and go directly to B)
A:
But this shit is not Fist of The North Star, and it is sure as hell not Akira. Shit dog, it's not even Bubblegum Crisis.
From what I understand anime today is video game tie-ins like Pokemon, rehashes of old shit from almost half a century ago like Doraemon etc., some race cars and robots, but for the most part, the most popular shits is obviously shows about 12 year old girls hanging out at home and having mundane conversations.
Imagine four twelve year old girls talking about shampoo in high pitched voices. Now, know that a man is masturbating to these twelve year old girls. Now grit your teeth and shake your head.
I have seen animes about girls being raped by tentacles and clockwork statues of the Buddha, I have seen an anime about fighting waitresses in a no-holds barred combat tournament where they rape each other to win, etc., and somehow all that is less perverse than this. It is my theory that this anime pandering to sex and violence blunted the overall nerd capacity for sex and violence and now they are so glutted and desensitized that they can only beat off to a group of middleschoolers preparing food and taking pratfalls. Now hump a pillow shaped like a child.
Yikes.
Anyway:
B.
I was super hyped to find the DIRECTIONS display booth which had an extended trailer for ACBU's AMAZONESS (Below is the short trailer that has been around for a while, the new one isn't up yet)
This shit is too awesome. Please watch it more than once. I wish I could put up the newer one, it is longer.
Also if you have hung out with me in the last 3 or so years I have shown you this, also made by ACBU, the video for ZAMAGI's "Magical Death".
The dude at the booth was kind of freaked out that I was into Zamagi. I pretended like I was down from day one but the truth is my old studio mate went to highschool with them.
Then I stood around and watched the same animation about teaching kids about how to brush their teeth. This was playing at the booth across from the booth where I am working. I watched this animation on repeat for six or so hours only stopping a few times to smoke or drink something.
And I am prepared to do this again, tomorrow, which also happens to be my birthday.
My girlfriend is taking me out for some kind of surprise afterward.
How can I explain to her that I can no longer maintain an erection unless she is a group of twelve year old girls?
What can I say?
If I knew at age 12 I would one day be working in the belly of the anime beast, the age 12 me would be elated.
(feel free to skip this next section, and go directly to B)
A:
But this shit is not Fist of The North Star, and it is sure as hell not Akira. Shit dog, it's not even Bubblegum Crisis.
From what I understand anime today is video game tie-ins like Pokemon, rehashes of old shit from almost half a century ago like Doraemon etc., some race cars and robots, but for the most part, the most popular shits is obviously shows about 12 year old girls hanging out at home and having mundane conversations.
Imagine four twelve year old girls talking about shampoo in high pitched voices. Now, know that a man is masturbating to these twelve year old girls. Now grit your teeth and shake your head.
I have seen animes about girls being raped by tentacles and clockwork statues of the Buddha, I have seen an anime about fighting waitresses in a no-holds barred combat tournament where they rape each other to win, etc., and somehow all that is less perverse than this. It is my theory that this anime pandering to sex and violence blunted the overall nerd capacity for sex and violence and now they are so glutted and desensitized that they can only beat off to a group of middleschoolers preparing food and taking pratfalls. Now hump a pillow shaped like a child.
Yikes.
Anyway:
B.
I was super hyped to find the DIRECTIONS display booth which had an extended trailer for ACBU's AMAZONESS (Below is the short trailer that has been around for a while, the new one isn't up yet)
This shit is too awesome. Please watch it more than once. I wish I could put up the newer one, it is longer.
Also if you have hung out with me in the last 3 or so years I have shown you this, also made by ACBU, the video for ZAMAGI's "Magical Death".
The dude at the booth was kind of freaked out that I was into Zamagi. I pretended like I was down from day one but the truth is my old studio mate went to highschool with them.
Then I stood around and watched the same animation about teaching kids about how to brush their teeth. This was playing at the booth across from the booth where I am working. I watched this animation on repeat for six or so hours only stopping a few times to smoke or drink something.
And I am prepared to do this again, tomorrow, which also happens to be my birthday.
My girlfriend is taking me out for some kind of surprise afterward.
How can I explain to her that I can no longer maintain an erection unless she is a group of twelve year old girls?
2.18.2010
READ KIERKEGAARD AND REGRET IT
Laugh at the stupidities of the world, and you will regret it; weep over them, and you will also regret it. Laugh at the stupidities of the world or weep over them, you will regret it either way. Whether you laugh at the stupidities of the world or you weep over them, you will regret it either way. Trust a girl, and you will regret it. Do not trust her, and you will also regret it. Trust a girl or do not trust her, you will regret it either way. Whether you trust a girl or do not trust her, you will regret it either way. Hang yourself, and you will regret it. Do not hang yourself, and you will also regret it. Hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it either way. Whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it either way.
