Twa conversations.
Momus talks with the pink paper; Hope Larson talks with her house.
Resolute.
Oh, hey. I did it.
(Final print job tonight. First of the promised packages out tomorrow. Further bulletins as events warrant, and do note I’ll be here a week from this weekend, if you’re so inclined.)
Groovy.
Ampersand brings us news of the Off-Broadway Evil Dead: The Musical, but unaccountably misses the Buffy/Red Dwarf connection: it’s co-directed and choreographed by Hinton Battle.
Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
I left Methernitha that day with many questions buzzing through my mind. What if I asked to become a member? Would I be accepted? Would they let me see it then? Would I find out how the machine functioned, and whether trickery was involved? How long would it take to gain their trust? Stefan Marinov, a Bulgarian physicist and free-energy inventor, joined Methernitha and for many years attempted to understand how the machine worked. He claimed to be privy to the secret of the device, but he could not convince the group to share their knowledge with outsiders. In the summer of 1997, he leapt to his death from a library window at Graz University; his suicide note ended with: “feci quod potui, faciant meliora potentes” (“I did what I could, let those who can do better”).
Soon after making my pilgrimage to the Methernitha, I heard about a conference devoted to free energy to be held in Berlin. Looking down the schedule, I was excited to see that there would be a presentation of a Testatika. I immediately booked a place and bought a plane ticket. When the time came, a somewhat half-heartedly constructed machine was described as a demonstration device, created to rule out certain hypotheses of the Testatika’s design—to show how it didn’t work. When I spoke to him after his talk and explained my ambitious quest to build my own working version of the Testatika, he earnestly recommended that a thorough reading of Gœthe’s Faust might be the best way forward.
—Nick Læssing, “Something for Nothing”
Cabinet issue 21—Electricity
This machine bugs liberals.
Say, Fred, I heard Lyndon is forming a new Federal agency.
Yeah? What’s that?
It’s going to be called the Poverty Relief Agency.
Oh, that’s nothing new, Bobby Baker’s headed that department for years.
Zing?
Down in Havana, 90 miles from our shore
Lies an army of Commies and Fidel Castro
We were going to remove them, the plans were all made
We’d help with the airplanes on invasion day
But you know the Liberals and the CIA
They agreed with Adlai, take the airplanes away
So the brave freedom fighters were destined to fall
’Cause we didn’t answer when we heard their call
—the Goldwaters, “Down in Havana”
Rick Perlstein’s always worth reading; the Design Observer’s running an essay of his that the New Republic couldn’t be bothered to put online, so go, read “What is Conservative Culture?”
Conservative culture was shaped in another era, one in which conservatives felt marginal and beleaguered. It enunciated a heady sense of defiance. In a world in which patriotic Americans were hemmed in on every side by an all-encroaching liberal hegemony, raw sex in the classrooms, and totalitarian enemies of the United States beating down our very borders, finally conservatives could get together and (as track twelve of the Goldwaters’ Folk Songs to Bug the Liberals avowed) “Row Our Own Boat.”
But now conservatism has grown into a vast and diverse chunk of the electorate. Its culture has become so dominant that one can live entirely within it. Shortly after the Republicans took over Congress in 1994, a Washington activist could, if he so chose, attend nothing but conservative parties, panels, and barbecues; a recent Pew Research Center study suggested that partisan divisions are increasing at the community level. And yet, far inside these enclaves, conservatives still rely on the cultural tropes of that earlier period: At one living room “Party for the President” in 2004, a woman told me, “We’re losing our rights as Christians. ... and being persecuted again.” The culture of conservatives still insists that it is being hemmed in on every side. In Tom DeLay’s valedictory address, as classic an expression of high conservative culture as ever was uttered, he attributed to liberalism “a voracious appetite for growth. In any place or any time on any issue, what does liberalism ever seek, Mr. Speaker? More. ... If conservatives don’t stand up to liberalism, no one will.”
How to explain these strange continuities? And what does it say about the politics of our own time? Kirk offers no answers, because what holds the movement together isn’t its intellectual history but its cultural one. Folk Songs to Bug the Liberals is this mystery’s Rosetta Stone.
Bugging liberals, you see, being bugged by liberals, is not incidental to conservative culture, but rather is constitutive of it—more so than any identifiable positive content. Seeing Republicans appropriate liberal-sounding rhetoric on immigrants and education and getting credit for it—even while their policies corrode public education and also stoke an anti-immigrant backlash—bugs the hell out of the liberals. Which is, for Karl Rove no doubt, part of the calculation. Rove knows that the pleasure of watching liberals’ heads explode is the best way to keep his team rowing in the same direction.
Two things struck me, reading this: first, of course, appropriation isn’t only done to fuck with our the other side’s heads. When you start to believe your own bullshit, that you really are beset on all sides by an implacable foe, when you’re out there fighting dragons every day, you start to ask yourself what it is they’ve got that you don’t; you start to wonder if maybe you shouldn’t become a little draconic yourself. You say things like, “They have Joan Baez, who do we have?”
