The SFFaudio Podcast #707 – READALONG: Villains Of All Nations by Marcus Rediker

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #707 – Jesse and Evan Lampe talk about Villains Of All Nations by Marcus Rediker

Talked about on today’s show:
Atlantic Pirates In The Golden Age, 2004, the narrator, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, And The Hidden History Of The Revolutionary Atlantic by by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, a lot of overlap?, the hydrarchy, dueling powers, bottom up, from above, the authority of the sea, abolitionism, the Putney debates, sailors are the threads, not the best scholarship, a concise argument, struggling with evidence, where the sources are weak, correct conclusions, a longer book, right on almost everything, a claim in the introduction, women went into piracy and discoursed on gender, a means to discuss those things, class, race, gender, the dual terrors, really convincing, to talk about terrorism, the Noam Chomsky arguments, state terrorism, the War on Terror, something not mentioned in the book, the Jolly Roger, to make the icon on twitter, the colour, the black flag, the black standard, 2014, 2022, the ISIS flag, 1716-1726, the last phase of the golden age, the barbary coast, book piracy, Captain Phillips, the excuse for Djjibuouti, corporations from all nations, not just contrast, these are not satanists exactly, not conforming to Christianity’s authority, why Roger is so jolly, the second meaning: fucking, making merry, what the pirates want to do, party, dancing, getting drunk, merry Christmas, a warm glow, happy fucking, death is coming, a momento mori for the whole ship, they know they don’t have long, as an extended slave rebellion, fly away from danger, and fly to party houses, take their stuff and go party with it, an intellectual history, how liberty and the French Revolution (and the American Revolution) coming out of it, Black Sails, 1715, the Bahamas, declaring war on the whole world, Charles Vane, John Rackham, Mary Read, Benjamin Hornigold, Blackbeard is not what you think, a prequel to Treasure Island, pirates don’t bury their treasure, an egalitarian society, an adaptation of this book the themes of democracy, maroons, runaway slaves, one of the best arguments, revenge, they purposely went after the slave trade because they despised it, they hated slavery, they slowed down the slave trade, and what caused their persecution, hurting them where it hurts, modern day connections, the propaganda against pirates, Cotton Mather, we gotta not send our children to sea, sea conditions are so bad, pressure against regular against internet piracy, Kim DotCom got raided in New Zealand, so much piracy has been domesticated, the Napster stuff, albums in the 90s had one hit song, I can just get the one song, how this becomes tamed, you wouldn’t steal a bike, everything its on youtube, spotify, ads, streaming for movies, 50 different streaming services, a wave that won’t go away, the Azov battalion, Ukraine has a Nazi problem, they’re on our team, the propaganda against pirates is needed because they’re attractive figures, Robin Hood is a folk hero, he and his merry men are there to have fun and make hay while the sun shines, figures to be made fun of, gallows humour, the church is something you can’t trust, Ivanhoe, everything bad is King John, free men hunting in the kings woods, outlaws, wolfsheads, making outlaws our outlaws, ‘Al-Qaeda is on our team is Syria’, the U.S. is funding Al-Qaeda in Syria, strange bedfellows, this book is about power, one of the responses to Rediker, pirates were petty capitalists, making a separate social order, a more rational marketplace, when markets matured pirates weren’t needed anymore, same propaganda to tame them, rock and rollers, so rich, Neil Young and Spotify, a monetary move, apply pressure, Joe Rogan’s ruining the world, if we think of rock and roll connected to be being merry and piratical, siton your treasure, he never was a punk, Lipstick Traces, counterculture, punk was never that mainstream, an ability to sell-out, they’re not gathering funds for a mortgage, cruelty from the masters, low pay, bad food, sickness, disease, a revenge principle, Nietzsche master morality vs. slave morality, the romans worshiped power, being cruel to your slaves was moral, a new religion coming from the east, Greek tutors, turn the other cheek, rotting in hell vs. living in heaven, the way of peace, the whole state apparatus, a capitalist realism way, a more sophisticated tool, Christian pirates (nominally), put them in slavery, kept them sick, injured, not enough alcohol, I’m a devil worshiper, inverse slave morality is no respect for authority, our only god is death, our only god is making jolly, not sustainable (they lost), a human lifespan, the particulars don’t kill piracy (just this golden age), without ourselves against those who wish to control us, you need to pay for my profits, not getting what you were (supposed to be) paid, a revelation to see it as a slave rebellion, the main plot point, Captain Flint, a particular treasure ship, dissatisfaction, ahistorical, quartermaster emphasis, Rackham was on Vane’s ship, fuck Treasure Island?, Starz, Spartacus is very class conscious, focus on sexuality and human bodies, the children’s book, where it veers, Flint’s overall goal is to negotiate with the capitalist system, I will be your king, the most ahistorical part of the show, it shocks the boatswain, there was no alternative to kings, there was no country without a king, Holy Roman Empire republics, England was the most democratic place on the planet, Florence, on the Roman model, the rise of empire, consolidation, Italy being turned into a country, when Germany gets its shit together, the way the Prussians thought about it, they way we’re teaching historical narratives, new interpretations, critical thinking, why do we make our narrative a history of states, progress, why is that the case?, France becomes a nation state by repressing local culture, the same propaganda, speak the same language, the Yiddish Press in New York, super-socialist, anarchist, communist, teach them English, that’s happening today, imposing a state on the sea, brutal violence, public hanging, pardons, the power dynamic is not as monolithic as it is here, suppression, lockdowns, kicking people off platforms, George Galloway, a former Labour MP, RT has been banned, Russian State Affiliated Media, Ed Schultz, Abby Martin, Chris Hedges, no Russian content at all, interviews with Cornell West, interviews, commentary and criticism, nobody gets a pardon anymore, applying to faceless corporations for review, African slave trade, the Royal African Company had stockholders, hope for their ship to come in, make new laws, this will solve things, sea-raiding, a pardon for all piratical activities, a free pardon, the buccaneers and the privateers, state mercenaries, Europe was in constant war, now you’re a warship, letters of marque, part of the defense budget, how it works with Al Quaid, stingers, 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, bad dirty feet on our holy soil, declaring war on the most powerful, the invasion of Iraq, disband the