1.29.2010
OH, AND ALSO, JD SALINGER IS DEAD
JD Salinger is dead but everyone is quoting Akutagawa:
"Once he had finished writing "The Life of a Stupid Man", he happened to see a stuffed swan in a secondhand shop. It stood with its head held high, but its wings were yellowed and moth-eaten. As he thought about his life, he felt both tears and mockery welling up inside him. All that lay before him was madness or suicide. He walked down the darkening street alone, determined now to wait for the destiny that would come to annihilate him."
"Once he had finished writing "The Life of a Stupid Man", he happened to see a stuffed swan in a secondhand shop. It stood with its head held high, but its wings were yellowed and moth-eaten. As he thought about his life, he felt both tears and mockery welling up inside him. All that lay before him was madness or suicide. He walked down the darkening street alone, determined now to wait for the destiny that would come to annihilate him."
1.21.2010
11.26.2009
GIMME THAT CHRISTIAN SIDE HUG, THAT CHRISTIAN SIDE HUG
Pretty sure this is serious.
And horrible.
Let me cleanse your pallette with this superior rap about bikes:
11.19.2009
THE LAST WORDS OF DUTCH SCHULTZ
Has it been in any other papers? George, don't make no full moves. What have you done with him? Oh, mama, mama, mama. Oh stop it, stop it; eh, oh, oh. Sure, sure, mama.
Now listen, Phil, fun is fun. Ah please, papa. What happened to the sixteen? Oh, oh, he done it, please. John, please, oh, did you buy the hotel? You promised a million sure. Get out. I wished I knew.
Please make it quick, fast and furious. Please. Fast and furious. Please help me get out; I am getting my wind back, thank God. Please, please, oh please. You will have to please tell him, you got no case.
You get ahead with the dot dash system didn't I speak that time last night. Whose number is that in your pocket book, Phi1 13780. Who was it? Oh- please, please. Reserve decision. Police, police, Henry and Frankie. Oh, oh, dog biscuits and when he is happy he doesn't get happy please, please to do this. Then Henry, Henry, Frankie you didn't even meet me. The glove will fit what I say oh, Kayiyi, oh Kayiyi. Sure who cares when you are through? How do you know this? How do you know this? Well, then oh, Cocoa know thinks he is a grandpa again. He is jumping around. No Hobo and Poboe I think he means the same thing.
...
Will you help me up? O.K. I won't be such a big creep. Oh, mama. I can't go through with it, please. Oh, and then he clips me; come on. Cut that out, we don't owe a nickel; hold it; instead, hold it against him; I am a pretty good pretzler -Winifred- Department of Justice. I even got it from the department. Sir, please stop it. Say listen the last night!
...
...
- That is what caused the trouble. Look out. Please let me up. If you do this, you can go on and jump right here in the lake. I know who they are. They are French people. All right. Look out, look out. Oh, my memory is gone. A work relief police. Who gets it? I don't know and I don't want to know, but look out. It can be traced. He changed for the worse. Please look out; my fortunes have changed and come back and went back since that. It was desperate. I am wobbly. You ain't got nothing on him but you got it on his helper.
...
I don't know. I didn't even get a look. I don't know who can have done it. Anybody. Kindly take my shoes off. (He was told that they were off.) No. There is a handcuff on them. The Baron says these things. I know what I am doing here with my collection of papers. It isn't worth a nickel to two guys like you or me but to a collector it is worth a fortune. It is priceless. I am going to turn it over to... Turn you back to me, please Henry. I am so sick now. The police are getting many complaints. Look out. I want that G-note. Look out for Jimmy Valentine for he is an old pal of mine. Come on, come on, Jim. Ok, ok, I am all through. Can't do another thing. Look out mamma, look out for her. You can't beat him. Police, mamma, Helen, mother, please take me out. I will settle the indictment. Come on, open the soap duckets. The chimney sweeps. Talk to the sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! Please help me up, Henry. Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone.
Now listen, Phil, fun is fun. Ah please, papa. What happened to the sixteen? Oh, oh, he done it, please. John, please, oh, did you buy the hotel? You promised a million sure. Get out. I wished I knew.
Please make it quick, fast and furious. Please. Fast and furious. Please help me get out; I am getting my wind back, thank God. Please, please, oh please. You will have to please tell him, you got no case.
You get ahead with the dot dash system didn't I speak that time last night. Whose number is that in your pocket book, Phi1 13780. Who was it? Oh- please, please. Reserve decision. Police, police, Henry and Frankie. Oh, oh, dog biscuits and when he is happy he doesn't get happy please, please to do this. Then Henry, Henry, Frankie you didn't even meet me. The glove will fit what I say oh, Kayiyi, oh Kayiyi. Sure who cares when you are through? How do you know this? How do you know this? Well, then oh, Cocoa know thinks he is a grandpa again. He is jumping around. No Hobo and Poboe I think he means the same thing.
...
