Serene Falcon

Propaganda 101 — A Small Black Pig

September 8th, 2007home at 12:20 pm (Other Writ, Animals, Royalism, The Enemy)

The Terrible Verdict

Roger of Wendover was a monk of St Albans who wrote a great chronicle that began with the creation of the world. Some ten years after John’s death he set down an account of the reign. What is immediately striking about this is that he seems to know more about John’s reign than men who were writing shortly after the events they described. He knows what John said to his nephew Arthur before he made away with him. He can give illustrations of the way the king terrorized the clergy: crushing an archdeacon under a cope of lead, threatening to slit the noses of papal servants and to pluck out their eyes. There is a story of a Jew of Bristol who had a tooth knocked out daily until he revealed where he had hidden his treasure. He gives John’s blasphemous oath ( ‘By God’s teeth’ ), and tells how he made free with the wives and daughters of his barons. He explains that John lost Normandy to the king of France because at the critical stage of the campaign he was uxorious and idle: ‘Let be, let be, whatever he now takes I shall one day recover.’ Historians have often used these stories freely: here at last is the meat after a diet of thin gruel. Now we can know what John was really like, for here are anecdotes that clearly characterise him.

What the historians who use these anecdotes about John seldom make clear, however, is that Wendover’s chronicle is full of anecdotes of a highly dubious nature. There is one about a washerwoman who tried to earn an extra penny by plying her trade on the Sabbath, and was sucked dry by a small black pig as punishment. There is one ( it is eighteen pages long ) about a peasant named Thurkhill from the village of Twinstead in Essex who, in 1206, was led through the realms of Purgatory by St Julian. As Wendover tells it the story has many realistic touches, from the man’s name and the place where he lived to precise details about the torture chambers of the underworld: in one, for example, stand cauldrons of inky water so bitter that if a piece of wood is thrown in the bark instantly peels off it. It is a grim and lively story; but is it true ? Wendover certainly seems to think it as authentic as his stories about John; and it is difficult to see on what grounds historians should reject the former while accepting the latter.

W. L.. Warren : King John

King John's Effigy

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Moving On

September 7th, 2007faq at 7:32 amparticipate (Self Writ, Animals, Correctitude, Generalia)

Useful how-to — from 1998 but updated recently — on vanishing from plain sight in America, Vanishing Point, by Fredric Rice.

Whilst the work options and governmental/police procedures would not be applicable outside the Americas, there are many useful tips: destroying a vehicle with rice ( long-grain natürlich ) in the radiator fluid is excellent, and need not be considered only of interest to escapees. There is a section for animal rights activists rightly pointing out that although correct, certain actions are illegal and that should be mentally taken on board as criminal, and not offered as so righteous that one is essentially innocent, justified by the cause. Neither the writer nor I would suggest not doing these actions; merely that they entail consequences. The enemy may be wrong — most people are — but like most people, they equally truly believe they are right.

As such, your opposition is motivated to find you. Given the fact that the vivisectionist industry and the animal fur industry financially support political venues, and you’re left needing to discard any mindset you may have that your crimes are minimal. You must adopt the mindset of your opposition which considers you — rightly or wrongly — to be a considerable threat to people’s security.

There is nothing in the least exciting about a life on the run, particularly out on the desert unless your entire world revolves around star-gazing; but this must help someone somewhere.

Great Bear aka Charles’ Wain

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The Ravenna Cosmography

September 7th, 2007

at 5:00 am

guidelines

(Self Writ, Generalia, Places)

Impressive study called The Roman Map of Britain

And here’s a paper on Old King Cole: Kyle Society

Antoninus Pius – Sestertius

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The Sweetest Hope

September 6th, 2007home at 5:10 am (Music, Videos)

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

Puccini – José Carreras with Teresa Stratas : “Che gelida manina”

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On Top

September 5th, 2007faq at 11:12 pmparticipate (Art, Generalia)

From The Auckland Art Gallery, a rather cool rendition of how Tissot‘s painting ‘Still on Top‘ was restored, after a nutter with a gun kidnapped and damaged it in 1998.