army, ISIS, let’s focus on Syria (what’s important right now), we’ve got a pipeline to put through, the pardons are not publicly stated, those guys were Nazis ten minutes ago, deathsheads on their uniforms, the ADL say they’re not Nazis, whipping gypsies in the street, a critique of capitalism, the origin of Capitalism, an expansion of one chapter, the share system, pay vs. shares, pre-money, the Romans, constant war and expansion, paying their troops with slaves, land too, but mostly slaves, fucking around in Gaul for a decade, enriched by the slaves, a co-op, the CEO gets paid more than a line workers, pirate charters, 1.5 shares for a captain, captains murdered by their crew, reading and navigating, reading, the quartermaster, the connections to the tribune, a stupid system in Canada, senators are appointed for life, party loyalists, tenure, untouchable by federal party in party, senatorial removal, 9 supreme court justices, a super-reactionary institution, political appointees, a quartermaster as a balance to the captain’s power, states on a ship, in battle they are at war, the articles are their constitutions and the captain is not their king, writing that first constitution, tradition, Artistole, the Athenian constitution, the Iroquois, “on account”, bandits and pirates, Eric Hobsbawm’s Bandits, an escape valve, providing hope, releasing the pressure a little bit, redistribute the wealth a little bit, stickin it to the man, the signing of the articles, I never signed onto the constitution and I never will, signing up for the Boy Scouts, a non-sea shanty, an implicit submission in that song, the U.S. founding fathers worried about this, Thomas Jefferson, re-write the whole thing every seven years, after the Civil War, repealing prohibition, voting rights, getting rid of slavery, defining citizenship, signing on, churches are even better at this, a class, confirmation, the age of consent, by reading from the Torah, confirmation for Christians, 13/14, at the beginning of your adulthood, adult baptism, children can’t consent, Jesus was baptized as an adult, re-baptized, born again, anabaptists, the Quakers, the puritans, religious nuts, strong opinions, the Putney Debates, debating class, authority, aristocracy, the New Model Army, spread these ideas, these tendrils of knowledge and discourse, across the Atlantic, carried by the sea, in H.P. Lovecraft, The Call Of Cthulhu Castro, a weird cult that no-one in the straight society likes, the interview, Cthulhu promises us freedom in this world and revelry, we’re not going to be slaves in this world, we’re not going to mortgage our lives, Cthulhu is beyond good and evil, same with the Deep Ones, immortality, kings under the sea, freedom in the sea, the same language, Robert E. Howard’s pirate stories, The General History Of Pyrates by Charles Johnson, disrespect for hypocrisy, the Voluminous Podcast, Howard was offended, how crime works in the South West, wanting to have children do better, pioneering, moving to get away, gun culture in the USA, keeping guns to keep the king honest, you better not come into my house, the fear and escalating via swatting people, we need to be able to crack down, Black Panthers are getting uppity, open carrying weapons, Paul has respect for the state in the way that Jesse does not, the police are there to keep order (or as the unfair captains of states), not sharing with the workers on the ship of state, having access to the ship’s store of arms, the Roman dictator, going to a frontier, the tradition, relinquish the power and currency and disband their army, not bringing armed troops into the city, to keep the state afloat in the right way, thinking of nations as something of value, everybody has a blue and yellow sticker in their twitter bio, a good person always trying to help things, people are suffering, teaming up with one state against another, inescapable capitalist realism, a badge or a patch, swearing to obey, submitting to power, if the captains hides information, the incident with the dresses, no guard on the shared hold, how dare you, to be sold at auction, a hint in the opening episode, John Silver, a cook, hiding something of value from the crew he’s joined, open up the books, if you can’t read, we have to rely on our representatives, in collusion with the captain, on a small ship of state with a black flag, connecting with the creation of the USA, the John Locke connection, the provinces, Providence, the state of Massachusetts, the spread of these ideas, writing fiction, show grammar, a thinly veiled description of the Boston Tea Party, dressing up like Indians, we are the natives of this land, we are protesting, we are barbarians, what January 6th was about, British provocateurs in the Boston Tea Party?, the etymology of the word strike, sailors striking the sales!, is Evan super-jealous?, Pacific history, blackbirders in the South Pacific, logbooks, not many mutinies, the Bounty mutiny, near mutinies, someone was beaten, put in irons, protesting to the mate, its really tense for a moment, a non-shitty captain, Captain Bligh, near-mutinies were common, worried about the competition?, how upset would he be that Jesse pirated his book?, he can be upset if he wants to be, Peter Linebaugh is more openly political, May Day, the commons, outwardly political, The London Hanged, dense and hard to read and wonderful, violence against the working class in England, theft over a pound, transportation was the out, pleading the belly, on account I’m pleading the belly, Newgate, Belmarsh, Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle, a right-winger?, a believer in tech, tech salvation, gaols vs. prisons, commerce, prostitutes could come in, I’m a young woman, I steal a bunch of silverware, a capitol offense, wink at a guard, the name of Evan’s book: pleading the belly, Jack London’s south sea island books with dogs, Jerry Of The Islands, Goliah, such a great story, a huge book, The Call Of The Wild, a terrier’s pov, blackbirding, slavery by another name, The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism And Black Slavery In The South Seas after the Civil War by Gerald Horne, John Barleycorn, Michael: Brother Of Jerry, this amazing place, Robert Louis Stephenson, Treasure Island, pre-homework, Tahiti, wife and step-kid, not an asshole, pretty cool, Travels With A Donkey in Spain, pirate charters, Daniel Defoe, Captain Charles Johnson, The General History Of Pyrates, fun names, Vane is a fun name, famous pirates, the two lineages of pirates, two families, jolly rogers, the final form, the dinseyfied version, the hourglass, skeleton, black background, paintings from the Middle Ages, Cockaigne, highly literate and oversexed monks, the land of milk and honey, hanging out with the nuns down the street, the dork version of pirates, making memes about what would be fun, waifu pillows, breaking out of the monastery, taking the ship of state and going a-pirating, cheese raining from the sky, a hilarious thing, a bottom up thing, something that comes down to us from such a long time ago, an interesting connection, all brothers of the sea, some sisters in there, not racist when thinking about freeing slaves, recruiting, make more