Will you help me up? O.K. I won't be such a big creep. Oh, mama. I can't go through with it, please. Oh, and then he clips me; come on. Cut that out, we don't owe a nickel; hold it; instead, hold it against him; I am a pretty good pretzler -Winifred- Department of Justice. I even got it from the department. Sir, please stop it. Say listen the last night!
...
Q.- Do you know who this big fellow was?
A.- No. If he wanted to break the ring no, please I get a month. They did it. Come on. (A name, not clear) cut me off and says you are not to be the beneficiary of this will. Is that right? I will be checked and double-checked and please pull for me. Will you pull? How many good ones and how many bad ones? Please I had nothing with him he was a cowboy in one of the seven days a week fight. No business; no hangout; no friends; nothing; just what you pick up and what you need. I don't know who shot me. Don't put anyone near this check~ you might have -please do it for me. Let me get up. heh? In the olden days they waited and they waited. Please give me a shot. It is from the factory. Sure, that is a bad. Well, oh good ahead that happens for trying. I don't want harmony. I want harmony. Oh, mamma, mamma! Who give it to him? Who give it to him? Let me in the district -fire-factory that he was nowhere near. It smoldered No, no. There are only ten of us and there ten million fighting somewhere of you, so get your onions up and we will throw up the truce flag. Oh, please let me up. Please shift me. Police are here. Communistic...strike...baloney...honestly this is a habit I get; sometimes I give it and sometimes I don't. Oh, I am all in. That settles it. Are you sure? Please let me get in and eat. Let him harass himself to you and then bother you. Please don't ask me to go there. I don't want to. I still don't want him in the path. It is no use to stage a riot. The sidewalk was in trouble and the bears were in trouble and I broke it up. Please put me in that room. Please keep him in control. My gilt edged stuff and those dirty rats have tuned in. Please mother, don't tear, don't rip; that is something that shouldn't be spoken about. Please get me up, my friends. Please, look out. The shooting is a bit wild, and that kind of shooting saved a man's life. No payrolls. No wells. No coupons. That would be entirely out. Pardon me, I forgot I am plaintiff and not defendant. Look out. Look out for him. Please. He owed me money; he owes everyone money. Why can't he just pullout and give me control? Please, mother, you pick me up now. Please, you know me. No. Don't you scare me. My friends and I think I do a better job. Police are looking for you allover. Be instrumental in letting us know. They are English-men and they are a type I don't know who is best, they or us. Oh, sir, get the doll a roofing. You can play jacks and girls do that with a soft ball and do tricks with it. I take all events into consideration. No. No. And it is no. It is confused and its says no. A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim. Did you hear me?
Q. (By Detective) - Who shot you?
A.- I don't know.
Q.- How many shots were fired?
A.- I don't know.
Q.- How many?
...
- That is what caused the trouble. Look out. Please let me up. If you do this, you can go on and jump right here in the lake. I know who they are. They are French people. All right. Look out, look out. Oh, my memory is gone. A work relief police. Who gets it? I don't know and I don't want to know, but look out. It can be traced. He changed for the worse. Please look out; my fortunes have changed and come back and went back since that. It was desperate. I am wobbly. You ain't got nothing on him but you got it on his helper.
...
I don't know. I didn't even get a look. I don't know who can have done it. Anybody. Kindly take my shoes off. (He was told that they were off.) No. There is a handcuff on them. The Baron says these things. I know what I am doing here with my collection of papers. It isn't worth a nickel to two guys like you or me but to a collector it is worth a fortune. It is priceless. I am going to turn it over to... Turn you back to me, please Henry. I am so sick now. The police are getting many complaints. Look out. I want that G-note. Look out for Jimmy Valentine for he is an old pal of mine. Come on, come on, Jim. Ok, ok, I am all through. Can't do another thing. Look out mamma, look out for her. You can't beat him. Police, mamma, Helen, mother, please take me out. I will settle the indictment. Come on, open the soap duckets. The chimney sweeps. Talk to the sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! Please help me up, Henry. Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone.
(edited out cross talk with detectives. Schultz died two hours later at 6:40pm, Oct.23 1935)
(Donald Barthelme has nothing on this)
11.16.2009
FIELD INTELLIGENCE FILE 227: WHO OR WHY IS XUXA?