Here.

The Reich Flag and that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire may be, for the semi-patriotic intent of the piece, beneath the Tricolor, but it’s always good to see them.

Unlike the bonnet of the elderly gent. Red Cotton Night-cap Country wasn’t just Browning being playful…

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I’d Love You Strong

September 5th, 2007

at 1:00 am

guidelines

(Music)

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Ruth Etting : If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight

Wasn’t she great ?

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Dostoevsky Has Left The Building

September 4th, 2007home at 3:00 am (Self Writ, High Germany, Places)

What the hell, I’m dead; so here’s a photo from a book on courtesans, of Wiesbaden, ‘The Prussian Spa’ in the 1860s. Whilst never as famous as Monte Carlo, one could have a good time there with kindly girls, gamble moderately, and take the waters at the same time.

Las Vegas is the American equivalent.

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Wide-Eyed And Full Of Sexual Excitement

September 3rd, 2007faq at 2:01 amparticipate (Self Writ, Art, Generalia, The Enemy)

Existing without television until just before the end of the last century and which discarded recently completely after little use for years, the only thing to regret in that is that one’s education in early cinema is incomplete. Admittedly cultural zeitgeist of the past informs one though a type of osmosis — I have never seen a Keystone Cops movie, but feel fairly confident it can be imaged enough — but I guess one should at least attempt to become acquainted with known masterpieces/milestones. Suffering is supposed to be good for the soul, although personally I should prefer to stuff it when given a choice.

In this spirit I today watched D. W. Griffith’s great anti-war epic ‘The Birth of a Nation’, Here.
Although only in brief chunks, as it’s kind of long at three hours, and suffers from the pace of a snail got at by horse-dopers. The, uh, low expectations of audience comprehension at that period also adds to the tame pace. Heavy symbolism lingered upon too long — although to be absolutely fair, most people might not find the delineation between the younger characters at the beginning sufficiently drawn, since they appear to be clones; and in any case there’s a whole lot of hand-shaking going on for about ten minutes so one’s attention is bound to wander rather. I frequently glanced at a crib-sheet* to see whom was who.

*( Following the South’s defeat, Stoneman calls for his protege and aide Silas Lynch (George Siegmann), mulatto (half African-American) leader of the blacks. When greeting him, Stoneman orders: “Don’t scrape to me. You are the equal of any man here.” Senator Charles Sumner is summoned, and forced to acknowledge mulatto Lynch’s position. Sumner proposes a less dangerous policy in the extension of power to the freed race. In the next room, Lydia listens to the conversation, wide-eyed and full of sexual excitement. ) I can think of more erotic subjects…

The main lessons this film teaches us are that war is hell — although war is undoubtedly better than a 12-hour ( or two hour for those of us more easily bored ) shift in the cotton fields every day —- mid-victorian clothes were insane; Reconstruction was hell ( although indignation over giving the freed slaves the vote, and disenfranchising whites ignores the fact that giving anyone the vote is lethal ); and that ‘Africans’ are natural brutes. It would be silly to get over-excited at things which were the common currency of mental discourse in another period; besides which blacks in early twentieth century America had far worse things to worry about than filmic propaganda for a racialist view of their recent past.

Generally the men are dorks, but the girls are pretty, although acting at that point often appears to involve imitating lunacy. Worse, the yuckyish sentiment is frequently overwhelming. Perhaps because the war was still in living memory at that time, the battle scenes are surprisingly — for art — realistic, insofar as one can see what’s happening; but then that is a quality of war itself. Still in the end, for the materials of the time, 1915, one can appreciate the skill of the director. The score is more insistent than it would have been when played by a weary piano-player in the cinemas of the time.

Obviously, online one can’t appreciate Griffith’s cinematic values as one ought: this is not a sharp rendering: no worse maybe than for a semi-blind person watching half a mile away at a drive-in on a foggy day.