liberty, make more merry, doing piracy today, the US military rules the seas, there literally in the Black Sea, the Red Sea, they’re on every sea, Aral Sea, the US Coast Guard is off the coast of Iran, maroon communities, places to run to, aggressive behavior, new society, new rules, the seas were a wild place, the taming of the wild spaces, where does piracy move to, this ethos, Jesse James, the outlaws of the old west, the Frank/Younger gang, the underclass, every man’s hand is against them, shot in the back while hanging a portrait, bounties, shooting outlaws, that outlaw spirit, crossing oceans, into boats, loading stuff on, an ability to trade and get things, you need to follow the more experienced person, how to navigate, before public GPS, how to tie ropes to the docks, you need to learn how to swim, like school, farming, harvesting, less fraught, the weather, time of day on the land, running your ship afoul, a need for skill, a need for respect, the pay is low, disconnected from most people’s lives, an anchor tattoo, a writer, a gay man, the merchant marine, a thing that profoundly changes a lot of people, the sailoring business, bully and bluff, a fight with Houdini, how terrible it was to be a merchant sailor, Luke Burrage, cruise ship, the talent vs. the crew, Philipinos, Malaysians, the global north, bullshit jobs, engaged in production, resistance is more significant, how we started this conversation, author and editors doing all this work for free, writing fiction for tiny audiences, late capitalism, teaching, our jobs exist (teaching) because of higher institutions, the byproduct of teaching is learning, the veins and the arteries, preying on the slave trade, railroad workers, the great railroad strike, Starbucks workers unionizing, the resistance and dismissal of the Truckers, the lack of acknowledgement of the yellow vests, blocking access and refusing to tow trucks, seeing Justin Trudeau, a war measures act in everything but name, seizing people’s bank accounts, Greta Thunberg, gas prices, ordering from Amazon, buying dog food through the mail, there aren’t that many independent truckers, the land problem, the original Mad Max (1979), two stories, the story of the toe-cutter gang, road pirates, reduced government power, incompetent government?, the life of the merry, disrespectful, the legend of the Night Rider, his scag, he falls apart emotionally, threatening communities, drunken, lascivious and rude, pirate swearing, a call for non-decorum, conversation in the discourse, some words are not allowed to be said, people with callouses on their hands, this is bullshit, the word bullshit is taboo, the constant replacement (euphemism treadmill), increasingly few kids at the grocery store, a kind of discipline on the crew, disciplined for expressing dissatisfaction, oppression from above, collegiality wasn’t written into the pirate codes, if we have a beef we have it out on the shore, formal and ceremonial and more accurate, somebody did some homework, making war on the world, we have this set, bringing all those sailors who are watching it, a lot of money, the right move, not enough sea-action, they don’t like sailing they like partying, sex and drama, Spartacus did it better, four season, Spartacus is so smart, Blood And Sand, the psychology is brilliant, my identity is tied to my , internalized their slavery, their favourite baseball player, a fraternity of players, what a big deal, when Wayne Gretzky left the Oilers to go to the L.A. Kings, emotional trauma, Edmonton is just so great, so naive and dumb, extreme loyalty, Any Given Sunday (1999), all about class, class solidarity, loyalty, I Am Spartacus, embracing his slave identity, we don’t know his real name, Batiatus, Crixus, the drama with the wife, the psychology behind being feted and respected as a slave, a star football player and criminally underpaid, baseball lockout, on the team with the guy with the tool in his hand, The Many Headed Hydra, Will would be get on this, Milton, literature connections, William Blake, Tyger Tyger, a radical anti-capitalist interpretation, horrible scary awesome creatures, the hydra metaphor, the hydra was the good guy, Hercules, the state has to be Herclues, on the side of the monster against the gods, Thungerb challenged her parents to lower their carbon footprint, becoming vegan, upcycling, giving up flying, popular with a certain set, Naomi Klein’s argument, we need to dismantle capitalism, a kid, George Galloway, Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann is not a threat, running a political party, Jeremy Corbyn, being a bad pirate, a progressive, a left wing democrat, Predator guy, I ain’t got time to bleed, Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, state affiliated media, opposed the Iraq War, I will always speak out against war, there’s a lot of pressure to suppress, youtube, twitter, facebook, The Thing In The Woods, the author of the Velveteen Rabbit, a werewolf book by an American, something freaky about that book, it being a stuffed animal, stuffed animals trying to kill Evan, ideas for making money, a stuffed dragon with tiger print skin, Peter Rabbit, a horror story, Mr McGregor’s garden, a big white beard, god chases him around the garden, the bold one, he almost dies, Margret Williams, can you tell by looking at someone’s behavior that they have Asperger’s?, is Evan aspy?, is Eric Rabkin aspy?, spectrum diagnosis is very suspicious, always missing the context in direct messages, here’s somebody’s tweet and here’s my response: Jesse “I know other people are starving and unable to move out of their parent’s homes but I’d really like to quit my office job and write full time”, Jesse: “speaking of which, have you seen Hunter Biden’s meth mouth?” Evan: “He used to lick milf pussy. Sad.” a reference to Trump, laptop pictures, him with the milfs, lady on a chain by her hair, the president’s son whose existence was a non-entity until we find out he’s getting paid $50,000 [a month] for a no-show job in a country the United States is trying to steal from”, Jesse: “watched first episode of Moon Knight”, Evan: “does Squirrel Girl show up?”, Jesse: “not so far”, Evan: “Pity. She’s hot. I think she’s autistic. Can she be hot? She has a tail. Butt plug with tail. That is a thing.”, Jesse: “Wow.”, Evan: “watch more documentaries on porn hub”, Belmarsh Prison is in the latest James Bond movie, I was glad James Bond was dead, where they’re keeping Julian Assange, a previous Bond movie had a Julian Assange character, an evil program, smartblood for no reason, still talking about documentaries on PornHub, I can’t pay my rent, do they still have stories, why pornos still have stories, theories of story, stories are about conflict, Clifford Simak stories, conflict in the universe, Waystation, seeing things revealed, a slight misunderstanding for a minute, what stories are at core, you order a sausage pizza, that is a story, it doesn’t have any conflict, that’s a display (not much of a story), why do you need that at all, go right into the fucking, a forty minute scene, Emanuelle (1974), a full length feature film, tags, stepsis, same stories again and again, Jesse needs to study more, researching later.

