Reduce Speed Now

Internet culture's ability to reexamine, remix, and reinterpret things is my favourite thing about it. Case in point: the Soundcloud account chipmunkson16speed, which plays cover versions from an old Chipmunks novelty record (a bit of internet research reveals that it's 1990's "Born To Rock") at 16 RPM rather than the correct 33 1⁄3 RPM. The results are surprising. Blondie's "Call Me" gains a distinctly doom metal feel:

Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is a Place on Earth", meanwhile, is transformed into some sort of Neil Young/Beach Boys collaboration:



And while it's not as good as the others, Michael Jackson's "Bad" played this way is very Trent Reznor at the start:

Bad Film Night No.1: Samurai Cop (1989)

You Have The Right To Remain Silent...Dead Silent.

A Very Dangerous Drug for Young Men

This is why Joy Division can be a very dangerous drug for young men. They seem to be presenting The Truth (they present themselves as doing so). Their subject, after all, is depression. Not sadness or frustration, rock's standard downer states, but depression: depression: whose difference from mere sadness consists in its claim to have uncovered the (final, unvarnished) Truth about life and desire.

The depressive experiences himself as walled off from the lifeworld, so that his own frozen inner life - or inner death - overwhelms everything; at the same time, he experiences himself as evacuated, totally denuded, a shell: there is nothing except the inside, but the inside is empty.
...
The Aesthetes want the world promised by the sleeves and the sound, a pristine black and white realm unsullied by the grubby compromises and embarrassments of the everyday. The empiricists insist on just the opposite: on rooting the songs back in the quotidian at its least elevated and, most importantly, at its least serious. 'Ian was a laugh, the band were young lads who liked to get pissed, it was all a bit of fun that got out of hand...' It's important to hold onto both of these Joy Divisions - the Joy Division of Pure Art, and the Joy Division who were 'just a laff' - at once. For if the truth of Joy Division is that they were Lads, then Joy Division must be the truth of Laddism. And so it would appear: beneath all the red-nosed downer-fuelled jollity of the past two decades, mental illness has increased 70% amongst adolescents. Suicide remains one of the most common sources of death for young males.

- Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on depression, hauntology and lost futures (2014)

Festival Number 6

The Dialectic In Action

Technically

Well, when you've run out of Toyota pickups... (Picture from the @HalaJaber Twitter account, and is apparently of an IS fighter in Libya).

Five Years

I'll Be There For You

Ross' behavior becomes more erratic. No one has seen Chandler for weeks. Ross keeps making stews. No one sees him go to the grocery store
— Jordan Shiveley (@jmshiveley) April 3, 2015

@jmshiveley Yet the stews continue. Ross eyes are dark wells and his gums start to recede. The stews continue.
— Jordan Shiveley (@jmshiveley) April 3, 2015

@jmshiveley Ross just mumbles incoherently about "THE DEEP KNOWLEDGE AND THE CRIMSON HUNTRESS MOTHER" when asked any question.
— Jordan Shiveley (@jmshiveley) April 3, 2015

@jmshiveley Joey has gone missing
— Jordan Shiveley (@jmshiveley) April 3, 2015

@jmshiveley The skin around Ross' mouth is grey and leathery. He doesn't seem to cast a shadow. All he does is make more and more stews.
— Jordan Shiveley (@jmshiveley) April 3, 2015

Rachel begins to delve into occult studies in response to Ross' change. She becomes thrice marked to the Crone and Crow, daughter of Shadows
— Jordan Shiveley (@jmshiveley) April 3, 2015

@jmshiveley She tries to enlist Monica to strengthen the binding rites of the Unsung Silent Ones. Monica threatens to tell Ross
— Jordan Shiveley (@jmshiveley) April 3, 2015

@jmshiveley Monica disappears. Rachel can now see the Forms that Move Beneath. It all becomes so clear. She knows what must be done.
— Jordan Shiveley (@jmshiveley) April 3, 2015

@jmshiveley Rachel treads the Mansions of Silence. The taste of iron on her tongue and lips crimson stained. There are no more boundaries.
— Jordan Shiveley (@jmshiveley) April 3, 2015

Phoebe merely sits atop the Throne on Nine Cold Flames in the Pit of Unending Eyes. Everything has gone according to her prophecies.
— Jordan Shiveley (@jmshiveley) April 3, 2015

Three Megabytes of Hot RAM

From over at Design Interactions comes an intriguing look at the social network you could've had in the 1980s:

I can't work out whether this is something people are actually doing, or an art project. Maybe that's the point? Either way, the idea of colonising the abandoned analogue frequencies is cyberpunk in its truest spirit. I'm told that Walter Benjamin saw surrealism as finding a revolutionary potential in obsolete things, in modernity's detritus. This seems a good example. 