INTELLIGENCE FIELD REPORT: 21.11.16 (LONG FORM BLOG POST ABOUT THE MYSTERIES OF OUR WORLD, XUXA EDITION)
I: Some Background Information:
Anyone interested can look up Xuxa and find that her Wikipedia page is an academic battlefield, where, I am sure, only love can bloom, to wit:
This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page. * Its neutrality is disputed. Tagged since February 2009. * It may contain original research or unverifiable claims. Tagged since August 2008. * Its factual accuracy is disputed. Tagged since August 2008. This biography of a living person does not cite any references or sources. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately. (June 2008) Find sources: (Xuxa – news, books, scholar)
Gentlemen, what is XUXA? In the interest of time I quote liberally from Wikipedia:
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Xuxa (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈʃuʃɐ]), Maria da Graça "Xuxa" Meneghel, March 27, 1963, Santa Rosa, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) is a Brazilian Grammy Award Winner, television actress, singer and children's television show host. Her various shows have been broadcast in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. Xuxa is of German, Austrian, Italian, and Polish descent. Her achievements include the second best-selling album in the history of Brazil and being the singer with the second highest total of number-one hits by a female in the Brazilian charts, surpassed only by Daniela Mercury. Xuxa has some of the biggest box office results in Brazilian history and has amassed a fortune of over $470 million. ... Xou da Xuxa is probably the most famous children's show in Brazil and Latin America. ... Xuxa presented cartoons and games, did interviews and performed some of her songs. ... The audience of the show was of kids who jumped up and down during the whole show. Kids shook pompoms throughout the show, marking the trademarks of the show. But the biggest trademark was the pink spaceship. Every show began with Xuxa getting out of the spaceship and at the end, she would go back to the spaceship (it remains so even today). Every year she released a new album for children. 1988's Xou da Xuxa 3 with her biggest hit 'Ilariê' (#1 in the radio in almost every Latin America country)... Xou da Xuxa ended in 1993 due to Xuxa's desire to invest more time in her international career, which included Spanish and English versions of Xou da Xuxa as well as various shows in the U.S. and Europe. During that year, she developed health problems attributed to stress; a typical week consisted of seven hours of taping for a month's worth of shows coupled with flying to Argentina where the Spanish version was taped.
To make things more complicated, comes this description of Xuxa's "Pink Spaceship" from an unregistered source:
...There the hand of Xuxa came upon me. As I looked, a stormwind came from the North, a huge cloud with flashing fire (enveloped in brightness), from the midst of which (the midst of the fire) something gleamed like electrum.
1. Xuxa, using her Nazi heritage as a disguise, insinuates herself into a gathering of vile and loathsome entities holding a costume ball in a destroyed mansion. Sneaking in passed the grieving, the sick, and the dead to the main table where the cloaked monsters sharpen their teeth and scrape their claws across maps of the world, Xuxa joins the gathering. When the monsters finish giving their speeches of numbers and wounds Xuxa pulls off her cloak to reveal her ivory marching band costume. As the screeches of carrion eaters and bureaucrat fills the mansion Xuxa jumps onto the table, her white boots stomping on their black meals. She lifts up her white skirt revealing a blinding light which destroys the boogeymen. All that is left is a pile of burnt receipts. She walks hand and hand with the survivors out of the wreckage to her pink spaceship parked under a rainbow.
2. Xuxa pilots her spaceship to an ancient forest where a unicorn is killing virgins. The unicorn has been stabbing young women in the forest, possibly raping them, shitting everywhere, and generally being an asshole. Hunters have been sent out to find the unicorn, but have found too many other things to kill in the bountiful forest and have returned home with pelts and meat but no unicorn. They shrug as they eat whole legs of deer and rabbits.
Xuxa dons the white shorts of a virgin and waits under a blossoming tree. When the unicorn appears covered in blood and briars Xuxa bares her sex to entice it. The unicorn is enticed and approaches Xuxa. She slips her legs around the unicorn's head and slips the horn inside of her. She then fucks the unicorn's head until it dies. With the money Xuxa made from donating the unicorn's horn and body to science, Xuxa can buy prosthetic limbs for orphans within a two thousand mile radius of the forest.
3. There was once an evil king who collected all kinds of automatons and clockwork curios. He imposed hateful taxes which bankrupted the citizenry so that amongst the lower classes the national dress became barrels and the national currency became sawdust. The king's palace was filled with golden machines imitating sunrises and songbirds. The king walked through the gardens giving complicated orders to
his artisans to build a faithful recreation of the heavens out of golden gears.
Xuxa tied a bow around her pink spaceship and flew it to gates of the castle. The king's clockwork butlers mistook the spaceship for a gift, another machine sent from foreign dignitaries and well wishers, and brought the spaceship to the king, and placed it amongst the golden machines.
The king rubbed his hands together in anticipation of the gift. Xuxa emerged from the spaceship dressed as a ballerina, her skin and clothing painted in a glowing gold.
The spaceship played a beautiful tune, imitating a musicbox. Xuxa spun on one leg in a pirouette and the king immediately fell in love with her.
As the king stepped forward to embrace her Xuxa smiled a brilliant white smile which burned the king to a crisp and fillled the whole castle with light. The golden machines melted from the heat.
Rivers of molten gold rolled out of the windows and doors of the castle and the citizenry rejoiced.
4. The boy with the denim jacket was a slave of the king Jehoaichin and walked in procession with the other slaves on the banks of the Chebar in the land of the Chaldeans.