Villains Of All Nations by Marcus Rediker

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The SFFaudio Podcast #595 – READALONG: Wasteland by W. Scott Poole

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #595 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa, Evan Lampe, and Will Emmons talk about the Blackstone Audio audiobook Wasteland: The Great War And The Origins Of Modern Horror by W. Scott Poole.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Great War And The Origins Of Modern Horror, hate notes!, starting prep on new Wastelands, this dude on the internet, Ghost, that was a shit book?, come on the podcast and tell me, a 2 star review by Ancient History: Not Quite Wastepaper, a good vacation read, Arthur Machen, a weird crit, Godzilla with tentacles, conclusions vs. omissions, a random collection of sentences, a reference to a Lovecraft poem, citation needed, a starting point for casual pulp history, pop horror studies, drop your class, wont come on the podcast, doesn’t listen to podcasts, most undergraduate essays are terrible, not a primary source, good for what it is, not the book I wanted, a book that doesn’t exist, cultural historian, making a puzzle by picking 1,000 pieces of a million pieces, rank it with stars, rating vs. review, the lowest review on goodreads or Amazon, looking at negative criticism, highly accurate, captured what this book is about, the title is unclear, a word is missing, this is a book about movies, Vladimir Putin in this book?, election interference, absolutely delusional, doing it throughout the book, where’s the E.C. Comics?, this isn’t about the origins of modern in general (films), he’s really not touching on literature, its all about these movies, why is Machen in here so much?, no films related to Arthur Machen, does that make it a bad book, you have to know what you’re getting, mistakes, assassinated not executed, Evan knows history, the horror of the trenches, his thesis is good, high-school world history, the Balfour Declaration, the Russo-Japanese war, ensconced in film and literature of this period, who is this audience for this book?, or Marissa for example, something interesting, 700 good pieces, why is Vladimir in here, World War Z, Annabelle (2014), you have to talk about Max Brooks, he shoehorns thing into it, the Great War never really ended, U.S. Army bases, military nerds, the whole reaction against horror, the Frankfurt School, German movies and German filmmakers, very broad, Ringu (1998), Wiemar Germany, Der Orchideengarten, Jesse doesn’t speak German, that horror and weird sensibility, consistent with Poole’s thesis, human psychology, lot of people, worthy of inclusion, as much about art, Pablo Picasso, photography, Scott Poole’s interests, there’s nothing wrong with that, it isn’t a survey, a modest pop history of horror, In Flanders Fields, propaganda in Canada, November 11th in Canada, The Four Feathers by A.E.W. Mason, buying poppies, it’s fucking sick, yo, I honor the veterans by knowing what happened, you’re not conforming, a social faux-pas,

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

the last stanza is fucking evil, the poppy, Mr Jim Moon’s podcast, the dreaming and desensitizing flower, the juice of the poppy, why are we doing this?, putting your body in a meat-grinder to make some rich guy richer, why the United States is still in Iraq, so evil, shell shock, how it translates into art and fiction, College of Charleston, Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism In The South Carolina Upcountry, a book his students would dig, in a conservative state, to know his students, he’s very grounded, an interesting fact, At The Mountains Of Madness by W. Scott Poole, listener and student Mike Nowak, a really good introduction to the subjects, Media Studies, fan writing, Will is not a horror guy, a bold thesis, horror as we know it is a reaction to WWI and the Western Front, Frankenstein (1931), weird horror, body parts sewn together is not in the novel, study the body, no stitching or gluing, what extracts, the Dracula connection, its all subconscious, the waxen bodies, the mirror, Monsters Of The Market: Zombies, Vampires And Global Capitalism by David McNally, a revolving door, The Body Snatchers, “We Are The Dead”, George Orwell, used to mollify and distract, the horror, how the Hell did Canada get into this stupid thing?, conscription, how did Mackenzie King deal with conscription in Quebec?, Lovecraft insane love of a homeland they’ve never visited, other people’s business, seeing Justin [Trudeau], pretending to be sad, don’t talk, observing silence, blue helmets, the Gallipoli campaign, noble sacrifice (fucking disaster), the right attitude, Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Neville Chamberlain, peace in our time, prevent another fucking meatgrinder, he has not fully learned his lesson, all in favour of empire, offense vs. defense, a slog of death, how much ink has been spilled, Chamberlain and Stalin, who is to blame for WWII?: Woodrow Wilson, who held the knife?: Hitler, Who put him on the path?: Wilson, Russia-gate, Ukraine-Gate, that brainworm shit is what caused Hitler is to have an audience, what’s to explain this?, City Of Endless Night by Milo Hastings, make everything chemically, how your government’s fucked up, pride, we’re better than them, we rule the waves, we rule the world, what these few guys at the top, we gotta blame things domestically, all that raping in Belgium, my son died because some people got raped, let’s extract value from those people, all the people starving in Germany after the war, Iran and Cuba sanctions, dual monetary system, Cuba’s so fucked up, to punish Cuba, the same kind of evil pride, the Soviet Union:

Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

too honest, hiding the truth, there’s a real sense that the horror we see after WWI and WWII is a way of mass dealing with the wars, kids reading E.C. Comics, faces rotting off, radiation fears, zombies and rotting bodies, Tales From The Crypt, the same reaction, a mass collective horror, our kids are going to be turned into juvenile delinquents, the Comics Code Authority, no blood aloud, no corrupt police officials, don’t show the undead, can’t use the word weird, they way they got out of that in the 1970s, Curtis Publications, Robert E. Howard, an exception for literature, Dracula, Frankenstein, a guy on staff named Marv Wolfman, that’s just his name, Werewolf By Night, The Thing, It, Swamp Thing, The Heap, the censorship, a face dripping off, nuclear war, controlling the population and feeding them bullshit, The Epoch Times, Falun Gong, super creepy, propaganda against China, Scientology for Chinese, a hate-on for the Chinese state, actual propaganda delivered to my mailbox, removed hashtags, #BidenDropOut, understanding how history works, is your only defense against being railroaded it another war, its a soporific and analgesic, sit their silently waiting, think about what you owe them, why is my brother Johnny mangled like that?, Goebbels censoring films, a worry, motifs and themes that can repurposed by the alt-right, Steve Bannon, Lovecraft’s current popularity, the alt-right don’t read the pulps, labeling people, a Nick Carter pulp:

In @monstersamerica’ book, IN THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, H.P. Lovecraft called himself “Carter” aftr Nick Carter in his LARP-like adventures

a dangerous kid, Nick Carter Weekly, Frank Belknap Long’s cat was named Felis, the surficial level, The Call Of Cthulhu, a giant death’s head with wings, Steve Bannon is a thought leader in that he’s read some books, Trump has not read a book in his whole life, cultural Marxism, the place that it comes from is there is massive distress and the response from the elites is not to deal with it but to spin, Lovecraft’s politics are stupid (loving England), owning the idiots, owning the elites than nothing, memes are easy and fun, the social distress, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right by Angela Nagle, immigration controls, embrace xenophobia, bracketing concerns, solve it in this very narrow way, one third of Americans didn’t pay their rent on April 1st, 2020, what’s going to happen?, this is massive distress, the perfect time for understanding how things happen, a great meme, distracted boyfriend meme, “sweet ass”, Tine, Quaran, Guillo, worried about hairproducts, podcasters have never done a podcast, rent strikes, world war, civil war, back to the blame game, you had a working class revolution in Germany, a 1918 class war, ordered away from the front, eat this shitless shit sandwich, propagandized, blamed and squeezed, stuff happens, the left is in power and unable to deliver anything, she’s a leftist, are you being nice to people?, the Social Democratic party (of Germany), the socialist couldn’t deliver, forty or fifty years of Neoliberalism, after Biden loses, it mirrors the current moment, The People’s Republic Of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski, you can’t win if you’re willing to capitulates to ridiculous talking points, Donald Trump is the most dangerous president in modern history, in what sense?, a terrible candidate, guys in the street angry, why people who are upset are going to buy into this shit, at least they have passion, the Russian Revolution happened because of this shit, the street movements, political institutions developing independently, the populists, movement culture, another failed movement, agricultural cooperatives, communes in Iowa, the wreckage of their failed attempts, the rage needs to be organized, the USA by 2021, Trump’s lack of action, what North Dakota is doing vs. what California is doing, New York, the cusp of something, peachy-keen, you don’t get Trump after Obama if Obama did so well, we don’t have a single royal family to execute the heads of, what Evan likes about Lenin, Will’s Lenin’s birthday tweet, one weird trick, if we just talk about x…, fooling them into letting us win, they suffered for those beliefs, writing in England, important cultural differences between different types of people in the Russian Empire, a jailhouse of nations, this peasant movement, what are we gonna do over the next couple of decades, modern WWII Russian movies, informed by Hollywood computer graphics,

PANFILOV’S 28 MEN (2016) is a Russian WWII movie about 28 legendary men from the 316th Rifle Division in the Battle Of Moscow funded by crowdsourcing, Russia, Kazakhstan, and a WWII computer game (WAR THUNDER) “Trump’s my guy” Instead of starting with action the movie starts with scene setting. It nods towards the “legendary” status of the story it is telling, has the officers layout a plan, soldiers tell each other tall tales & semi-mytholgocal stories while they dig foxholes and build dummy howitzers Not a shot is fired for the first half hour of the film. It’s all dialogue, character building. This is a film that COULD NOT HAVE BEEN made in HOLLYWOOD. As to the story being a TRUE story…

Russia’s Culture Minister:

“It is my deep conviction that even if this story was invented from the start to the finish […], it is a sacred legend which it’s simply impossible to besmirch. And people who try to do that are total scumbags.”

the movie knows that it’s kind of bullshit, how the propaganda spread, the story is known to be false, it doesn’t matter because it’s important, Russian WWII movies are not anti-German, the Great Patriotic War, Quentin Tarantino, Spaghetti Western WWII movies, he’s more about the movie than he is about the propagandist history, be distant from the propaganda, this is emblematic, its their honoring that tradition like Robin Hood, more true than reality, Enemy At The Gates, War Of The Rats, Ron Perlman, that game you played is Russian, the reason most people are 100% with trump is because he’s a thumb in the eye to the elites, he’s owning the libs, he’s got them bamboozled, he’s gonna be indicted!, fantasy is a persistent human genre of thought, Poole’s footnote, clever footnotes, footnote 13, male academics cite themselves more than their female colleagues, my fellow academics, a knowing understanding, a good teacher, interested in his subject, writing a textbook, there’s more studying to be done, how E.C. Comics was shut down, The Orchidgarden, 1919-1921, the covers on Instagram, this horrible giant orchid growing out of a greenhouse, a snail, bilateral symmetry, elves, holding a human skull, a lady looks in the mirror, full of rich imagery of distorted bodies, mythological horrors, Germany’s rich with this, the books that are available, where are the North African films on WWII?, where are the Chinese films on WWII?, the Russian movies are made in a modern capitalist culture, political officers, there are issues, we’re defending the motherland, Russians aren’t the boogeyman, the invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea, promised not expand NATO, that’s our access to the Black Sea!, c’mon man!

Wasteland by W. Scott Poole

Der Orchideengarten

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The SFFaudio Podcast #548 – READALONG: The Ministry Of Truth by Dorian Lynskey

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #548 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, and Terence Blake talk about The Ministry Of Truth by Dorian Lynskey