It was Dr. Fred C. Schwarz of the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade (CACC) who acted as [Janet] Greene’s “Col. Parker” and molded her into his very own Anti-Baez. As reported in The Los Angeles Times, on October 13, 1964, Schwarz unveiled his new musical weapon against Communism at a press conference at the Biltmore Hotel in LA. With Greene at his side, Schwarz stated to the assembled press that he had “taken a leaf out of the Communist book” by adding a conservative folk singer to his organization. “We have decided to take advantage of this technique for our own purposes.” He then added, “You’d be amazed at how much doctrine can be taught in one song.”
The second thing was how old the conservative schtick is. They were hating on the Clenis back in 1964.
Say I saw a new a great new play on Broadway last night, it’s called The Doll House.
Is that the Rodgers-Hammerstein show?
No, it’s a Profumo-Baker production.
Must have been quite a comedy!
Might call it a farce!
Rimshot, motherfuckers. Rimshot.
Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.
PHILLIPS: Do you think they’re taking what you’re saying and incorporating it into foreign policy?
ROSENBERG: I wouldn’t go that far. But I would say—I would say that Bible prophecy is an intercept from the mind of God. It’s actually fairly remarkable intelligence, and that’s why my novels keep coming true, because mine are on this side of the Rapture, leading up to Jerry and Tim’s books, but they suggest events that the Bible does lay out that will get us closer to those events. And, in fact, one by one in The Last Jihad, my book The Last Days, The Ezekiel Option, and now The Copper Scroll, have this feeling of coming true. I think that’s why a million copies have sold. They’re New York Times best-sellers, because they’re based on Bible prophecy, and they are coming true bit by bit, day by day.
PHILLIPS: Joel, do I need to start taking care of unfinished business and telling people that I love them and I’m sorry for all the evil things I’ve done?
ROSENBERG: Well, I think that would be a good start. I mean, Jesus loves the people of the Middle East. Matthew 15—Jesus was in southern Lebanon. Why? Telling the people of Lebanon that he loved them, that God loved them.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a simper.
Ah, youth, where is thy sting?
—Neil Gaimain; Scott McCloud; San Diego, 1991.
Via 
ivy_rat.
Park that car. Drop that phone. Sleep on the floor. Dream about me.
Duly added to the list of things I can’t get enough of: the way John Perry’s guitar won’t stop climbing at the beginning of “Another Girl, Another Planet.” I may not agree that it’s the greatest rock single ever recorded, but certainly no pop song ever kicked off better than this one, and that’s what it’s all about. —The fact that it’s in heavy rotation with “Catastrophe” is probably best not dwelt on, given that our Secretary of State is sending coded messages to the end-time fucknuts who are so goddamn besotten with themselves they think it’s only fitting the world’s ending just for them. This, too, shall pass. The Dude abides.
Would you believe I’m still tinkering with the deltiolographs?
Until then:
A goddamned amusement park.
Here we are, in the deeps of Howard Beale time, and following a link from a link to a link I find myself at Tom Spurgeon’s massively inclusive list of lists of Things to Do in San Diego When You’re Chuffed, and damned if I didn’t end up wishing I’d gone to Comic-Con. —I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
We do what we’re told.
Many of the abusive interrogation methods that were being used at Nama were clearly authorized by the command structure at the camp. [“Sgt.] Jeff [Perry”*] told Human Rights Watch that written authorizations were required for most abusive techniques, indicating that the use of these tactics was approved up the chain of command.
There was an authorization template on a computer, a sheet that you would print out, or actually just type it in. And it was a checklist. And it was all already typed out for you, environmental controls, hot and cold, you know, strobe lights, music, so forth. Working dogs, which, when I was there, wasn’t being used. But you would just check what you want to use off, and if you planned on using a harsh interrogation you’d just get it signed off.
I never saw a sheet that wasn’t signed. It would be signed off by the commander, whoever that was, whether it was 03 [captain] or 06 [colonel], whoever was in charge at the time. . . . When the 06 was there, yeah, he would sign off on that. . . . He would sign off on that every time it was done.
[...]
Jeff also said that the commanding officer at Nama would sometimes tell the interrogators that the White House or Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had been briefed on intelligence gathered by the team, especially intelligence about Zarqawi:
[They’d say:] “Rumsfeld was informed, such and such a report is on Rumsfeld’s desk this morning, read by Secdef . . . it’s a big morale booster for people working 14 hour days. Hey, we got to the White House!”
—No Blood, No Foul:
Soldiers’ Accounts of Detainee Abuse in Iraq
Human Rights Watch, July 2006
Volume Number 18, No. 3(G)
via Talking Points Memo
At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner. Some test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. Most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the learner.
If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:
- Please continue.
- The experiment requires you to continue, please go on.
- It is essential that you continue.
- You have no choice, you must continue.
If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.
[...]
There is a little-known coda to the experiment, reported by Philip Zimbardo. None of the participants who refused to administer the final shocks insisted that the experiment itself be terminated, nor left the room to check that the victim was well without asking for permission to leave, according to Milgram’s notes and recollections when he was asked on this point by Zimbardo.
—“Milgram experiment,” Wikipedia
Have you got anything without spam?
Dealing with the junk mail, I find an envelope from our auto insurance provider, Nationwide, and on the off-chance it’s something I should pay attention to, I open it. —It’s an offer to switch our auto insurance policy to Nationwide, where we could save up to $523 a year over our current rates.
The meme of innocence.
I’m not much of one for tit-for-tat (oh, who am I kidding), but the boys at Sadly, No! make one hell of a point.
Kiss them for me.
Hey! It’s the weekend of the massive San Diego Comic-Con. We didn’t go this year, but it sure sounds like Jesse Hamm’s enjoying himself.
Cui malo?
I know, I know: mocking the intellectually crippled is the jeu du jour of the left-blog elite, but people, really: Dobson and his ilk aren’t the ones comparing the homosexually inclined to dogs that moo; the Gill Foundation is. Sherman’s just pointing up the fatal flaw in Norman’s well-meaning but breathtakingly dim-witted argument: the proper stance in the fight for basic human rights isn’t I can’t help it I was born this way but what the fuck business is it of yours who I spend my life with?
Coffee.
The Spouse and I recently went through a couple of weeks where we eschewed coffee and alcohol and sugar and bread and nuts and milk and eggs and cheese and butter and yogurt and red meat, that last not proving too difficult, as I’m nominally vegetarian (though I’m eating more fish, which is completely the fault of the decent sushi joint that’s walking distance from our house), and as I’m nominally vegetarian and do most of the cooking, the Spouse finds herself vegetarian de facto. Even the lack of coffee wasn’t too bad after the first few days with the headaches and the grumpiness. I drank a lot of green tea.
And it wasn’t as bad as you’d think. Anytime you force your diet out of its usual rut you get creative, or so I’ve found. Menus spark up. I found whole chunks of cookbooks I hadn’t seen yet. That lovely gratin with the red onions and the olives and the tomato and the thyme. That “Mexican” stir fry, with the black beans and the corn. The Tuscan white bean and tomato soup with the kale roughly chopped and tossed in to wilt. —Though the tofu with the tasty spicy sauce didn’t turn out exactly as Madhur Jeffries advertised. (Really, the worst of it—aside from the daily infusions of foul herbal nostrums which, we do this again, I’ll just skip, thanks—was the lack of cheese. And eggs. I do like the dairy.)
But the point is not to trade recipes whose names and particulars I can’t bring to mind here at work, away from my cookbooks. The point, despite the relative ease with which I did without it over the course of the two weeks, is the coffee.
Before we did this two-week purge, I used to drink my coffee out of a mug like this:
With milk enough and two spoons of sugar. (It’s a big mug; a bowl of coffee, as the Spouse would put it.) I’d have two of those as I read my blogs and newsfeeds before I considered myself human enough to face the rest of the day.
Now, though? I drink one, maybe two, of these:
And I drink it dead black. No sugar at all. The very idea of doctoring the stuff is on the edge of ick to me, now; has become, oddly, alien.
Weird.
Oh, right.
I was—“procrastinating” is such an ugly word—I was organizing some notes, looking over the list of proposed titles for upcoming fits and remembering which ones I’d found epigrams for and which ones I hadn’t, when I tripped over “Frail,” there between an as-yet unnamed bit at no. 14 and “Plenty” at no. 16.
“Frail.” Hadn’t that been the one with the O’Brian quote? Aubrey to Maturin, or Maturin to Aubrey, one of ’em anyway laughing at what little it is that separates quickness from death? Which the hell book was that from? And why isn’t the quote in the neat little text file I’ve got of all my other epigrammic candidates?
So I opened up the various other text files I’ve accumulated over the years where notes have been stashed and squirreled away, and searched them with the various search tools at my disposal, looking for “frail.” Bupkes.
Did I forget maybe to put it somewhere? Noted it en passant, said to myself, oh, hey, keen, let’s remember to come back and get this later, okay? And then forgot? As it wouldn’t be the first time.
Okay. Okay. We could go look for it. Except I ran across it the last time I was bingeing through the first seven or so of the Aubrey-Maturin books, and I have no earthly idea which one it was in. And I don’t remember enough of the context to make skimming at all viable. Not through seven books. (Maybe I should start bingeing again? Put down The Orientalist and Evasion and Civilizations Before Greece and Rome and The Demon Lover and pick up Master and Commander for another go-round, grimly determined to pounce this time?)
I think I was actually typing “frail” in the Seach Inside the Book! feature over at Amazon when it hit me: maybe I’d written it down. You know, on paper. With a pen. In the main black notebook I’ve been using when I’m not, you know. Near a keyboard.
Found it in two: “Bless you, Jack, an inch of steel in the right place will do wonders. Man is a pitiably frail machine.” —Although I still don’t know which book. Or what context. Oh, well.
(At least I got a blog post out of it. Now. What in hell am I going to quote for “Surveilling”?)