Richard "Snakey Spine" Plantagenet

I first posted this on Facebook at the time, but given today's events it seems apposite again. Here's Jamie from over at Blood & Treasure on Richard III, from February 2013:

Half the country – and the twee half at that – seems to be getting in a tizzy about a man who, given the medieval level of state formation, was basically a fucking gangster; and what’s more a gangster among gangsters: the royals were all gangsters until Cromwell taught them a little circumspection. That little princes in the tower wet job should be a clue with Richard, but there seems to be a general feeling that it was dignified by being done as statecraft. Or maybe it's a Kray twins thing: 'they only murdered their own', etc

Sure, he was a lawgiver: so was Lucky Luciano. And sure, there was that time in 1215 when the underbosses ganged up on a weak capo and took a bunch of diabolical bleeding liberties. But Richard ‘Snakey Spine’ Plantagenet played the same role in Our Island Story as Jake ‘Greasy Thumb’ Guzick did in the history of Chicago. Under a car park is exactly the right place for him, at least in the absence of a flyover or a crocodile filled swamp. 

That's An Archaeological Theory Joke, Son

Ye Wretched

Bodies

Seems More Like Sub Territory...

Achilles on the Plains

Like Achilles, Roman Nose had stayed out of the morning battle, and like Achilles, his absence had been keenly felt by his warriors. The day before he had destroyed the charm of his sacred war bonnet. One of the taboos connected with it was that he must not eat food taken from the pot with an iron implement. At a feast given by the Sioux, Roman Nose ate meat served by a squaw with an iron fork. Tall Bull, his friend, called his attention to the error and urged him to take purification ceremonies at once. But that very night Forsyth's command was discovered and Roman Nose had no time for the ceremonies before the battle.

He stayed out of the first charge, saying he would die if he made it. But he was such a power that the other Cheyennes kept urging him. In mid-afternoon he suddenly decided to go into the fight. Putting on the war bonnet, he mounted. With a wave of his great arm, the giant summoned his warriors. A moment later they were charging. 

Forsyth's men fought this new danger desperately. At the dead run, Roman Nose thundered down upon them. Just before he reached the trenches, a shot from some bushes to one side, brought him crashing down. Jack Stilwell and two companions were hiding there. Roman Nose's followers scattered.

The place where Roman Nose fell was on the river bank. Painfully he dragged himself out of sight among the bushes. There was he found by his people and carried away. He died in the Cheyenne village that night.

- Paul Iselin Wellman, Death on the Prairie: The Thirty Years' Struggle for the Western Plains (1934) 

I read this account of the death of the great Cheyenne warrior Roman Nose more than 10 years ago, when I was a student at UCL. It stayed with me, although I could not remember the details of names and dates, so I was pleased to finally be able to locate the passage again on the internet.

"But I Love...I Love All...All People..."

On 13 November 1989, six days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Erich Mielke addressed the parliament of the German Democratic Republic in his role as Minister of State Security. When one member of the parliament objected to his use of the term "comrades" to address them, he replied "But I love...I love all...all people...".  The room could only laugh.

I know about Mielke, and about the above clip, because of Philip Kerr's novel Field Grey (2010).

RPG LOL

Taken in Libya, this is probably the best illustration of how 21st century insurgencies are fought. Image from the @Rekka_K Twitter account.

Computer Security

New computer security question #1: "As a child, what color was the bucket that you used to bring water from the nearest well or stream?"

— Werner Twertzog (@WernerTwertzog) September 13, 2014

Computer security question #2: "Which disease came closest to killing you before the age of 5?"

— Werner Twertzog (@WernerTwertzog) September 13, 2014

Computer security question #3: "In your experience as a child, which country's occupation army was the least vengeful?"

— Werner Twertzog (@WernerTwertzog) September 13, 2014

Computer security question #4: "What memory of violence do you try hardest to suppress?"

— Werner Twertzog (@WernerTwertzog) September 13, 2014

Dame With A W

In honour of the release of Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, here's one of the finest moments from Shortpacked!:

Centenary

'I say, is it really true that the French artillery had to fire on their infantry?' Delaforce asked. 'To drive them over the top?'
'Absolutely,' Finlayson said. 'They had a mutiny. The troops wouldn't leave the trenches, so the French generals laid down a barrage on them. That soon shifted them.'
'What happened afterwards?'
'Afterwards? There was no afterwards. Why d'you think they didn't want to get out of the trenches?'

- Derek Robinson, Goshawk Squadron (1971)