Talked about on today’s show:
June 2019, direct from the publisher Penguin Random House, the last chapter, the afterword, there are four lights, the first part, learned the most, an intellectual history, the life after Orwell’s death, a grab-bag of memes, the cold war, the conservative revival, too loosey-goosey, H.G. Wells, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, flat, comprehensive, how it touched other people, David Bowie, Star Trek, Babylon 5, it didn’t have that rigor (in the second half), a funnel, a shotgun, The Prisoner, the momentum is gone by 2019, how many places he’s infiltrated culture, computer games, blind spots, America was a blind spot, Orwell’s anti-Americanism, Trump, when you’re writing about history thirty years ago, perspective, Margaret Atwood’s appendix theory, a lot of bad theories, China and 1984, through the great firewall, censorship, The Guardian, June 4th anniversary, The Atlantic, why 1984 isn’t banned in China, the inner party is going to read it anyway, it’s at bookstores, Animal Farm, discussed in colleges in Canada, Hearts Of Iron IV, so deep, play Honduras during WWII, what officers in the army were active in Honduras during WWII, Paradox Games, insane on the details or mechanics, cannot be done in any other medium, fascinating, that they ban that, the meme of the day issue, PUBG, blood and gore restrictions (green blood), switches from being about Orwell and the U.K. to the United States after the war, the Apple ad, social media, fake news influencing the Taiwanese elections, who gets taught this book and who discusses it, how Orwell is used by the CIA as anti-communist propaganda, why so many people are forced to read it in school, school is indoctrination, training workers, who what huh?, what was your first encounter with Nineteen Eighty-Four, trying to learn about dystopian fiction, self-educate, a roman-a-clef (a book with a key), most teachers suck, who the fuck are those guys?, its not a kids book, Animal Farm is a kids book, propaganda, everybody wants to take control of Orwell, anti-totalitarian, notice how its not considered science fiction, she’s a stumbling block, she is double thinking when she says her book is not science fiction, in her mind, the pulpy fifties sort of stuff, a wilful blindness, voluntary ignorance, an article on Margaret Brundage (for Playboy), I’m going to write a science fiction novel, I’m going to write a utopian, a massive list, We is public domain, E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, I’m inside the machine, I worship the internet, just like the lady in the story, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, the premise, H.G. Wells (the guy most responsible for modern science fiction), in response to Looking Backward, the Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles, she uses the appendix theory in The Handmaid’s Tale, she needs that hope, had Orwell lived, Wells gets dragged, nobody likes Wells’ later stuff, H. L. Mencken’s review of Wells’ later stuff (The Late Mr. Wells), When The Sleeper Awakes, Mack Reynolds, the problem is everybody has a good income and no jobs, no waiters or waitresses, no service jobs, everybody wants meaning (and there’s no jobs), The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin, that book nobody reads anymore, the turn from utopia to dystopia, a theory that’s just an idea, people trying to fuck with George Orwell’s statement for their purposes, how everybody can take ownership, this is how you guys are, high school sci-fi class, libertarian teacher, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, kids are malleable, the books you read when you were young, Brave New World, look at this!, these are books that exist, who’s the publisher?, questions that never go into the mind of a student, Adbusters, slick production used against slick production, the best books tell you something you already know, I’m being gaslit, I’m not crazy!, that Goldstein book, literally true, did they create it themselves?, The Plague by Albert Camus, realist vs. allegory, a movie version of The Plague starring William Hurt, the Hurts hurt, the RCMP, anti-American imperialism, the Chinese threat, afraid of conscription, looking back do you see the hands?, staying with the Queen and following America’s lead, why we read the books that we did, the “free market” trying to sell books, not just the free market, Shakespeare for social purposes (rather than a CIA plot), The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, the legacy, the same books still being pushed, a certain number of novels in the curriculum, The Hunger Games used in school, massive cultural impacts (from inertia), The Prisoner is Nineteen Eighty-Four, the village is perfect, everyone has a place, a child of 1984, spook-life, political expediency vs. moral obligation, the new Big Finish The Prisoner, what makes the dialogue authentic, all questions are turned on their heads, number one is number six, why Atwood’s theory is bad, when the telescreen echoes words, doubling dream-like, nothing is on fixed ground, is it even 1984, write new reality, the one book, a healthy body is a negative, physically weaker, turning them into infants, that instinct is within us, I want a pillow, the Big Brother reality shows, make me a star, I like being babied, people would volunteer for prison, no problem for most people, does it matter (most people aren’t going to read it anyway)?, the Internet Research Agency story, if this book was written in the 1970s, the Muller stuff, okay Rachel Maddow went too far, a political hack who doesn’t even know what’s in his own report, political interference, Honduras, why are 80% of the refugees Honduran, a passing reference to Milton Friedman and the Shock Doctrine, Chile, the U.S. Empire, not a major part of the story, Airstrip One, is Britain in charge or is Britain a colony in 1984, post national, the difference between patriotism and nationalism, a good and natural thing vs. an artificial and evil thing, a connection and fondness for them, when George Orwell went to fight against fascism, ok I have to fight now, when you submit to an authority, Blake’s 7, that opening episode is absolutely drawn from 1984, they call him a pedophile and insert memories in order to convict him, the solution (never stated) is anarchistic group of people who do not love Big Brother, even on Star Trek they have to follow orders, Terry Nation’s Survivors, the “good fight”, working with warlords to take down the Taliban, dishonorably discharged for telling the media about warlord sex-slaves, why the good side lost, nobody conscripted them, about nationalism, the state more than the nation, the Michael Radford movie of 1984, national symbols, nations are constructed, French culture, the French state, the books that are important to you, a nation is a project, what Oceania meant, they control the world through the sea, not nation names anymore, Orwell is seeing what’s happened to the U.K., The Marshall Plan, no victory here, V-J Day, this book published in June, no mention of BoJo (Boris Johnson), neoliberalism, ideology is what’s missing, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump don’t have ideology, the alternative facts are just to make them look good, damage control and self-promotion, not having an ideology is the ideology, double-think, he’s lying but he’s revealing what other don’t want to say, you don’t need an intellectualized theory, a gas that’s everywhere based on double-think, who gets to do the gas-lighting, story after story about alternative facts, Cube (1997), Cube 2 (2002), owners, making fun of a conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory, Noam Chomsky, The Wall Street Journal, it’s not the focus, preferred candidates, the staff of RT is former MSNBC employees, Jesse Ventura, Minnesota exist in theory, the dominant voice, the subtitle is what sold me, The Biography Of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a birth, genes, afterlife, more books like this, a negative review, Bellamy is the soup that’s in the culture that you’re building on, an overall trend from utopia to dystopia, so valuable, all the stuff that was listed, a lot not mentioned, the number of respondents to Bellamy, William Morris’ utopia, we’re the sleepers, that opening line (much improved from the original draft), he was a very good writer, the previous drafts, what he took out, really interesting, Orwell’s personality, cruel to everybody’s babies, a fundamental place of honesty, I paid money for this they’re doing a bad job, no animosity for the writer and artist, not trying to be mean, Jesse fears he’s being mean when he ats Marissa, a smile with a thing, “Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.” from The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky, the quote in the book is not that quote, the spirit of the play(?), a drama in four acts, as hard as it is to identify the truth (very very very hard), if you don’t have truth as your god you’re fucked, if you were forced to fight in a war in the 20th century, of all the fascist dictators was Franco the least worst?, Hitler, Mussolini, WWII was a battle against fascism, WWI, the Spanish Civil War, the Vietnam War, Maissa’s question (turned on its head), the International Brigades, Norman Bethune, the Great Patriotic War (in China), battlefield surgery, fighting for a principle, what war would you fight for?, what principles would you fight for?, Orwell’s Homage To Catalonia, pirate mentality, you don’t get 1984 without that, thinking on paper, everything that I wrote was directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, so Pollyanna, lay down and die, if conscripted during WWII Jesse would like to serve Alan Turning’s coffee, his country didn’t love him, you love Big Brother (he doesn’t care), the mustache is not a Hitler mustache, more Stalin, no one escapes the tar-brush, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, an important and good book, how to fight against your government your institutions your Alexa devices, the Google button that’s built in, on principle it’s a bad idea to be submitting so, the reason it has a switch to turn the camera off, removing the battery, electromagnetic field sensitivity, keeping his cellphone in a lead-lined box, its off in a certain sense, devices with no off switches, “Nvidia Shield Off”, if the book is going to be relevant after 1949, B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two, positive reinforcement vs. negative reinforcement, use pleasure, use fear, News From Nowhere: 1984, the discovery of Eric Blair, lack of any institutionalized government, the dream of 19th century anarchism, 10 hours is a reasonable size, so much is suggested, the appendix is important, revising history, you don’t read the Dune appendix, the Tolkien appendices, A Clockwork Orange, a missing chapter, as Eric Blair intended, Eric Blair hates vegetarianism, teetotalers, nudists, Quakers, sandals, fruit juice, Marxist slogans, pistachio coloured shirts, birth control, yoga, and beads, anti-hipster socialist.