Xuxa's pink spaceship appeared to him from the heavens, and the boy looked upon its terrifying aspects. Xuxa took a burning hot coal from within the depths of the spaceship and placed it into the boy's mouth. The boy from that day forth could speak nothing but the truth and eventually went to the valley of the rusted cars, where, with his new powers he raised the dead.
But there are also sources which speak of Xuxa as having maleficent and evil aspects. These accounts speak of Xuxa using her powers for ends which seem strange when held in comparison to her more popular deeds.
1. There was a factory with no doors but only windows where children were forced to work at conveyor belts assembling horrible things which snarled and clawed at them. They worked until they dropped dead of exhaustion. Their only "lunch break" was on every other tuesday when they lined up at the factory's windows to see Xuxa arrive outside on her motorbike.
Xuxa would pull up to the factory on her white motorbike and recline on it, eating souvlaki from a paper dish. While s
he reclined and ate, the juice from the paper tray splashed all over white tank top and her bare legs. When she had finished eating she stood up, pulled on the elastic on her white shorts, and poured the remaining souvlaki juice down the front of her pants.
The children watched in silence while their stomachs growled with hunger. As the whistle blew signaling the end of the break, Xuxa got back on her bike and drove away.
2. There was a fancy dress party held in the great white hall. Men and women from many nations appeared in their finery to dance and feast.
When dinner was served and all attendees sat down to the table they found all of the glasses and utensils missing.
Xuxa appeared laughing, dressed like a storm, and lined all of the guests against the walls of the dining room.
She walked down the line of the guests, insulting and berating them, tearing their clothes, eating their food in front of them, punching and kicking them, doing insulting imitations of them to their face, drawing rude pictures of their children and parents in front of them, blowing smoke in their faces, giving them haircuts, spitting on them, throwing money at them, screaming at them in a nonsense language, stealing their pocket money, and so on in that fashion.
When she finished her circle around the room she jumped into her pink spaceship which had until then been disguised as a giant pink roast on the table. She flew away crashing through the ceiling of the white hall, destroying the chandeliers and the lode bearing walls.
After Xuxa had left all of the guests went home without speaking. Later they sent letters back and forth discussing the incident, but would not talk about it in person.
The white hall collapsed, and where it once stood, nothing will grow.
3. Xuxa appeared before two women who were condemned to death. They were waiting in the courtyard of the jail awaiting their execution. The sun was just beginning to rise and the women hugged themselves against the cold. Xuxa appeared in a swirl of white fire.
The women thought Xuxa had come to save them and fell to their knees thanking her. Xuxa instead stuck a bunch of pushpins into their foreheads, laughed, and disappeared.
What is to be made of these conflicting accounts?
Are the negative accounts libellous attacks by shallow enemies?
Are the stories of her good deeds merely a clever advertising campaign?
It is hard to tell from current data but it is my opinion that if either of the accounts of Xuxa's either naughty or nice actions are true, then both sides have to be true.
With all of this field work I still do not know the answer to the most important question:
WHO OR WHY IS XUXA?
written but not proofread
Sextidi, 26 Brumaire CCXVIII
I: Some Background Information:
Anyone interested can look up Xuxa and find that her Wikipedia page is an academic battlefield, where, I am sure, only love can bloom, to wit:
This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page. * Its neutrality is disputed. Tagged since February 2009. * It may contain original research or unverifiable claims. Tagged since August 2008. * Its factual accuracy is disputed. Tagged since August 2008. This biography of a living person does not cite any references or sources. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately. (June 2008) Find sources: (Xuxa – news, books, scholar)
Gentlemen, what is XUXA? In the interest of time I quote liberally from Wikipedia:
Xuxa (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈʃuʃɐ]), Maria da Graça "Xuxa" Meneghel, March 27, 1963, Santa Rosa, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) is a Brazilian Grammy Award Winner, television actress, singer and children's television show host. Her various shows have been broadcast in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. Xuxa is of German, Austrian, Italian, and Polish descent. Her achievements include the second best-selling album in the history of Brazil and being the singer with the second highest total of number-one hits by a female in the Brazilian charts, surpassed only by Daniela Mercury. Xuxa has some of the biggest box office results in Brazilian history and has amassed a fortune of over $470 million. ... Xou da Xuxa is probably the most famous children's show in Brazil and Latin America. ... Xuxa presented cartoons and games, did interviews and performed some of her songs. ... The audience of the show was of kids who jumped up and down during the whole show. Kids shook pompoms throughout the show, marking the trademarks of the show. But the biggest trademark was the pink spaceship. Every show began with Xuxa getting out of the spaceship and at the end, she would go back to the spaceship (it remains so even today). Every year she released a new album for children. 1988's Xou da Xuxa 3 with her biggest hit 'Ilariê' (#1 in the radio in almost every Latin America country)... Xou da Xuxa ended in 1993 due to Xuxa's desire to invest more time in her international career, which included Spanish and English versions of Xou da Xuxa as well as various shows in the U.S. and Europe. During that year, she developed health problems attributed to stress; a typical week consisted of seven hours of taping for a month's worth of shows coupled with flying to Argentina where the Spanish version was taped.
To make things more complicated, comes this description of Xuxa's "Pink Spaceship" from an unregistered source:...There the hand of Xuxa came upon me. As I looked, a stormwind came from the North, a huge cloud with flashing fire (enveloped in brightness), from the midst of which (the midst of the fire) something gleamed like electrum.
- Within it were figures resembling four living creatures that looked like this: their form was human, but each had four faces and four wings, and their legs went straight down; the soles of their feet were round. They sparkled with a gleam like burnished bronze.
- Their faces were like this: each of the four had the face of a man, but on the right side was the face of a lion, and on the left side the face of an ox, and finally each had the face of an eagle.
- Their faces (and their wings) looked out on all their four sides; they did not turn when they moved, but each went straight forward... Human hands were under their wings, and the wings of one touched those of another...
- Fuck it, the description just gets harder and harder to figure out.
- The point being that this shit is crazy. She's the host of a show aimed at children, yet there is something undeniably erotic about her. And not in that typical mother/whore bullshit, something heroically erotic, something strangely chaste, in a room full of kids, she is dressed like the captain of a luxury liner with giant shoulder pads, the whiteness of her teeth shining and momentarily alighting on the faces of the elect.
- It is undeniable that there is a light which comes forth from Xuxa. A light not unlike the light which followed the savage genesis of our world; in which our ancestors awakened, temporarily blind, yawning, and totally down to fuck. And also down to build stuff and start naming things.
- Throughout history (though mainly in the late 1980s) Xuxa has appeared to us as a historical and powerful force. (see: this file footage)
- Here is a basic rundown for those without the time or patience to watch the above. Xuxa appears in a nameless ghetto. There is nothing but children here, their parents apparently either operating or being operated on in the bone factories of the third world. Here the children subsist on hard breads, dry white crackers, and graffiti. They wear the primary colors of creeds and politics foisted on them from birth, the consequences of history. And these little motherfuckers are at each other's throats!
- But Xuxa appears, seemingly out of nowhere, like a comet. She is riding a dope bike, a machine separate from Xuxa but an aspect of herself made into utility, as in the Kaballah where YHVH being everywhere and therefore incapable of action works through the divine will. The dopeness of Xuxa's bike being an emanation of the dopeness of her body.
-
- Riding along with Xuxa in the back basket of her white bike is the pile of a Rag Dog, an emissary of death, as reflected in the lower biological realities and eventualities of corruption and loss. But as he has been tamed by Xuxa he is a coeval and a celebrant. His posture is begrudging, but nonetheless he is a participant in the fun. He is age and resentment in the rehabilitation of Xuxa's love. But his presence in the ensuing ceremony is necessary. For without the shadow of the ragdoll, the soft and furry memento mori, Xuxa's work would resemble one of those pastoral scenes frozen onto an opulent parlor wall behind wigged and ribboned figures exchanging gifts while the world outside consisted of teeth and fire.
- "Et in Arcadia ego"
- To return to the action at hand:
- With a honk of her horn Xuxa makes her presence known.
- The children halt their attempted honor killings and look up. She looks on their violence and wags an admonishing finger in front of her brilliant smile. From her basket she produces not treasure or sustenance, but paintbrushes. She is giving these children the gift of the creative impulsive, the pre-erotic and transformative aspect new to their youth, until now only expressed in destruction. She beckons the children to follow on their bikes and on foot, among them one in a denim jacket hangs back.
- They follow her through a gas station (this image too obvious to explore, but in brief: the fulfillment and refillment, the transformation of the skeletons and scales of ancient giants, long dead, into the fuel of the living. History coupled in the meeting of ancient monsters and the will of man, the erotic act, etc.) Against a wall soiled by the inarticulate claws of the desparate (see Li Ho: "Witness the man who raved at the wall as he wrote his questions to Heaven.") the children use their new brushes to cover the graffiti. A dancing Xuxa reveals to them paints provided by the Rag Dog, the colors as sublimations of the myriad expressions of nature, simplified for their violence addled and hungry hearts. There is dancing and the consumption of sodas. Kids do hype BMX tricks in anticipation of romance and explosions of emotion waiting in their adult lives. The Rag Dog barks and smiles on the body as a celebration.
- Xuxa embraces the Rag Dog, behind her the paint is drying in the shape of a heart. This is love because of, or despite, the temporary nature of our lives and bodies. Death is not feared and excluded, but invited, and therefore provides. The rainbow which is painted across Xuxa's dope titties hides the heart which is shown to all, as a sign of hope, on the dirty wall. The children paint this rainbow over the dirty scrawl. The Rag Dog connects each member of the ceremony with a painted red line on the ground. His brush sweeps over their shoes, even Xuxa's glowing white pumps. This red line is the biological interiority of man.
