View current page
...more recent posts
Lots of people have been doing search requests for "Army Pfc. Lynndie England," the woman holding a leash around a naked man's neck in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. What is this fascination with evil women? A guy in Fresno shoots 9 of his children and it's a local story after the first week, but Andrea Yates drowns her 5 and it's a national cause. People, Lynndie England is a distraction from the real issue. The government and a compliant media say that the naked men tied up and arranged in dogpiles were the work of a few bad (or "overstressed") eggs. That's not true. Military intelligence dreamed up all the simulated homoerotic activity and picture-taking to break down the sexually squeamish Iraqis and get them to "confess." Our government has crossed the line and they're handing you Lynddie England. Wake up and smell the coffee, folks.
Watch war criminal Donald Rumsfeld being heckled by protesters during today's Congressional hearing. Pretty gratifying.
Opie - Our Greatest Installation Artist
Screen grabs from Ron Howard's film A Beautiful Mind. In the depths of paranoid schizophrenia, mathematician Russell Crowe sees patterns in newspaper and magazine clippings and sets out to "break the code." Twice (that we see) he fills a room with printed matter and scrawls numbers and diagrams all over everything--above is the second episode, in the tool shed. Of course, the art world is full of people doing this kind of thing, from Kurt Schwitters to Robert Rauschenberg to Thomas Hirschhorn (see below). Director Howard hired some pretty good people to channel this activity as simulated madness. Instead of the Modernist paradigm of "artists taking inspiration from the insane" this is the reverse process, sort of, bringing the visual vocabulary of the art elite (Hirschhorn at Barbara Gladstone) to a mass audience. Hence, the title of this post.
Thomas Hirschhorn, Plan Moi
From ionarts:
Twice in [Kill Bill: Vol. 2] characters use the phrase "coup de grâce" but pronounce it without the final S sound ("coup de gra"): in French, that would give you the phrase "coup de gras" (S not pronounced), which I guess is the heart attack one would get from eating too much triple-cream St. André (a "blow of fat").I also learned that Tarantino thinks Gibson's Passion "is one of the most brilliant visual storytelling movies I've seen since the talkies—as far as telling a story via pictures." I agree with ionarts' Charles T. Downey that Kill Bill: Vol. 1 was better than 2 (except for that turgid anime), but it's a moot point because they now begin their life as a single film. Will they be watchable in one sitting as a DVD? Or will all the yacking in Vol. 2 grow tedious, as the spectacular Crazy 88 sequence recedes in memory? I went to see Vol. 1 twice (mostly for the densely-layered music) but haven't felt the urge with Vol. 2, much as I enjoyed it.
(From the Washington Post today) In this cropped photograph, Army Pfc. Lynndie England of the 372nd Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Cresaptown, Md., holds a leash tied around a naked man’s neck in an Iraqi prison.(From Yahoo News yesterday) President Bush addressed the Arab world on television, but stopped short of saying he was sorry. He said the abuses were "abhorrent" and do not represent "the America that I know."
Midland, Texas, 1950, kitchen of a ranch style home. It's very hot and dusty outside.
Barbara Bush: George Junior, you spilled milk on the table. What do you say?
George Junior: Nothin'! I didn't spill it!
Barbara Bush: Yes, you did, and I'm asking you nicely now, Georgie. What do you say to Mommy when you do something bad?
George: Nothin'!
Barbara Bush: [reaches across the table and raps 4 year old George's head with her knuckles.] Talk to Mommy! What do you say?
George: (crying) Nothin'! Nothin'! Nothin'!
Barbara Bush: [Slaps George on the side of the head.] Little man, you're making me very ashamed! Say you're sorry to Mommy! Now!
[George silently sobs. Barbara begins shaking him violently, slapping his face and shoulders.] Say you're sorry! Say you're ashamed! Do it!
[George Bush Senior walks in.]
George Bush Sr.: Hon, have you seen my golf shoes?
UPDATE: Faced with ongoing, near-catastrophic bad press, the President finally, belatedly apologized today--or says he did. The man still can't say the words "I'm sorry," because of all his Mommy issues. Also, the "apology" is worthless since he still voices support for the creepy Rumsfeld and hasn't fired anyone.
UPDATE 2: An Aussie paper interviewed some folks from Lynddie England's hometown (choice quotes are in the comments). This may not have been the most balanced reporting, but still, one man thinks "we went to Iraq to help the jackasses" and can't understand why they're shooting at us. That should be Exhibit A in the case of how the major media failed to educate the public about our unprovoked invasion of Iraq. More thoughts on Ms. England here.
"Windows Noises" is a short Flash movie by Clown Staples (click here--it loads pretty quickly). It's made using the little .wav (sound file) editor called sndrec32.exe, found in the Windows/system32 folder right next to the viruses and spyware. Windows XP still includes this fun device, although it's usually overridden by RealPlayer or the like. The source material for "Windows Noises" consists solely of four sounds: chimes, ding, chord, and the "Microsoft Sound" (a pre-XP string sample). These have been chopped up, accelerated, reversed, looped, and mixed into a single synchronized file. In the video, an unseen mouse-clicker plays up to six editors like a mini-orchestra. The piece is at once hellishly clever, dumb, resourceful, "deconstructive," and musically very catchy. As explained in the Winnoise FAQ, the Flash film isn't a record of an actual performance but rather a re-enactment of the processes by which the tune was made. All the sound was done with sndrec32.exe but the visuals are animated from cut-and-pasted screen shots of the cursor flitting about the "orchestra," triggering drop down menus and starting and stopping loops. It was actually a relief to learn the piece wasn't done in real time--nobody could be that good. Could they? I still don't believe synch-ing up the parts was as easy as Clown Staples says it was. [via cuechamp, where I also got the screenshot]