And, here are Marissa’s notes about UTOPIAS & DYSTOPIAS mentioned in The Ministry Of Truth:

1516 – Utopia by Thomas More
1726 – Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
1771 – The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One by Louis-Sebastién Mercier (time-travel to future utopia)
1880 – Dr Heindenhoff’ Process by Edward Bellamy (scientist learns how to erase memories and guilt – Orwell’s Oceania-like)
1872 – Erewhon by Samuel Butler (satire)
1887 – A Crystal Age by W. H. Hudson
1888 – Looking Backward: 2000–1887 by Edward Bellamy
1889 – To Whom This May Come by Edward Bellamy (telepathy has eliminated crime and deceit)
1889 – New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future by Elizabeth Corbett (feminist utopia)
1890 – News from Nowhere by William Morris (agrarian, anarchist utopia – counter to Bellamy’s “cockney paradise”)
1890 – Looking Further Backward by Arthur Dudley Vinton (bigoted sequel to Bellamy’s book, nationalism + feminism have emasculated America)
1890 – Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century by Ignatius Donnelly (Minnesota congressman & original conspiracy utopia in which “paradise is carved out in a Swiss-owned Uganda while American capitalism perishes in blood and fire”)
1890 – A.D. 2050: Electrical Development At Atlantis by John Bachelder (Right-wing utopia, refugees from Bellamy’s failing Nationalist society flee to Atlantis, which is turned into a proto-Orwellian police state)
1891 – Mr. East’s Experiences In Mr. Bellamy’s World by C. Wilbrant
1891 – Freeland: A Social Anticipation by Theodor Herzoka (Austrian economist “the Austrian Bellamy”)
1891 – The New Utopia by by Jerome K. Jerome (Bellamy spoof, introduces “numbers as names” SF trope)
1892 – A Traveler from Altruria by William Dean Howell
1892 – Gold In The Year 2000, Or, What Are We Coming To? by J. McCullough (time travel to future utopia where men play golf)
1897 – Equality by Edward Bellamy (fills gaps in Looking Backward)
1893 – Sub-Coelum: A Sky-Built Human World by Addison P. Russel (conservative utopia, anti-“materialistic socialism”)
1894 – The Land of the Changing Sun by Will N. Harben (underwater society with gov of eugenicists uses scanning devices and psychological torture)
1894 – A Journey of Other Worlds by John Jacob Astor (A conservative utopia, [by] one of richest men in the world at time USA, dominates planet & seeks to colonize others)
1897 –”A Story of the Days To Come by H.G. Wells” (forerunner to The Sleeper Awakes)
1898 – The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells
1899 – Imperium in Imperio by Sutton E. Griggs (first black utopia, Baptist Minister, son of former slave)
1900 – The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (“a Bellamyite, to judge by L. Frank Baum’s description of his egalitarian society in The Emerald City of Oz”)
1905 – A Modern Utopia by H.G. Wells
1906 – Looking Forward: The Phenomenal Progress Of Electricity in 1912 by Harry W. Hillman
1909 – The Machine Stops by E.M Foster (scientific dystopia)
1915 – Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (feminist utopia)
1920 – We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (totalitarian state dystopia)
1923 – Men Like Gods by H.G. Wells (parallel universe utopia), HG Wells,
1932 – Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (response to Wells’ Men Like Gods)
1938 – Anthem by Ayn Rand
1940 – Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler (author’s disillusionment with the Soviet Union’s version of Communism at the outset of World War II)
1942 – Unknown Land by Herbert Samuel
1945 – Animal Farm by George Orwell
1948 – Walden Two by B.F. Skinner (utopian)
1949 – 1984 by George Orwell
1952 – Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
1953 – Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
1953 – Love Among the Ruins: A Romance of the Near Future by Evelyn Waugh
1953 – One by David Karp
1958 – The Rise Of The Meritocracy 1870–2033 by Michael Young
1960 – Facial Justice by L.P. Hartley
1962 – Island by Aldous Huxley

The Ministry Of Truth: The Biography Of George Orwell's 1984

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #122 – Displaced Person by Eric Frank Russell

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #122

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Displaced Person by Eric Frank Russell

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Displaced Person was first published in Weird Tales, September 1948.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #471 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Out Of The Earth by Arthur Machen

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #471 – Out Of The Earth by Arthur Machen; read by Mr Jim Moon. This is an unabridged reading of the short story (21 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Mr Jim Moon.