- The young man in the denim jacket who has until now held back from the celebration is now entering the ceremony. But his attention is not on colors redecorating the profane wall, but on Xuxa's bike. He mounts it and pantomimes that he is revving the engine. This is not unlike the kabbalists who believed they could harness the creative force of god by knowing his true name and therefore harness the divine will. But the young man with the denim jacket is acting out an unknowing immature coupling with Xuxa. The young man's immature actions show the inarticulate desire to become one with Xuxa if not only temporarily. His precociousness speaks of g
reater things. This is the birth of a poet.
- III: Other Sources
1. Xuxa, using her Nazi heritage as a disguise, insinuates herself into a gathering of vile and loathsome entities holding a costume ball in a destroyed mansion. Sneaking in passed the grieving, the sick, and the dead to the main table where the cloaked monsters sharpen their teeth and scrape their claws across maps of the world, Xuxa joins the gathering. When the monsters finish giving their speeches of numbers and wounds Xuxa pulls off her cloak to reveal her ivory marching band costume. As the screeches of carrion eaters and bureaucrat fills the mansion Xuxa jumps onto the table, her white boots stomping on their black meals. She lifts up her white skirt revealing a blinding light which destroys the boogeymen. All that is left is a pile of burnt receipts. She walks hand and hand with the survivors out of the wreckage to her pink spaceship parked under a rainbow.
2. Xuxa pilots her spaceship to an ancient forest where a unicorn is killing virgins. The unicorn has been stabbing young women in the forest, possibly raping them, shitting everywhere, and generally being an asshole. Hunters have been sent out to find the unicorn, but have found too many other things to kill in the bountiful forest and have returned home with pelts and meat but no unicorn. They shrug as they eat whole legs of deer and rabbits.
Xuxa dons the white shorts of a virgin and waits under a blossoming tree. When the unicorn appears covered in blood and briars Xuxa bares her sex to entice it. The unicorn is enticed and approaches Xuxa. She slips her legs around the unicorn's head and slips the horn inside of her. She then fucks the unicorn's head until it dies. With the money Xuxa made from donating the unicorn's horn and body to science, Xuxa can buy prosthetic limbs for orphans within a two thousand mile radius of the forest.
3. There was once an evil king who collected all kinds of automatons and clockwork curios. He imposed hateful taxes which bankrupted the citizenry so that amongst the lower classes the national dress became barrels and the national currency became sawdust. The king's palace was filled with golden machines imitating sunrises and songbirds. The king walked through the gardens giving complicated orders to
his artisans to build a faithful recreation of the heavens out of golden gears.Xuxa tied a bow around her pink spaceship and flew it to gates of the castle. The king's clockwork butlers mistook the spaceship for a gift, another machine sent from foreign dignitaries and well wishers, and brought the spaceship to the king, and placed it amongst the golden machines.
The king rubbed his hands together in anticipation of the gift. Xuxa emerged from the spaceship dressed as a ballerina, her skin and clothing painted in a glowing gold.
The spaceship played a beautiful tune, imitating a musicbox. Xuxa spun on one leg in a pirouette and the king immediately fell in love with her.
As the king stepped forward to embrace her Xuxa smiled a brilliant white smile which burned the king to a crisp and fillled the whole castle with light. The golden machines melted from the heat.
Rivers of molten gold rolled out of the windows and doors of the castle and the citizenry rejoiced.
4. The boy with the denim jacket was a slave of the king Jehoaichin and walked in procession with the other slaves on the banks of the Chebar in the land of the Chaldeans.
Xuxa's pink spaceship appeared to him from the heavens, and the boy looked upon its terrifying aspects. Xuxa took a burning hot coal from within the depths of the spaceship and placed it into the boy's mouth. The boy from that day forth could speak nothing but the truth and eventually went to the valley of the rusted cars, where, with his new powers he raised the dead.
But there are also sources which speak of Xuxa as having maleficent and evil aspects. These accounts speak of Xuxa using her powers for ends which seem strange when held in comparison to her more popular deeds.
1. There was a factory with no doors but only windows where children were forced to work at conveyor belts assembling horrible things which snarled and clawed at them. They worked until they dropped dead of exhaustion. Their only "lunch break" was on every other tuesday when they lined up at the factory's windows to see Xuxa arrive outside on her motorbike.
Xuxa would pull up to the factory on her white motorbike and recline on it, eating souvlaki from a paper dish. While s
he reclined and ate, the juice from the paper tray splashed all over white tank top and her bare legs. When she had finished eating she stood up, pulled on the elastic on her white shorts, and poured the remaining souvlaki juice down the front of her pants.The children watched in silence while their stomachs growled with hunger. As the whistle blew signaling the end of the break, Xuxa got back on her bike and drove away.
2. There was a fancy dress party held in the great white hall. Men and women from many nations appeared in their finery to dance and feast.
When dinner was served and all attendees sat down to the table they found all of the glasses and utensils missing.
Xuxa appeared laughing, dressed like a storm, and lined all of the guests against the walls of the dining room.
She walked down the line of the guests, insulting and berating them, tearing their clothes, eating their food in front of them, punching and kicking them, doing insulting imitations of them to their face, drawing rude pictures of their children and parents in front of them, blowing smoke in their faces, giving them haircuts, spitting on them, throwing money at them, screaming at them in a nonsense language, stealing their pocket money, and so on in that fashion.
When she finished her circle around the room she jumped into her pink spaceship which had until then been disguised as a giant pink roast on the table. She flew away crashing through the ceiling of the white hall, destroying the chandeliers and the lode bearing walls.
After Xuxa had left all of the guests went home without speaking. Later they sent letters back and forth discussing the incident, but would not talk about it in person.
The white hall collapsed, and where it once stood, nothing will grow.
3. Xuxa appeared before two women who were condemned to death. They were waiting in the courtyard of the jail awaiting their execution. The sun was just beginning to rise and the women hugged themselves against the cold. Xuxa appeared in a swirl of white fire.
The women thought Xuxa had come to save them and fell to their knees thanking her. Xuxa instead stuck a bunch of pushpins into their foreheads, laughed, and disappeared.
What is to be made of these conflicting accounts?
Are the negative accounts libellous attacks by shallow enemies?
Are the stories of her good deeds merely a clever advertising campaign?
It is hard to tell from current data but it is my opinion that if either of the accounts of Xuxa's either naughty or nice actions are true, then both sides have to be true.
With all of this field work I still do not know the answer to the most important question:
WHO OR WHY IS XUXA?
written but not proofread
Sextidi, 26 Brumaire CCXVIII
10.20.2009
8.16.2009
DANCING CHILD WITH HIS CHINESE SUIT
He has sold albums by the million and was the idol of the 1960s protest movement. But yesterday Bob Dylan discovered what it's like to be just a face in the crowd. Police were called in a quiet seaside town after he was spotted freewheelin' down the street and apparently acting suspiciously. A 22-year-old female officer demanded to see his identification papers.
He assumed she would at least recognise the name if not the face. But she ordered him into the back of her car and took him to his hotel to check his story. Then she radioed her older colleagues at the police station to ask if anyone knew who Bob Dylan was.
He assumed she would at least recognise the name if not the face. But she ordered him into the back of her car and took him to his hotel to check his story. Then she radioed her older colleagues at the police station to ask if anyone knew who Bob Dylan was.
8.14.2009
JESUS BELIEVES IN EVOLUTION
"The Gods Are Real,
They Are Violent Aliens!
Wherefore,
Intelligent species probably evolved long before us, therefore,
They may have journeyed here and interfered with the development of life on earth, as science can deduce from patterns of rapid evolution, fossilized abductions, and hybrid species, therefore,
The gods of world religions, may be these aliens, therefore,
They give hidden prophecies about themselves, and secretly influence world events, and they pollute each others revelations with forgeries such as Genesis 1, therefore,
There might never be an Almighty God, as even the holy scriptures attest, therefore,
There is war among these alien gods, according to the law of Survival of the Fittest, therefore,
The alien gods compete for the genetic resources of earth, therefore,
The alien gods have haphazardly and imperfectly influenced the evolution of humanity and other creatures, as Genesis and the lost Biblical book of Enoch attest, therefore,
Because this cosmos is so filled with alien warfare, barbaric cruelties, forgeries, and genetic perversion, the Christian God has revealed to us that this cosmos is a failure, therefore,
Jesus Christ has endeavored to challenge the system, therefore,
Let it hereby be resolved the Jesus believes in evolution, and he hates it."
qed
They Are Violent Aliens!
Wherefore,
Intelligent species probably evolved long before us, therefore,
They may have journeyed here and interfered with the development of life on earth, as science can deduce from patterns of rapid evolution, fossilized abductions, and hybrid species, therefore,
The gods of world religions, may be these aliens, therefore,
They give hidden prophecies about themselves, and secretly influence world events, and they pollute each others revelations with forgeries such as Genesis 1, therefore,
There might never be an Almighty God, as even the holy scriptures attest, therefore,
There is war among these alien gods, according to the law of Survival of the Fittest, therefore,
The alien gods compete for the genetic resources of earth, therefore,
The alien gods have haphazardly and imperfectly influenced the evolution of humanity and other creatures, as Genesis and the lost Biblical book of Enoch attest, therefore,
Because this cosmos is so filled with alien warfare, barbaric cruelties, forgeries, and genetic perversion, the Christian God has revealed to us that this cosmos is a failure, therefore,
Jesus Christ has endeavored to challenge the system, therefore,
Let it hereby be resolved the Jesus believes in evolution, and he hates it."
qed
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