Talked about on today’s show:
the proper pronunciation of Machen, Arthur Llewellyn Jones, Up Under The Roof by Manly Wade Wellman, apprentice journalist, The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen, The Lost Club, Reading, Short And Deep, identicals, a Hellfire Club, a big scary black book, never heard from again, a very weird story, truly as the first weird fiction author, Edgar Allan Poe, cosmicism, Mr Weird, H.P. Lovecraft, “it is this”, M.R. James, bedrock authors, Machen lived this stuff, a real-life magical society, the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn, W.B. Yates, a genuine mystic, landscape, in the modern world people see things on the surface and don’t apprehend the meaning, meta narrative, the interior story, so deeply framed, so nested, the hoopla surrounding The Bowmen, it’s not the story, the story is not the story, the story is the effect of the story, embarrassed by the story, a disappointment, surprisingly funny, a bit of whimsy, the early weeks of WWI, a ray of hope, taken as a genuine report from the front line, the Angel of the Mons, fighting the tide, how rumours take hold without any evidence, “snow on your boots”, reading it a straight up, a weird meta-fiction, pre-Borges, this sounds familiar, so popular, side projects, tales, stories, a meme, fascinating, how many Machens?, not a good story, T.P.’s Weekly, November 22nd, 1915, the retreat from Mons (August 1914), September 1914, six months later, weird podcasts, Tin Foil Hat Podcast, part of being an adult is being interested in the truth, conspiracy, half of capitalism, Clinton and Pizzagate, really fucked up things going on in government, punishment for plebs, a Clinton, New York child sex scandal, in the memory, it couldn’t be killed, all the letters Machen got, death threats, bottom up stories and top down stories, Russia! Russia! Russia!, collaborating or colluding, a conspiracy theorist, the person who testified who can’t be found, the Russian rumor, reports of Russian troops seen in Britain, a plague of spies, Cossacks at train stations heading south, a huge flap, a third myth, the Rape of Belgium, a rumour among German troops, resisting the invasion, buckets full of eyes, necklaces of German soldiers’ eyeballs, breasts cut off, every conceivable atrocity, a British censor on war time reports, the liars did very well, James Hayward’s Myths And Legends Of The First World War, German corpse factories, “the vile Hun”, fake news, the horrible little children, the Edwardian equivalent of the internet, into the papers in a round about fashion, how the nature of rumor and myth begins, transmitted in times of uncertainty and trouble, official news sources, Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, they’re all correct, CIA infiltration of news agency [and MI5 screening of BBC], a lack of news, filling the gap with whatever they can find, the whole Russia story, 13 Russian trolls, Facebook ads, “the big gotcha moment”, the Internet Research Agency, in the business of trolling (for money), fake accounts, we have these rubes, for commercial purposes, Trump somehow helped the Russians hack the DNC servers?, borders mean nothing to the ultra-rich, puppets, Bernie-bro,

“army recruiters reported problems in explaining the origins of [WWI] in legalistic terms” hence an evolution in tactics, or different tactics for different classes, or the intellectual vs. the visceral

posters from 1914 and 1918

Seventy years ago your great-grandfathers and their great-grandfathers signed a document that made certain guarantees about Belgium’s neutrality.

vs.

Remember when the Germans raped their way through Belgium

this was Pearl Harbor!, why this story is so relevant, the thing that is the story, a powerful point about war, Morgan the childlike man, Castle Coch, the Red Keep, read about Belgium, and think they could haven been more than five or six years old, they were to ear what slime is to the touch, blasphemies struck like blows, a swarm of noise-some creatures, children with old men’s faces, one paragraph, Morgan to dream of Avalon, to purge himself of the fuming corruption of the streets, is this a true story?, places that are deprived and poor, the underwolves, super-predators, the Central Park five, seven fold increase in prison population, harvesting slaves, whatever new drug it is, top down or bottom up, moral panics, juvenile delinquents, hoodies, chavs, thuggish people, picked up by politicians, class war, welfare is for crack and knives, mainstream news, rock and roll, Beatles records, video nasties, horror comics, Dungeons & Dragons, video game violence, Trayvon Martin, manipulate the facts, the funny children, is Machen starting another story?, this is how I make this stuff up, the myth of the JD (juvenile delinquent), teddy boys, rockers, mods, a Bank Holiday British tradition, Quadrophenia, arguments about-for-and-against education, bad seeds, evil children, The Midwich Cuckoos, teenage hoodlums, Graham Greene’s The Destructors, free rides, sticking it to the man, sense of power, community centers, midnight basketball, psychology, the irresistible impulse to knock over a house of cards, the impulse for destruction, they just came in from Siberia, a train ride from Scotland, the British, Americans, and Canadians invade Siberia to try to reverse the Russian Revolution, The Sandbaggers, the rumour becomes the reality, wanting to believe the legend, not caring about evidence, fossilized in this story, what Robert E. Howard calls the little people, elves and trolls and gremlins, from fantasy to fake news, fake fairies, a strange new power, The Novel Of The Black Seal, The Novel Of The White Powder, Panther paperback, terrible cruel dwarf elves, the horror of war, he took a long time to get there, what’s this mention of Belgium, the worst swearword known in the galaxy, a weird momentum, the story has to keep replicating, the introduction to The Bowmen And Other Stories, the answer of course is in the question, struggles in truth in news, false, the seedbed for new conspiracy theories, official unknown sources, trying to fill dead air, Mr Jim Moon’s Folklore On Friday articles, Krampus, absolute bullshit, Mr Jim Moon’s shows on Halloween, the received wisdom is always wrong, a new dark age, perceiving reality, where this story is set, who’s saying it, there are so many narrators, real places, Glastonbury Tor, Morgan le Fay, the myth of Avalon seems to be a bottom up story, Geoffrey Of Monmouth, Mallory, John Boorman’s Excalibur, a gel filter, the land of the fairy, Morgan le Fay is she has sex with her half brother, Mordred is killed by Arthur, Arthur is wounded and goes to the island of Avalon where he is healed by his sister and the mother of his child, how you get out of the horror of the Belgian horror, internecine war, the Kaiser and the Czar hugging each other.

propaganda evolution in WWI

The Angels Of The Mons

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #083 – The Bowmen by Arthur Machen

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #083

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Bowmen by Arthur Machen

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

The Bowmen was first published in the London Evening News, September 29, 1914.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson