#this is truly a historian moment /j | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kaepopsicle · 4 years

Text

nct mbti types redo!

the old one can be found here! but i definitely recommend this one more tehe!

🧃

hi hi! so i know most of you know about mbti or myers briggs personality, if you don’t well. . here’s a little summary! if you already do know go ahead and scroll down past the keep reading to find ncts types! now for those that don’t and want to know it’s basically when you take this quiz and you get four/five letters, each giving you a detailed description of your personality! it helps you find other people with the same personality and people you are compatible or not compatible with! of course it is all just for fun! but i know some people take it seriously! do whatever feels right to you! so moving on to the different letters; there are 4 different letters you can get! which leads to about 16 different outcomes! (there are also 2 extra letters! A & T which are basically the outlook on yourself! but not that many people actually go by those!)

- first there’s E & I (extrovert & introvert) this is basically what your energy level is. E- you get energized by people and are more social. I- you get drained by people and are more homebodies.

- second there’s N & S (intuitive & sensing) this is basically how you understand or learn about other people! N- you base off of your gut feeling or instincts when you first meet someone! more observant! S- you are more logical, analytical, you get to know people a little first before you decide!

- third there’s F & T (feeling & thinking) this is basically what it says! how do you respond to problems! F- you think with your heart! more empathetic and emotional! T- you think with your head! more logical and emotionally intelligent!

- fourth and last one there’s P & J (perceiving & judging) and this is basically on how you prefer to live your everyday life! P- more spontaneous go with the flow! you don’t like schedules very much and tend to go with your gut on things! J- more neat, more punctual! you like routine and for things to go as planned!

also! you can be a mix of these! (for example i am an enfp/infp! so am an mix of extroverted & introverted!) you can pick one that resonates with you most or if they both do go by both!

well that should be all of it! if you want to take the quiz then you can find it right here! now that you know a little bit about what it is! let’s get into what ncts types are! i split them up between the two biggest differences which are introverts vs extroverts! :))

— introverts

confirmed types: infj . isfj . isfp . infp

other introverted types: intj . istj . istp . intp

🧃

- infj

members that are confirmed infjs:

ten . jungwoo . mark . hendery . winwin . half jisung

members i also think are infjs:

no one else

common traits include: creative . empathetic . friendly . intelligent . private . overthinkers . artistic!

most compatible with: enfp!!!! . infp . enfj . other infj

our most popular type! (which is great bc it’s my natural partner ;)) infjs or also know as the advocates are highly artistic and creative people! they appear at first to be very quiet and sensitive! but when actually they’re quite intelligent and are observant, peaceful, friendly people!

“With their strong sense of intuition and emotional understanding, INFJs can be soft-spoken and empathetic. This does not mean that they are push-over's, however. They have deeply held beliefs and an ability to act decisively in order to get what they want. While they are introverted by nature, people with this personality type are able to form strong, meaningful connections with other people. They enjoy helping others, but they also need time and space to recharge. While this personality type may be characterized by idealism, this does not mean that INFJs see the world through rose-colored glasses. They understand the world, both the good and the bad, and hope to be able to make it better.”

🧃

- isfj

members that are confirmed isfjs:

doyoung . jaemin

members i think that are also isfjs:

yuta . half johnny

‎

common traits include: protective . compassionate . sees the good in others . sensitives with others emotions . warm hearted

most compatible with: esfp!!!! . estp . istj . & other isfj

this type is one of my personal favorites! the defenders! they are the type of people who will have you walk on the inner side of the sidewalk! they may seem a little cold at first but once they trust and open up to you they are so warm! and loyal! very puppy like!

“They typically want to work hard, get along with others, and make sure they do what is expected of them. ISFJs value relationships highly and strive to cooperate and maintain harmony with others. They want stability and longevity in their relationships, and tend to maintain a deep devotion to family. They feel most connected with people they know they can rely upon over the long term. ISFJs appreciate tradition and like knowing how things were done in the past. They are loyal to established methods and values, and want to observe the proper, accepted way of doing things. They place great importance on fitting in with established institutions and contributing what they can to maintain strong, stable social structures. In groups, they often take on the role of historian, ensuring that new members respect and value the established customs.”

🧃

- isfp

members that are confirmed isfps:

taeil . jeno

members i think that are also isfps:

shotaro

common traits include: independent . imaginative . creative . passionate

most compatible with: esfj!!!! . esfp . isfj . other isfp

the next type is the adventurers! they are curious and passionate people that are very drawn to the outside world and helping others! they are gentle and sweet :)

“ISFPs are gentle caretakers who live in the present moment and enjoy their surroundings with cheerful, low-key enthusiasm. They are flexible and spontaneous, and like to go with the flow to enjoy what life has to offer. ISFPs are quiet and unassuming, and may be hard to get to know. However, to those who know them well, the ISFP is warm and friendly, eager to share in life's many experiences. ISFPs have a strong aesthetic sense and seek out beauty in their surroundings. They are attuned to sensory experience, and often have a natural talent for the arts. ISFPs especially excel at manipulating objects, and may wield creative tools like paintbrushes and sculptor's knives with great mastery.”

🧃

- infp

members that are confirmed infps:

chenle . half jisung

members i think that are also infps:

taeyong

common traits include: peaceful . idealistic . open minded . seek harmony

most compatible with: enfj!!!! . enfp . infj . other infp

the next type are the mediators! i love this type (not only bc im half this type) but bc this type is really the most pure and deserves the entire world. they are curious and flexible people!

“Mediator personalities are true idealists, always looking for the hint of good in even the worst of people and events, searching for ways to make things better. While they may be perceived as calm, reserved, or even shy, Mediators have an inner flame and passion that can truly shine. Comprising just 4% of the population, the risk of feeling misunderstood is unfortunately high for the Mediator personality type – but when they find like-minded people to spend their time with, the harmony they feel will be a fountain of joy and inspiration.”

🧃

- istp

members who are confirmed istps:

none of them

members who i think are istps:

renjun

common traits include: practical . creative . rational . spontaneous

most compatible with: entp!!!! . estj . intp . other istp

these are the virtuosos! this type are relaxed! very down to the grown, they are the type of people you want to have during an crisis, they are good at calling the shots and keeping everyone calm!

“Virtuosos love to explore with their hands and their eyes, touching and examining the world around them with cool rationalism and spirited curiosity. People with this personality type are natural Makers, moving from project to project, building the useful and the superfluous for the fun of it, and learning from their environment as they go. Often mechanics and engineers, Virtuosos find no greater joy than in getting their hands dirty pulling things apart and putting them back together, just a little bit better than they were before.”

— extroverts

confirmed types: enfp . esfj . esfp . estp

other extroverted types: entp . enfj . estj . entj

🧃

- enfp

members who are confirmed enfps:

xiaojun . haechan

members who i think are also enfps:

no one else

common traits: energetic . fun . kind . very popular & friendly

most compatible with: infj!!!! . infp . enfj . other enfp

these are the campaigners! (my other personality type) these types are the kind of people you want to be friends with, they keep the energy happy and fun, but also know how to listen and relax

“Campaigners will bring an energy that oftentimes thrusts them into the spotlight, held up by their peers as a leader and a guru – but this isn’t always where independence-loving Campaigners want to be. Worse still if they find themselves beset by the administrative tasks and routine maintenance that can accompany a leadership position. Campaigners’ self-esteem is dependent on their ability to come up with original solutions, and they need to know that they have the freedom to be innovative – they can quickly lose patience or become dejected if they get trapped in a boring role.”

🧃

- esfp

members that are confirmed esfp:

half jaehyun

members who i think are also esfp:

lucas

common traits include: bold . aesthetic . confident . inclusive

most compatible with: isfp!!!! . isfj . esfj . other esfp

this type are known as the entertainers! the whole world is their stage! these people are not only eye catching and well entertaining, they are sweet and have good sportsmanship!

“Entertainers love the spotlight, and all the world’s a stage. Many famous people with the Entertainer personality type are indeed actors, but they love putting on a show for their friends too, chatting with a unique and earthy wit, soaking up attention and making every outing feel a bit like a party. Utterly social, Entertainers enjoy the simplest things, and there’s no greater joy for them than just having fun with a good group of friends. Though it may not always seem like it, Entertainers know that it’s not all about them – they are observant, and very sensitive to others’ emotions. People with this personality type are often the first to help someone talk out a challenging problem, happily providing emotional support and practical advice.”

‎

🧃

- esfj

members that are confirmed esfj:

kun

members who i think are also esfj:

half johnny

common traits include: supportive . encouraging . caring . positive

most compatible with: isfj!!!! . isfp . esfp . other esfj

this next type are called the consuls! known for their very parent like demeanors, these are what you call your “mom/dad friends” the ones that will give you the best advice and always be a shoulder to lay on and always cheer you on at your worst!

“People who share the Consul personality type are, for lack of a better word, popular – which makes sense, given that it is also a very common personality type, making up twelve percent of the population. In high school, Consuls are the cheerleaders and the quarterbacks, setting the tone, taking the spotlight and leading their teams forward to victory and fame. Later in life, Consuls continue to enjoy supporting their friends and loved ones, organizing social gatherings and doing their best to make sure everyone is happy.”

‎

🧃

- estp

members that are confirmed estp:

half jaehyun . sungchan

members who i think are also estp:

no one else

common traits include: social . perceptive . original . direct

most compatible with: intp!!!! . istp . entp . other estp

these are the entrepreneurs! the people that know what they want in life and will and have the stamina to do so, they are natural born leaders and enjoy calling the shots! and expressing their big ideas!

“Entrepreneurs always have an impact on their immediate surroundings – the best way to spot them at a party is to look for the whirling eddy of people flitting about them as they move from group to group. Laughing and entertaining with a blunt and earthy humor, Entrepreneur personalities love to be the center of attention. If an audience member is asked to come on stage, Entrepreneurs volunteer – or volunteer a shy friend.”

‎

🧃

- entp

members that are confirmed entp:

none

members who i think are entp:

yangyang

common traits include: quick thinkers . knowledgeable . charismatic . energetic

most compatible with: isfp!!!! . intp . esfj . other entps

the last type we will be talking about are known as the debaters! this type are the kind that could go for hours discussing important topics to them! they are quick witted, and are good at coming up with things on their feet. intelligent and resourceful, these types make excellent lawyers

“No one loves the process of mental sparring more than the Debater personality type, as it gives them a chance to exercise their effortlessly quick wit, broad accumulated knowledge base, and capacity for connecting disparate ideas to prove their points. Debaters are the ultimate devil’s advocate, thriving on the process of shredding arguments and beliefs and letting the ribbons drift in the wind for all to see. They don’t always do this because they are trying to achieve some deeper purpose or strategic goal, though. Sometimes it’s for the simple reason that it’s fun.”

‎

🧃

- wowowowubsy, this was a really long post! thanks for making it to the end! what do you think about their types and do you have any other ideas what types the remaining mystery members are? thank you so much for reading! :)

- my thoughts are that there is not a single introverted thinker on this whole team! (renjun i have hope in you!)

- and the fact there are only 1.5 confirmed thinkers in an group of 23- how do they manage ???

- sorry sungchan & jae

- they really are a bunch of introverted feelers goodness gracious

- also literally my pictures ran out half way through it and it won’t let me delete them lmao so sorry about that

‎

74 notes · View notes

oberlincollegelibraries · 4 years

Text

Weekend Edition: Constitution Day, Part 1

Constitution Day celebrates the the adoption of the United States Constitution and the people who have become U.S. citizens. It is observed on September 17th, the day the document was signed at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Constitution Day is coming up this Thursday and to get ready for it, we are highlighting newly added books about the U.S. government and American history.

They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy by Lawrence Lessig

"In the vein of On Tyranny and How Democracies Die, the bestselling author of Republic, Lost argues that our democracy no longer represents us and shows that reform is both necessary and possible"-- Provided by publisher

“Lessig believes that along many dimensions, a single flaw-- unrepresentativeness-- has detached our government from the people. Our fractured partisanship and ignorance on critical issues drive our leaders to stake out ever more extreme positions. Here he charts the way in which the fundamental institutions of our democracy, including our media, respond to narrow interests rather than to the needs and wishes of the nation's citizenry. Lessig shows that ‘We the people’ are increasingly uninformed about the issues, while political polling reflects and normalizes our ignorance, feeding it back into the system as representative of our will.” -- adapted from jacket

The Great Democracy: How to Fix Our Politics, Unrig the Economy, and Unite America by Ganesh Sitaraman

A leading progressive intellectual offers an agenda for how real democracy can triumph in America and beyond. Since the New Deal in the 1930s, there have been two eras in our political history: the liberal era, stretching up to the 1970s, followed by the neoliberal era of privatization and austerity ever since. In each period, the dominant ideology was so strong that it united even partisan opponents. But the neoliberal era is collapsing, and the central question of our time is what comes next. As acclaimed legal scholar and policy expert Ganesh Sitaraman argues, two political visions now contend for the future. One is nationalist oligarchy, which rigs the system for the rich and powerful while using nationalism to mobilize support. The other is the great democracy, which fights corruption and extends both political and economic power to all people. At this decisive moment in history, The Great Democracy offers a bold, transformative agenda for achieving real democracy

Choosing the Leader: Leadership Elections in the U.S. House of Representatives by Matthew N. Green and Douglas B. Harris

How are congressional party leaders chosen? In the first comprehensive study since Robert Peabody's classic Leadership in Congress, political scientists Matthew Green and Douglas Harris draw on newly collected data about U.S. House members who have sought leadership positions from the 1960s to the present - data including whip tallies, public and private vote commitments, interviews, and media accounts - to provide new insights into how the selection process truly works. Elections for congressional party leaders are conventionally seen as a function of either legislators' ideological preferences or factors too idiosyncratic to permit systematic analysis. Analyzing six decades' worth of information, Green and Harris find evidence for a new comprehensive model of vote choice in House leadership elections that incorporates both legislators' goals and their connections with leadership candidates. This study will stand for years to come as the definitive treatment of a crucial aspects of American politics.

Disestablishment and Religious Dissent: Church-State Relations in the New American States, 1776-1833 edited by Carl H. Esbeck and Jonathan J. Den Hartog

"On May 10, 1776, the Second Continental Congress sitting in Philadelphia adopted a Resolution urging each of the British colonies in North America "to adopt such government as shall . . . best conduce" in response to the impending crisis with Great Britain. A suitable preamble was passed on the May 15 following, and Congress then directed that the document be released to the public. The Resolution of May 15 set in motion a round of constitution making in the colonies, several of which soon declared themselves sovereign states and severed all remaining ties to the British Crown. In forming these written constitutions, the delegates to the state conventions were forced to address the issue of church-state relations. Each colony had unique and differing traditions of church-state relations rooted in the colony's peoples, their country of origin, and religion, and the state constitutional framers had to confront the issue of religion, which many would have preferred to put off. This unique volume, comprising twenty-one original essays by eminent historians and political scientists, is a state-by-state account of disestablishment in the original thirteen states, as well as a look at similar events in the soon-to-be-admitted states of Vermont, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Also considered are disestablishment in Ohio (the first state admitted from the Northwest Territory), Louisiana and Missouri (the first states admitted from the Louisiana Purchase), and Florida (wrestled from Spain under U.S. pressure)"-- Provided by publisher

#oberlin college #oberlin college libraries #weekend edition #constitution day #us constitution #us government #american history

3 notes · View notes

an-american-experiment · 5 years

Quote

Anyway, all this to say I’m coming home this summer at my sister’s invitation, I’ll be there with your fam’ly if you make your way upstate. I know you’re very busy I know your work’s important but I’m crossing the ocean and I just can’t wait. You won’t be an ocean away. You’ll only be a moment away.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

John Barker Church was an envoy to the French government from 1783-1785. After this, the family returned to New York for a brief visit and then went back to Europe until 1797. The exception to this was a visit from Angelica which took place in 1789 for Washington’s inauguration. Angelica did not visit again until the whole family moved back in 1797 - it was a long and arduous journey to cross the Atlantic before steamships, and one that was dangerous in addition to time consuming.

There were rumors that Hamilton took a more than brotherly interest in Angelica, Miranda would not be the first person or historian to pick up on this idea. However, Elizabeth Hamilton always dismissed it, and when one reads the letters that passed between the three of them, (Angelica, Eliza, and Hamilton) they can easily be read as a teasing lighthearted exchange of people who truly cared for each other and each others’ conversation.

Sources: the following sources were used - the collected letters/writings of Alexander Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton the Revolution, Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton, The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton by Allan McLane Hamilton, Hamilton by Richard Syllia, and Charles Cerami’s book called Young Patriots. In addition, War of Two by John Sedgwick and Washington and Hamilton by Tony Williams were used throughout. Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton by Tillar J. Mazzeo was used as well.

Follow us at @an-american-experiment where we are historically analyzing the lyrics of Hamilton with a new post every day!

#hamilton #alexander hamilton #lin-manuel miranda #hamilton the musical #hamilton an american musical #history #angelica schuyler #angelica schuyler church #eliza hamilton #elizabeth hamilton #john barker church

19 notes · View notes

hyphenednation-blog · 4 years

Text

What it truly approach to be an anti-racist, and why it's now not the same as being an ally

It become three months after Ahmaud Arbery become shot with the aid of a former police officer while jogging, two weeks after Breonna Taylor turned into shot and killed in her home by way of the police, and six days after George Floyd died underneath the knee of a police officer.

These names are only some of the various Black Americans who have been killed by using the police within the beyond decade alone. But it was Floyd's death that intensely woke America as much as police brutality and the horror of systemic racism that has seeped into America's underbelly because slavery started out inside the US four centuries ago.

The Black Lives Matter movement, which originated in July 2013 after George Zimmerman turned into acquitted for the killing of Trayvon Martin, is out in full pressure throughout the nation and worldwide.

But for a non-Black individual to fully apprehend anti-racism, they should endeavor to understand the underlying context of Reid's Tweet: Black lives (and voices) had been marginalized and silenced to the point of death for centuries. They've been trying to inform us about the deadly problem of institutionalized racism; the white community has not been taking note of them and has not been appearing to fix it.

Racism towards Black Americans isn't perpetuated amongst white Americans alone, and Black Americans are not the simplest racial group to be afflicted by racism. That is to say, racism and anti-racism exist in multitudes. But it was white European colonialists who were at the helm of slavery 400 years ago, laying the inspiration for today's structural racism that everyone is born into.

In learning and scripting this article, I became transported returned to my readings and research on colonization and racism from college African American literature classes. I realized with soreness that I shouldn't have stopped my education on the difficulty just because I no longer had a proper class — perhaps I faster could have understood how racism has embedded and benefited my day by day life. But I also realized that my white privilege isn't a burden to bear, but a manner for me to enact alternate.

The first step is getting to know what racism and anti-racism are, what it means to be anti-racist, and a way to take action. The guideline beneath is only a beginning point of understanding it all.

What is anti-racism?

"Anti-racism is an energetic and conscious attempt to work against multidimensional elements of racism," Georgetown African American studies professor Robert J. Patterson advised Business Insider.

Patterson, who wrote "Destructive Desires: Rhythm and Blues Culture and the Politics of Racial Equality," brought that we want to collectively shift our taking into consideration racism as conscious, intentional, overt movements to unconscious, covert, and unintentional movements. He brought that whilst racism can manifest individually, it often occurs institutionally.

When abolitionist Anthony Benezet based America's first abolition society in 1775, it is able to have signaled the first recognised act of anti-racism in America. Anti-racism has its foundations in abolition and the post-liberation fight for structural trade as well as 20th-century civil-rights movements, Malini Ranganathan, a faculty team lead at the Anti-Racist Research & Policy Center at American University, told Anna North of Vox.

But it's difficult to trace the exact beginning of the term "anti-racism."

Merriam-Webster will tell you the first recognized use of "anti-racist" become in 1943 — the equal yr Marxist historian Herbert Aptheker dismantled the longstanding argument that African Americans typical slavery in his book "American Negro Slave Revolts."

Aptheker, who later became the literary executor for creator and civil-rights activist W.E.B. DuBois, eventually overturned the then extensively held idea that each one whites universally accepted racism in his book "Anti-Racism in US History: The First 2 hundred Years."

Today, anti-racism is perhaps maximum closely related to Ibram X. Kendi, the founding director of American University's anti-racist studies center (who is now moving to Boston University to open an anti-racist center there), who popularized the concept together with his 2019 book "How to be an Anti-Racist." In it, he wrote: "The only way to undo racism is to always discover and describe it — and then dismantle it."

What does it mean to be anti-racist?

You don't need to be free of racism to be an anti-racist, Ijeoma Oluo, creator of "So You Want to Talk About Race," once tweeted. "Anti-racism is the dedication to combat racism anyplace you locate it, which include in yourself. And it's the simplest way forward," she wrote.

Racism perspectives a racial institution as culturally or socially inferior. An anti-racist, in line with Kendi's book, is "one who is expressing the idea that racial groups are equals and none desires developing, and is helping coverage that reduces racial inequality."

But to recognize what an anti-racist is, one ought to additionally apprehend what an anti-racist is not: a non-racist. There is no such aspect as a non-racist, Kendi writes, as it indicates neutrality.

"One endorses both the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist," he says. "One both believes issues are rooted in organizations of human beings, as a racist, or locates the roots of troubles in strength and policies, as an anti-racist. One both permits racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist."

Patterson, the Georgetown professor, stated that humans "collapse identification and behavior" when they misconstrue now not being racist as being anti-racist. In the process, they underappreciate how action alerts anti-racism and underestimate their very own influence in dismantling the structures that guide racism.

Patterson stated Kendi's view of anti-racism highlights the way racism is socialized into behaviors — how racial inequities and disparities are embedded in private and public life. We should unravel those behaviors via thinking about and pulling back assumptions we make approximately "the naturalness of things," he stated.

If your default wondering is "I'm not racist," a greater knowledgeable point of view would be spotting how you're informed and influenced by way of the embeddedness of race and institutionalized racism.

"It's in reality critically thinking about and studying how race subjects in seemingly nonracial context," he stated.

To be an anti-racist, Kendi said in an interview with Vox, is to admit while we're being racist and then challenging those racist ideas.

"We adopt anti-racist thoughts that say the problem is strength and coverage whilst there's inequity, now not humans." That is, it's far the gadget, not a racial group, that wishes to be changed. "And then we spend our time, we spend our funds, we spend our strength hard racist policy and electricity."

What is the difference between an ally and an anti-racist?

"I assume that human beings suppose that racism is Black human beings's trouble," Patterson said.

It isn't always. Misunderstanding whose trouble racism is and who can fix it misplaces the weight of obligation to solving racism directly to the disadvantaged group.

"Racism is a white hassle," Robin DiAngelo, sociologist and the white anti-racist creator of "White Fragility," informed The Guardian in a February 2019 interview. "It turned into built and created via white humans and the remaining obligation lies with white people. For too lengthy we've checked out it as though it were a person else's trouble, as though it turned into created in a vacuum."

That leaves the onus on white people for non-public ACCOUNTABILITY : Understanding and spotting the financial and social advantages and privileges this machine bestowed upon them (which include this writer) and taking action to transform these conditions.

This involves getting beyond white disgrace and guilt. While white people today didn't create racism, activist Ben O'Keefe tells Vox, they can choose to confess that they gain from it and acknowledge their power in converting conditions.

"We don't want you to hold the load of your privilege," he said, addressing the white community. "We want you renowned it and to use your privilege, sell good, and to fight oppression."

But in the usage of white privilege for distinctive vantage points to speak approximately anti-racist practices, it's important to now not talk for Black humans's experiences, Patterson said. That "kind of reinforces the concept that Black people can't speak for themselves or that you need a white voice to authenticate what the Black attitude is," he said.

The act of doing additionally marks the difference between an ally and an anti-racist. An ally, Patterson stated, is someone who supports the cause and is interested in the issues, however doesn't as explicitly interact in actions. "An anti-racist is extra actively fighting towards the structures, et cetera, that perpetuate racism, while an ally might be in a extra supportive cast role," he added.

To be clear: It is movement that lies at the heart of anti-racism. As Kendi wrote in a December 2018 article for The Guardian, "A racist or anti-racist isn't always who we are, but what we're doing within the moment."

Keep in thoughts that anti-racism isn't approximately sitting on information, however acting on it.

Here's where you could start.

Educate yourself. Read approximately privilege, histories of race, and oppressed voices with the help of anti-racism reading lists from courses like The Strategist and Time.

Identify steps to take by talking to friends, family, and peers.

Check out this Google Doc of anti-racism resources.

Volunteer or donate to organizations combating racist rules that create and assist racial inequality.

Call out racism while you see it and espouse anti-racist ideas to help change racist policies.

Patterson said most of these exceptional steps will create an arsenal of demonstrative ongoing hobby that isn't just "for the hashtag." For example, remember how these movements could play out whilst you're in a board room discussing diversity and inclusion or in a college-admissions committee discussing test ratings and supposedly objective measures, Patterson said.

It took too long for non-Black human beings to capture directly to the Black Lives Matter movement. But now that the white network is listening, we all want to apprehend our strength in creating exchange. And Kendi stated it great in his interview with Boston University earlier this week: "You have to agree with alternate is possible on the way to convey it approximately."

#ACCOUNTABILITY #ALLY #ANTI-RACISM

2 notes · View notes

quakerjoe · 5 years

Photo

This is a long read, but it’s the best damned thing I’ve read in a long time... ~Joe

I stopped watching Chernobyl after the first episode because a lifetime ago, I was a serious physics nerd and everything they were saying was absurd about the levels of radiation. Last night we watched the other 4 episodes and I thought maybe I might try and push the rock up the hill again and maybe open some eyes about where we are right now in this truly dystopic Orwellian nightmare. J. Robert Oppenheimer was a particular hero to me as a teen because he was so brilliant and accomplished the impossible in just 18 months. If you have not read American Prometheus, I highly recommend it because it details a time when we had a government of imbeciles running around with their hair on fire about communists who threw people in jail who wouldn't admit to that old drunk McCarthy that they were communists. Like all demagogues, McCarthy thought he was the lone arbiter of who was and who wasn't a patriot and he rose to such prominence because he was willing to lie about anything to make his baseless allegations. But Joe McCarthy was no patriot nor was his principle henchman Roy Cohn. They used the collective paranoias of stupid people to manufacture a crisis that did not exist. They destroyed lives and relished doing it to what would be referred now as the 'elitist liberals' like Dalton Trumbo and Oppy. Oppy was an extremely educated liberal who spoke to other people like him. Some of whom were communists. This made him a threat in the minds of the men who put Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death. Ethel was entirely innocent but that didn't matter to a public brought to full froth by the hysteria of the day. Those men beating the drums of patriotism could not conceive of a man like Oppy talking to a communist and not be a communist himself, the same was said of Trumbo. Guilt by association was just enough for the likes of Cohn and McCarthy. "For each lie, a debt to the truth is incurred." Chernobyl Historians have written heroic books about the great generals of WWII, MacArthur and Patton being the most famous and they do deserve their notoriety but they ignored to a large extent who actually won the war for the allies and that comes down to two men: Alan Turing and J. Robert Oppenheimer. By any measure, Alan was the greatest man of the 20th century. Oppy is a bit harder to fit into that calculus and he said so himself because he knew atomic weapons would change the world and not in a good way. It's true the Japanese were whipped and that Doolittle could have continued to firebomb Japanese cities until the Japanese came to heel but that is still speculation. After Nagasaki, the war was over right or wrong, Oppy did that and saved hundreds of thousands of American troops. After the war, McCarthy went after Oppy. He wasn't treated like the hero he was and didn't want to be. He was treated like a Soviet agent and stripped of all of his security clearances because he would not name names. He was threatened with prison, his jobs were taken from him and he was exiled from the community of scientists that *he* built because of the lies of scum like McCarthy and Cohn. Alan Turing didn't fair much better from his government either. The McCarthys of that time didn't really believe in America at all, he wasn't a patriot no matter how loudly his supporters screamed it. McCarthy didn't think the idea of America could survive 'communist infiltration'. He had no grasp of why communism spread in Russia like wildfire because to his primitive and ignorant mind, he didn't know what it was like to live under a Tsar. 'If it spread there then it can spread here' was the thinking because McCarthy didn't understand or believe in the ideals that founded America. To him, they were so weak and feeble that communism would be preferable than what we had in America. That lie destroyed lives, destroyed families and stands as a black stain on our nation's history. The thing about liars is that they have to tell bigger and bigger lies to cover for all the small ones and then that debt to the truth comes due. It came to McCarthy when Joseph Welch lanced the festering boil that was McCarthyism with the truth. Before Welch delivered his fatal blow, he reacted to McCarthy's slander with this: "And so, Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale & Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale & Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I'm a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me." Then a moment later, he drew the blade that ended the national nightmare when he murdered McCarthy with the indelible truth: Mr. Welch: You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? McCarthy and Cohn of course had no decency. Cohn delighted in going after homosexuals and destroying their lives while being a homosexual himself. They were the most vile hypocrites the world had ever known. McCarthy incapable of feeling shame, drank himself to death after he was humiliated as the coward he was. I sat there thinking about this as the full horror of what happened at Chernobyl unfolded. The entirety of the Russian government played out exactly like Trump having all of his cabinet praising his greatness, it was vulgar, it was disgusting. Then I remembered all the other dictators I've read about in history who surrounded themselves with sycophants. Martin Bormann being the reference example who served Hitler so faithfully. Bormann was a slack-jowled imbecile who was barely qualified to lick stamps but nobody in the Reich dare cross the thug because he was Hitler's favorite yes man. I remember that day Trump's cabinet took turns telling Trump how honored they were to serve under his super terrifically awesomeness and that they were but boot-licking sycophants. Pence really had to lather up Trump's ass before he could muster a vulgar enough kiss to satisfy that insidious git. I sat thinking that this was the lowest moment in the history of the Republic. What separated them from the Soviet Central Committee under Gorbechev? Not a damn thing. They *all* lie for a living and kiss the dear leader's ass. It was the most unAmerican thing ever done in the White House. It was sheer cowardice by each and every single one of them. Any man who had a lick of honor would have walked out in disgust to save what's left of their honor. The *only* one who got out of this administration with any was General Mattis. And you can see this cult in all of its terrible glory if you just glance at any of the stories coming in from visitors to the concentration camps now open on United States' soil. There are zero testimonials from any objective visitor who says conditions are fine. Last Thursday a government Lawyer argued to 3 appellate judges that giving toothbrushes and toothpaste were luxury items not to be afforded for the $700-$800 a day American tax payers are paying private prison companies to house these thousands of misdemeanor offenders. Republicans have strenuously objected to calling these 'detention centers' 'concentration camps' because nothing offends cult members like the truth about what they are really do. Ask any Scientologist if you're not positive of this undeniable fact. Children are living outside, locked up and fully exposed to the elements without food and running water because the man who concocted this policy is a 32-year-old psychopath named Stephen Miller who has devised schemes to strip parents of their children as a 'deterrent' from coming to the US. I remember wondering as I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich how so many people were duped into voting Hitler into office and here I am now witnessing it. I see right wing lunatics actually calling people 'Antifa' as if it is some slur. "Antifa'' meaning 'anti-fascist.' They seem wholly unaware that Americans won a war against fascism because we were all against what the Axis was doing. What the nazis knew was that they needed to control the press. What modern fascists like Rupert Murdoch have learned is that it is easier to control the masses with propaganda and to do that is to obey Goebbels' edict to 'accuse the other side for what you are guilty of.' This is where Republicans are now. There is no Republican party anymore. It is a cult of personality except it isn't Hitler being exalted by the hoards of half-literate morons, it's Trump. Trump lies to them and they breath in his lies and they repeat them with a religious fervor because none of them are aware that for each lie they tell, they incur a debt to the truth. In Germany and in Chernobyl, those lies always caused death on a mass scale either through incompetence or outright evildoing. Here we are at a crossroads in American history with an ignorant electorate chanting 'lock her up' as if that's something that's going to happen. The Secretary of the Treasury is openly breaking federal law in full few of all these miscreants and the cult doesn't care. The Attorney General of the United States, the highest law enforcement official in the land openly committed perjury before the US Congress. The President has committed election fraud, violated the emoluments clause and committed more acts of obstruction of justice than can be counted in full view of the American people and the sad fact of the matter is nothing is being done about it. The Republican cult doesn't even want to pretend like they don't want the Russians involved in the next election. They've done exactly nothing to safeguard our elections from Russian interference because they are so easily bought by Putin that they aren't going to do a damn thing to stop someone who is trying to help them win elections. I don't know what it takes before the people take to the streets but if opening up concentration camps isn't appalling enough to put the spurs in then nothing will. This is how it was done, the chipping away of normalcy with outrage after outrage until insanity became the new normal because as Voltaire so presciently said, 'anyone who can make you believe absurdity can make you commit atrocities.' Little children are locked up outside in the elements without so much as a blanket to protect them. They have no rights to anything because the courts are so overwhelmed with cases now that it will take many years before any of these refugees get a hearing. They're standing children up in front of a judge without a lawyer to defend themselves against imaginary crimes of crossing a line on a rock turning 35,000 mph in a small solar system. Republicans stole a supreme court seat and they will continue to lie, cheat and steal to remain in power. That's why Mitch has delivered over 100 carefully selected members of the Heritage Society to fill vacant judicial posts because he does not care about our democracy, he cares about power. As many Republicans have said, they only need someone to sign stuff, they don't care who. Trump is perfect for their agenda and democracy has never been on their agenda, usurping it is. 20 years of Murdoch's brainwashing has gotten us to this point and if anyone really believed in justice in this country, the heads of everyone at Fox would be rolling down main street as a lesson to future ambitious propagandists who mean to undermine our nation as that rogue Australian has done more than any other. To rid ourselves of this seditious scourge is going to take all of us who agree to speak with one voice at the ballot box. It's going to take protests on a scale not seen in the US. Blood is already being spilled in these concentration camps. Edmund Burke's warning that all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing is coming to pass *yet again* and here we are at tyranny's doorstep. How much is enough? What atrocity must be committed on American soil before we get off our sorry asses and start doing something about it? If you don't think we aren't at war with a very determined enemy bent on destroying our country then you need to wake up to reality before we wake up that one morning like Martin Niemöller did when he said, "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." Every single Republican in office right now is an enemy of the United States who are conspiring with our foreign enemies to keep themselves in power. So are the people who vote for them because they are no different than the people who voted Hitler into office. I sincerely hope if you agree with what I have said here that you spread this message with any like-minded people because as of yet, I haven't seen any presidential candidates calling these concentration camps what they are. If we don't start preparing for next November today, we could wake up to another 4 years of Trump. Our nation cannot survive such a reckless criminal administration the likes of this one for another four years. The nation will be bankrupt and in its death rattle. We can start speaking in unison this Independence Day by squelching this Trump celebration in DC by turning the real patriots out on a scale he can't imagine. It's time to start fighting and dirty at that while there's still something worth fighting for. #Resist Your very life depends on it as does our future.

- Thomas Clay

56 notes · View notes

the-nerktwins · 6 years

Text

There’s more to “Another Day” than meets the eye…or, ear…

Sometimes the most interesting thoughts are captured during discussions. I recently began a thread in a Beatles forum I’m a member of, about Paul’s song “Another Day” and the deeper meaning I personally found within it. The conversation veered into two different directions. One was the concept of the lyrical content being overlooked for a few possible reasons, not the least of them being that the protagonist was a woman. The other branch of this conversation veered towards was the musical anatomy of the song and how it serves to add texture to the story the lyrics are telling.

It’s with regret that I report that some participants completely overlooked the musical complexity of this track. To illustrate, here are a couple of key quotes from respondents in the thread I started:

“In contrast to 'Eleanor Rigby, 'Another Day' is cute and perfect instead of full of contrast and dynamics. The cozy comfort of the music itself reflects the bland predictability of the protagonists' life, as depicted in the song. I'm just not sure that's the best approach to take. I think John and George's (Martin) influence would have added some dimension.”

“Yes it's typical of McCartney to wrap a dark story in a cute song. He likes to hide things (even from himself).”

I was left wondering if me and these posters were even listening to the same song! I was also reminded of how ready people are to default to and parrot the (false and grossly oversimplified) talking points that the fandom has been spoon-fed about Paul’s songcraft since the 1970’s. Paul is hardly ever regarded as a valid artist in his own right outside of the Beatles collective, that is terribly, truly wrongheaded in every imaginable way.

I find it galling that many fans still want to hear his early, solo work with a “Lennon filter” applied to it. I’ve seen people saying things like, “This song is good, but if he’d done it with John it would’ve been GREAT!” I completely disagree. McCartney’s compositional abilities by 1967 had evolved to the point where he could “hear” in his head almost exactly what he wanted his final product to sound like. He was adept at articulating his vision to producers, engineers, and bandmates rather early on.

It also hasn’t escaped my notice that certain fans resent his abilities within the confines of the Beatles’ collective since it did contribute to some friction within the band during their late period, and then they turn around and completely ignore his competency when it comes to his solo work (and lament that he couldn’t collaborate with Lennon or George Martin on particular solo songs). It’s a paradoxical mentality and I’m not shy about denouncing it. It gives me whiplash, if I’m quite honest about it!

Since I don’t know (and didn’t ask) the participants about whether they’ve had any experience as musicians, I can make some allowance for the fact that people who’ve played music can hear things in a piece that non-musicians may not pick up on. The thing is, there exist a fair number of sources which could at least illustrate what’s going on musically in “Another Day.”

As for me, since I have a musical background, and I can HEAR what’s going on. To me there are “contrast and dynamics.” The song builds, crescendos, and comes back down again. There's a lot going on in terms of time signature changes, and decorative elements which add texture to the story being told. It’s brilliant! I realize that someone who has little to no musical experience could miss it. There are musically-inclined people out there who can explain it, however, and I went looking online for just that. I conducted two simple Google searches: “Paul McCartney Another Day Musical Analysis,” and “Paul McCartney Another Day Sheet Music.”

With the second search, I found a website which allows the user to play a midi file of the song (with the lead vocals, backing vocals, and every instrument) while the user is taken through the sheet music. The parts being played highlight what’s going on in the song as it’s playing. If someone is inexperienced as a musician, it can serve as a nice, visual aid to see just how complex a composition is, and how much is going on within it. Here’s a screenshot of the site, and a link to “Another Day” for illustrative purposes.

"Another Day" by Paul and Linda McCartney on MuseScore.com

To me this is proof-positive that "Another Day" isn't just a cutesy, fluffy song.

For some further argument in the favor of the musical merits of this song, I stumbled upon comments from fans in the Steve Hoffman music forums, in a thread called "Paul McCartney 'Another Day' Appreciation Thread"

After the bit ".... leaves the next daaaaayyyy..." there's this descending run on the guitar that is perfectly placed, but very difficult indeed to play. – Edgard Varese

yeah, another day is an absolutely killer track. to me its really the perfect song: catchy as hell, yet imaginative and really far more complex than a casual listener would ever realize. i also agree with the thoughts on the rythym guitar. great song to learn for any guitar player, not just for the rythm, but for the chords also. i believe it starts with a g to a b7 with an f# bass and really you've got me hooked from there – andyw676

Listen to the bassline...amazing. – Stateless

I've always loved this song, everything about it really. The undertone of Rigby-esque sadness was obvious to me from the get-go, and the yearning in the "sometimes she feels so sad" bit as the music shifts up and down chromatically always put a lump in my throat. Paul's very good at getting some of the more delicate emotional shadings in his songs. Great song. Thanks for the thread! -- Gardo

That song has some crazy chord changes, and lots of em. Makes it special. – Dave D

To diverge just a little bit into lyrical territory, there were some nuggets of push-back within this Steve Hoffman thread against the typical appraisal of this song, namely it being labeled as “lightweight” or “trite” by certain critics or fans.

Similarly, on "Another Day" if you read the lyrics carefully you may come away feeling not uplifted by a catchy little ditty but a mite saddened by the sometimes crushing loneliness of the modern grind. Personally I love the "At the office where the papers grow..." and "Alone in her apartment she'd dwell..." parts, some of Paul's best lyrics. Remarkable concision. – Dr J

I don't consider it quite as light as I did. It's almost a social commentary on the way women's lives were in the 70s, although not a knock at anyone specific. I admit I'm stealing a little of my wife's analysis. – kevinsinnott

I find it interesting to note that the second poster needed some assistance from a woman regarding his appraisal of the lyrical content. It’s another reminder of the depressing reality that this song is likely written off as superficial and lightweight, and not much analysis applied to it, but because the protagonist is a woman. Just as a lot of our struggles as women are ignored or ridiculed, a song written by a male who sympathizes with our plight is written off as “silly” and “fluffy” by male fans, even if the lyrics have a dark subtext.

To me, the song speaks of something dark and existential going on within the protagonist's psyche, and Paul himself is simply a narrator, imploring the audience to empathize with her as much as he does. And by empathizing with the plight of a woman, Paul unfortunately gets labeled a superficial square who creates “Muzak” and isn’t “Rock N’ Roll” enough. And that’s not right any way you slice it. Even more ironic is that not long after "Another Day," Lennon at the behest of his wife would be singing and talking about Women's struggles for equal rights and the injustice of it all. He glibly missed his former songwriting partner's intent in this song. That's not unlike John at all, however, and that's certainly not the point of this essay. It's just an observation I found interesting.

"Another Day" also speaks to me as an acknowledgement that people who are highly functional can and do suffer depression; people are coached to wear a mask of being “OK” because it’s not socially acceptable to admit you are not OK. Just keep your head down, go to work, do what you’re supposed to do, get on with it, and don’t tell anyone about your problems…

“As she posts another letter to the sound of five People gather 'round her and she finds it hard to stay alive.”

To go back to the song being marginalized as a little bit of radio-friendly, pop fluff, when to me it clearly is NOT for a moment, I want to acknowledge something. Fans were less able to access opposing literature and materials in the early 1970’s, and McCartney himself wasn’t talking much to the press (and unless you’re a brand-new fan, you know why), so I can see why people sort of accepted this viewpoint at the time.

As Erin Torkelson-Weber has pointed out in interviews and on her blog, “The Historian and the Beatles,” Paul’s relative lack of response to the talking points being pushed by John and Yoko within their post-breakup PR campaign, as well as Paul choosing not to give too much weight to the unfair critical appraisal of his work that was tainted by rock music “journalists” essentially siding with John and Yoko, really created a vacuum, allowing for the fandom’s appraisal of Paul’s work to be dominated by this narrative. Therefore, it’s natural that many, if not most fans in 1971 would buy into these sentiments.

What I find annoying is that this tendency continues to persist within the fandom, even among younger fans! This is despite having a considerable amount of evidence available at our fingertips that can serve to point out how very wrong this narrative truly is, up to and including the damn sheet music!

With the ability we now possess to access contemporaneous source material and examine all of it objectively, and the ability to listen to virtually all of his music for free via the major, online streaming services, it demonstrates laziness when people within the fandom choose not to think for themselves regarding McCartney’s genius and artistic merit separate from the other Beatles (namely Lennon).

“Another Day” isn’t the only McCartney work I’ve seen suffer under-appreciation by fans, but it’s an excellent example to illustrate my point, since it was specifically singled out by Lennon and early 70’s rock critics and used as a device by Lennon and the prominent rock critics of the day to publicly mock McCartney and call his integrity as an artist into question.

A lot of McCartney’s solo work is written off in a similar fashion, and what a terrible shame that is. Quite frankly, I think people are depriving themselves of a lot of pleasure by simply dismissing McCartney and avoiding his music (or sticking to his “greatest hits” without delving into his catalog and giving everything a thorough listen), based on these antiquated appraisals of his work.

In conclusion, I hope this essay didn’t come across too harshly. I just hope it may inspire people to listen more carefully to Paul McCartney’s solo work and give him the credit as an artist that he duly deserves.

#another day #musical analysis #my posts #paul mccartney #solo #songs

237 notes · View notes

shriekbackmusic · 6 years

Text

Virtual Sleevenotes, Credits and Lyrics for ‘Barry Andrews: Lost Pop Songs 78-80’

TRACK LIST 1 Rossmore Road 2 Win a Night Out (with a well-known paranoiac) 3 Freak 4 Me and My Mate Can Sing 5 Mousetrap 6 Bring On The Alligators 7 Sargasso Bar 8 Feeding Time 9 Muscle & Movement 10 Opposite Way in the Rush Hour 11 Taking Over ICI 12 Vampyr Skinhead 13 Big Soft Safe Family

MUSICIANS 1-3 clarinet: Frank Abrams, trombone: Ian Bateman, guitar: Rob Hendry, Robert Fripp, Bruce Mcrae, bass: Dave Marx, drums: Richard Wernham, engineer: John Strudwick, backing vocals: Bruce Mcrae, Patti Palladin, Clara Harris, Steve New, Marion Fudger. Recorded at Rockstar Studios, Fitzrovia, Mixed at Regent’s Park Studios, St Johns Wood. 4-7 guitars and bass: Dave Marx, drums: Rob Wilford, engineer: Hugh Padgham, Producer: Martin Rushent. Recorded at Townhouse Studio 2, Goldhawk Road. 8-10 guitar: Jon Ellis, bass: Dave Marx, drums: Richard Wernham, engineer: John Strudwick, recorded at Pathway Studios, Islington 11-13 bass: Marion Fudger, guitar: Rob Hendry, drums: Richard Wernham, engineer: Eric Radcliffe, recorded at Blackwing Studios, Borough.

The songs on this album have been lying about for a looong time, as you see. The reasons for this are twofold: 1- it’s juvenelia, really - undeveloped, derivative. Trying stuff on for size. An artist not in complete control of his medium, if you like. So I was not in a hurry to expose it, I guess, for its flaws are obvious. 2 it’s precious, unrepeatable, unvarnished. Truly an account of Process as someone’s aesthetic develops. It’s fascinating to me, of course (‘each man loves the smell of his own farts’) and, I have to assume, as an article of faith, that it may be to others. So, as a one-time-for-all-time thing, I was hesitant to release it. Anyway, here they…are, these songs which are inextricably bound both to a critical time in my life and the interstitial flavour of the historical moment: the end of the 70’s in good old (post-war, now post-60’s) UK. The dingy, dark, money-strapped days of Callaghan and Heath on the cusp of the New (fake) Gold Thatcherite Dawn.

London still grubby, edgy and un-Developed in a lot of places (squats still available - for instance) and Punk, which had roared for a couple of years - having redefined pop culture, via getting Pissed and Destroying - was about to stagger off into the wings, fresh out of ideas.

the Roxy Club, Covent Garden in 77 (it’s a shop selling Speedos now. Out with the Bin Bags in with the New Shiny Pants!)

The Clash and Pistols albums of 77 had permeated, by 79, everywhere they were likely to go (surprisingly far) but their offspring - the ninety-to-the-dozen, political, permanently furious form of *Punk was on the wane. ‘New Wave’ as a catch-all term for anything that was neither hardcore (with a little ‘h’) Punk nor Old School Rock was becoming the mot du jour. Another strange little sub-genre was Power Pop (which my old firm XTC could be described as, although to be fair, we were doing it well before the term was coined). Blondie, The Rich Kids, the Rezillos: all were attempts to make ideologically (yes!) acceptable the idea of melody and upbeat themes in a landscape where (Iove this term) *Ramalamadolequeue was rapidly wearing out its welcome.

(the Rich Kids - ft. Steve New, the baby deer. They’re not signing on are they? They’re Rich.)

Personally, these tunes cover, as historians say, ‘the long 78-80’. Roughly from the end of my time with XTC to the beginning of Restaurant for Dogs which was (sort-of) the R&D for Shriekback, although definitely with its own sovereignty and aesthetic.

Rossmore Road source: 1/4″ tape This came to light in a box of old tapes (Lordy I wish I had more tapes). It’s the first mix John Strudwick and I did for the single but I wasn’t happy and, rather sportingly, Virgin let us remix it. This version, though, not only has the ‘son trouveé - ‘asking for directions’ elements at the beginning and end (hilariously furious posh guy who - you can hear - I have managed to wind up even in the few seconds it takes to ask where Rossmore Road was. How? I really was an annoying, chippy bastard in those days - you can see why I felt paranoid (see below).

I was playing with Robert Fripp’s League of Gentlemen at the time and Robert kindly offered to come down and bestow his guitar benediction upon my humble pop tune (skills which were to be deployed, rather more usefully, on Bowie’s ‘Scary Monsters’ later that year - which Robert had taken a break from rehearsals with us to do (‘I have redefined the parameters of modern guitar playing’, he self-deprecatingly declared, on his return).

We got off to a bad start and never got beyond it: we plugged Fripp in and played the tune - John the engineer had assumed, totally reasonably, that this was a ‘get familiar’ go-through before we started recording.

As producer I should have been clearer - very much so, as it turned out because Fripp threw a total hissy fit when told we hadn’t recorded his 1st take. He gave us a rant about Heroes etc - how all his most genius work had been 1st or second takes. I apologised. He made a somewhat passive/aggressive show of graciousness in spite of this clear affront and the atmosphere was kinda tense after that. Someone else who hated me. Just great.

And anyway, what we would have got (and, on the 2nd take, did get) was - Fripp fans forgive me - 70’s prog-hero solo guitar noodling (very good guitar noodling, but still) - which loftily ignored the song’s structure so entirely that you had to choose between either just showcasing Robert or actually crafting the song. On the remix we ended up using one note (at the top). I honestly couldn’t find anything else that properly fitted. On the present mix, however, if you listen carefully, you can hear Fripp doing his flash, busy thing - it’s mixed as loud as I dared but you can hear it doesn’t really work and, if it hadn’t been him playing it, it wouldn’t have been there.

An inappropriate and inelegant use of resources, as he might have said. Interesting to hear though, perhaps, in a vestigial tail/snake legs sort of a way.

conceptual stuff about RRd.

ROSSMORE ROAD (NW1) The 159 runs along it Round the corner from Baker Street There's a dolls house shop on the corner Of Lisson Grove and

Rossmore Road Rossmore Road

Turn left at the DHSS in Lisson Grove You find yourself in Rossmore Road And there's a number of public buildings And a safety barrier down the middle of the road

In Rossmore Road In Rossmore Road In Rossmore Road

White and yellow lines and street signs And public phones and traffic cones And belisia beacons on the central reservation All humming now, all humming now, all humming now

To the north The Grand Canal Round the corner Regent's Park Next stop on the tube Marylebone Road And you can see Balcombe Street from Rossmore Road

The 159 runs along it Round the corner from Baker Street There's a dolls house shop on the corner Of Lisson Grove and

Rossmore Road Rossmore Road Rossmore Road Rossmore Road

In Rossmore Road White and yellow lines and street signs North of the river South of the circular Under the road Above the railway

All humming now, all humming now, all humming now All humming now, all humming now, all humming now All humming now, all humming now, all humming now All humming now, all humming now, all humming now All humming now, all humming now, all humming now All humming now...

Win a Night Out (with a well-known paranoiac) sound source: 1/4″ tape

Very pleased with this, I am still. Sui generis as they come. Blur before Blur said somebody. OK I’ll take it. I was (I think) actually thinking about Patti Smith’s Piss Factory - and Land and Wave, those half-poem, half-song tunes of hers. This, though, suffused with the provincial UK, late 70’s consciousness you get when you perhaps smoke too much grim hash and take too much speed. Interesting sexual punishment element to it also. Because it’s two dates: one rustic and one urban, then an extreme post coital reverse followed by a horrific denouement (Nazi Vivisection! The worst kind) which shows that, as they say: ’just cos you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you’.

This is, obviously, autobiographical (apart from the vivisection). This arsy, scruffy little bloke, oppressed by the forces of reaction and class, who seems to attract humiliation and brutality wherever he goes, even though his intentions are just to have fun and get laid. It’s a little poem about fear and self doubt which, around ’79 there seemed to be lots of. So I made a record. More expensive than a therapist but it has a trombone player..

WIN A NIGHT OUT (WITH A WELL-KNOWN PARANOIAC)

We could rendezvous in a country pub I know in the heart of rural England where the landlord sports moustaches just like Jimmy Edwards and the crisps and pickled onions on the bar are numberless as the stars at night We're just about to order scampi in an Elizabethan basket when two neckless men in blazers and cravats approach our table and say - "sorry - this bar is exclusively for the use of Nobel prize winners, latter day saints, people who have seen God and selected relatives of our dear Queen, and furthermore, you worm, there is mud upon your plimsolls". I reply that I am a member of most elitist cliques you care to name and the blood which courses (at an ever increasing speed as it happens) through my veins belonged once to the Cuban royal family, but, they don't listen and they just pour my drink down the sink and say "this is not what we mean. In this life, one is either U or non-U and if I were you I'd make myself bloody scarce.” I even try to show them my credit cards but unmoved they say "OK sonny, it's time you were taught a lesson and there's only one thing that your sort understand"

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac Win a night out with a famous paranoid Win a night out with a well known paranoiac Win a night out with a famous paranoid

At an Iberian eatery in the west end, we could gaze at each other across saucers of yoghurt and bits of crusty foreign bread - and then - I could order a carraffe of Asti - we could have so much fun. We could discuss things like communism and chart positions with the lack of inhibitions that separate the truly liberated from the herd - but - I should mention that I talk quite loud as a casualty of inexpensive foreign wine and neither am I unaware of the restive noises from the party sitting close by. But as I'm in the middle of my funny story about the Arab and the underwater toilet, I can't stop now 'cause I'm in too deep, as I'm coming to the part where I say (in my best joke telling voice), "so the Arab says to the attendant, right...

‘Of course as we know five thousand pounds of pressure can suck out almost anything,’ and it all goes quiet and a little girl is saying: "Daddy, what a horrible man" and Daddy replies, "don't worry darling 'cause I've just made a phone call to your crypto-fascist Uncle Roger and he'll be here quite soon, and make quite sure he doesn't upset any little girls... little girls any more"

Win a night out with a famous paranoiac Win a night out with a well known paranoid Win a night out with a well known paranoiac Win a night out with a famous paranoid

Lying in your crumpled bed on Sunday morning, you said your Mum and Dad had gone away to a conference in Bath and I believed you like a fool. Now you get up, go to the window and you turn a pot plant round. I study your naked bottom with a twinge of lust but I'm not twigging that something's going down. There is a sound of the heavy boots upon the stairs and the door crashes open and in comes your Dad with some faithful retainers and some ex-Army mates from the Conservative Club. And I figure they must have been waiting all night because your Dad is clutching two reels of infra-red film and he's looking dangerously pale as he shows me the microphone under the bed, and I'm just about getting the message: all is not too groovy

As you stand there in your dressing gown laughing at me, then in comes your Mum in her nylon house coat with her hair hanging loose like a suburban Harpy and she advances towards me with an army surplus bush knife, clearly bent on wreaking havoc down below the navel and she's just about to get stuck in when I wake up... and yeah, it was all a dream

I'm really in a hospital bed. There is a smell of formaldehyde in the air, and a couple of doctors with swastikas on their arm are doing something to the brain of a sheep and in the corner is a huge zinc bath containing some sort of reptile and the nurse is saying "be a brave boy and drink it all up". And I realise I can't feel me legs and the shape in the bed isn't my shape at all and I wanna cry out but I can only bleat

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac Win a night out with a famous paranoid Win a night out with a well known paranoiac Win a night out with a famous paranoid

FREAK source: cassette So Funk was the thing - but let’s take it and fuck it up with our English voices and anti-slick playing. Let’s actually take the funk/fun out of it. Disco hatred was the tip, kinda. I recall saying in an interview that it was like scratching up a big lairy american limousine with the nasty, rusty keys of your squat (there’s also an unreleased Restaurant for Dogs version we recorded for Warners with Nick Launay which takes this approach to its theoretical limit: it’s pretty hard to listen to). We are, in fact, so alienated from the subject matter that I sing ‘just come on down to the fifth floor’ instead of ’54’ - the iconic New York club, me not having heard of it (though - quirky historical note - Shriekback did actually play there in the place’s last week - on the Sacred City tour).

Dave’s ‘confused Dutch person’ on the end is a nice random element. Like he’s wandered in off another session.

4 Songs from Town & Country EP (Virgin 79) Me and My Mate, Mousetrap, Bring on the Alligators, Sargasso Bar sound source: vinyl Ah T&C - I sort-of despise thee. No-one was taking care of my career development - especially not me - after XTC so I got stuck in a posh recording studio with the Strangler’s producer way before I should have been. This you can hear from the ‘apprentice piece’ nature of this EP. All influences fully on show and sellotaped together. A ‘band’ which, you can tell, has only so much in common and which was kinda thrown together. An adolescent ferocity in the delivery not masking very well a slew of insecurities. ‘Calm Down’ I want to tell this snarling young herbert, ‘nobody thinks you’re cool anyway. It’s fine: do an album about a fish, why dontcha?’ As it is, we get a variety pack of New Wave/Post Punk styles and lyrical tropes: Me & My Mate (the Clash obvs: stage democracy, anti-rockist groupy exploitation, DIY fanzine-esque self-expression for the working classes, Patti Smith reference). Mousetrap A classically-trained-but-recently-listened-to-Elvis Costello/Joe Jackson Bitter Relationship song. I like the spoken word bit that deconstructs a Well Made Play in 4 lines though (for those who don’t know, The Mousetrap is the longest running show in the West End - since ‘52!). The ‘Darlings’ repeated hookline was a reference to my lovely Aunty Rene who worked many years in the box office of various West End theatres (the Adelphi and the Prince of Wales I think - and since you ask) and had adopted a fabulously camp way of speaking through long exposure to gay theatrical men. Her poodle Chico was ‘my little Treasure Island’ and everyone else was ‘Darling’.

Aunty Rene (2nd left) with her theatrical crew and actress Anna Neagle at the Coalhole on the Strand 1968)

MOUSETRAP Been playing Shaftesbury Avenue For a thousand years or maybe two - darlings Done plenty bum gigs in my time But everything's alright now

In the mousetrap In the mousetrap

We fall in love most every night We're quite ridiculously tight - darlings And yeah I feel some kind of freak Getting killed six times a week

In the mousetrap In the mousetrap

It's nearly half past three Gotta do a matinee I don't understand this game Why everything's the same

But as the show go on and on And on and on And on and on and on and on and on And on

I know the punters mustn't see How mundane it seems to me - darlings But sometimes I wish I could screw Someone else in Shaftsbury Avenue

In the mousetrap In the mousetrap

Curtain up - exposition Development of character Plot - unravelling slow Sustaining interest, gathering momentum

Till they unmask the killer Then a twist right at the end And it's all over till tomorrow night

In the mousetrap In the mousetrap

Sargasso Bar definitely the best of this bunch. Although the Small Town Observational style is a little irritating (alright, Bazzer, you’re a Poet of the Everyday and you are so very alienated) it is here for the first time that a certain mock heroic, magical-realist aspect started to appear in my writing. ‘they raise their glasses in 2/4 time and they study the latecomers as they slither in beneath the door’. XTC did a version of this which failed to get onto GO2. Not too much different I think but I recall Andy Partridge’s objection to the line: ‘we’re surrounded by the Eels of Death’. He felt it was the sort of hippy, trippy kinda image which XTC Stood Against. I felt it was - well - mock heroic and magical realist. This conversation went nowhere, obviously, but it was instrumental in making my decision to leave the band. These people just didn’t get my shit…

SARGASSO BAR Couple in the corner Now she's crying on his shoulder Well they're a couple of Modern Lovers Sort of Kevin and Isolde She's embarrassed by his footwear He's embarrassed by her hair But he doesn't really care He says it's murder staying emotionally aware He's another Lost Soul But he's only come here to die And get high

In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar

Big John in the wooly Football training in the evening Well he got married married married Now he only thinks of leaving And he's surrounded by the blubber Watch the terylene stretching As he makes a point about his car When you're on miles to the gallon You know where you are And he's here every night, he's such a regular guy He gets high

In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar

We came in from the rain Now we're surrounded by the Eels of Death Everyone nervous and everybody couldn't care less We raise our glasses in 2/4 time We study the latecomers as they slither in beneath the door About this time of the night There's more and more and more and more Well, give them ten minutes then they all go home to die Cos they're so high

In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar

Bring on the Alligators yeah, dunno about this one really. Clearly I’m really working the magic realist tip again but to what end? It’s clearly meant to be funny, what with the Polish ‘1234’ in the middle and the ‘cocktail bar’ quiet section at the end and all but it’s all trying a bit hard for my liking. The awfully Lahndun working class accent I have on all these tunes is also a bit abrasive. My estuarine whine is of course part of me but it is underlining, unecessarily and stridently I feel, the ‘prolier than thou’ ethic which I had bought into wholesale during Punk. Let it go, dude…

2 LOTS OF DEMOS source: cassette Well, now we were getting somewhere.. Listening back now, 40-odd years on it really does seem to me that the year (ish) between the EP and this first set of demos represented a huge leap in my - er - self development. The life in XTC - still living with Ma & Pa or on the road within the Mothership of the band - record company, management, everything being done for you (at the expense, as it turned out, of knowing what was actually going on..hem hem). It’s cosiness and material sufficiency came at a price I could no longer put up with. Time to go, clearly.

I remember leaving the last outpost of that world - the nice flat above the Townhouse, paid for by Virgin while we were recording the EP but now, since recording had just finished, off limits. So…I could go back to Swindon - or step out into the scary metropolis, where all the safety nets have been packed away, and see what can be made to happen. Me and a girlfriend (who had signed up when I was a (sort-of) pop star - she was in for a taste of the real musician’s girlfriend’s lot now alright) went over to my old schoolmate’s flat in the East End (he was at college in London) - it was pouring down of rain as we walked across Tower Bridge. No money for a cab - the XTC wages had long been cut off.

Youth seeks a Rite of Passage, does it not? This seemed to be mine. I felt noble and scared and reckless and Hungry for Experience. So, these tunes were written after a year of London, of squatting, signing on, meeting loads of new people, getting sick, getting well, hanging round the ink well - no, actually, after a particularly avid speed binge and a dreadful mini-tour with the T&C band I developed serious chickenpox (more virulent in adulthood, it turns out). I was the Elephant Man for a while. The body was having its unignorable say about all this new input. But the tunes were definitely better. More individual. Not trying so hard and, sometimes, there was a Showing Forth of something really quite juicy and new (and I don’t just mean the pustules, har har).

Feeding Time I submitted this to Shriekback’s publisher when he asked if we had anything that might do for the Eurovision Contest. He never quite looked at me the same way again, I thought (nil points pour moi).

I had been working at London Zoo (west gate and Reptile House: taking money on the door) that year and eating in various Camden/Kilburn greasy spoons. These two experiences were to produce this little gem. A Meditation on Eating. I think it needed doing.

Points of interest: Dave Marx’s great bassline which is really the hook and the armature. Jon Ellis’s glistening ‘egg’ chord. The ‘Taking Your Order’ on the fade (Prawn Cocktail! The 70′s are strong in this one...) I had earlier recorded this with some ‘opera’ singers (from the BBC West of England Chorus - including Mrs Evenett (contralto) my old French teacher) singing the ‘Feeding Time’s’ in fine bel canto stylee. Which I may release at some point.

FEEDING TIME Putting things into my body at Feeding Time White wine and little damaged bodies from the bottom of the sea inside me still feel hungry when I reach the end and I won’t feel good when it’s Feeding Time again. I watch him from the corner at Feeding Time sometimes he is hideous to watch as he shovels his chops inside him and his belly is beginning to distend and I know he’ll feel great when it’s Feeding Time again

but in the meantime Eat - don’t stop Eat - don’t stop Eat - don’t stop

Biting Viscera and gristle at Feeding Time listen to the lobsters whistle crack their legs open suck out what you find inside The spaghetti as it glistens at Feeding Time like spirogyra on your wet lips munching masticated chips in your mouth with lots of wine Eggs! Eggs! Soft and warm romantically slipping down inside and I wish it could always be Feeding Time and I wish it could always be Feeding Time (let’s see what’s on menu.. I’ll get an onion bhaji.. …prawn cocktail …three more pappadums…)

Opposite Way In The Rush Hour You know, it’s a bit cheesy and self serving but I still dig this. Our hero is heading off to some gig (some horrible, low paid, nightclub-type gig - let’s say in Edgbaston. Or Stoke). He’s hitching his way up there to meet the band at the soundcheck and it’s just getting dark. He looks at all the Regular Folk coming home from work: old geezers on pushbikes, factory workers - UK manufacturing has still a few years in it at this point - young girls (that might have been mating/marriage material in his former life) wait at bus stops and the cosy tea (the evening meal not the drink - important class-related point) on the tables, visible through the shortly to be curtained windows and our man gets all Springsteeny-sentimental about his self-ordained High and Lonely Destiny. Noble chords, I think, and very clever drumming by Rich Wernham (he was bloody good, I must say - as Nick Lowe said - ‘you can get away with murder if you’ve got a good drummer’). The absence of traditional last chorus repeats, instead dissolving into a babble of voices was indicative of some creative, envelope-pushing Thort, I would say. The boy’s finding his feet..

OPPOSITE WAY IN THE RUSH HOUR Going the opposite way in the rush hour watching the cars going past in the night. Factory gates let out the day shift - they escape on their bikes. Daughters go home on the bus, see you’re not one of us. The sensation is sweet and it’s sour. Going the opposite way, opposite way, in the rush hour.

Closer to being a part of the big system: so near and far from all that you seek. Closer to where the big heart beats you into submission then rocks you to sleep. Curtains still open The news on the telly they’re making their tea and I want all they’ve got but somehow.. keep on going this way: opposite way in the rush hour.

Street lamps come on now, those front rooms look so warm now. Old men with empty lunch bags pedal homewards and the girls wait at bus stops as the weekend unfolds. Once it would have felt so right heading into the hot sticky heat of the night

…it’s not a question of honour or a question at all Just the way that we choose to live now Going our opposite way… opposite way… opposite way…

Muscle and Movement Painfully sincere (and unintentionally camp) credo from the Squat years. Fucking grim, mate. It was cold, self-flagellating and unecessarily unpleasant. Here is the mantra behind that lifestyle experiment ‘pain is knowledge and knowledge is wealth.’ Jeez, give this guy a cuddle...

MUSCLE & MOVEMENT Fed up of sitting around with my legs crossed Pretending and smiling and saying ‘yeah, cheers then’ avoiding the whites of their eyes. (and another thing) And another thing- don’t try and tell me you’re gonna get something together when everything’s going your way then the limit’s the sky. You can’t always hide on the side watching people who do things bigger than you. You can’t have a permanent stop to the things that displease you or give you unease. ‘Cos all that matters is Muscle and Movement flesh out all your fantasies with Muscle and Movement (ain’t no such thing as security, just Muscle and Movement Muscle and Movement

as you relax at the end of the day there’s another tomorrow staring at you as it stands at the top of the stairs time is a swine it just keeps coming at you battering you to the floor as you try and stand up yelling you’ve had enough save it for somebody free - don’t talk to me I got no symapthy pour out some more of that wine everything’ll be fine just stay drunk all the time but remember that Muscle and Movement is all that makes you what you are Muscle and Movement standing still don’t get you too far it’s Muscle and Movement Muscle and Movement

it’s hard but it’s true that there’s nothing to cling to nothing to belong to and nowhere is more important than where you are now and there is no rest for the wicked, no rest for the wicked or peace for the innocent or the don’t knows (this lines indecipherable) cos there ain’t nobody got the things they need (same) cos the things that you lack are what you never get back cs the only secret weapon is Muscle and Movement

Muscle and Movement nothing happens by itself Muscle and Movement pain is knowledge and knowledge is wealth

Vampyr Skinhead & Taking Over ICI Well, it’s here that I claim total responsibility for the Two-Tone/Ska Revival that was to occur later that year. No, honest - no-one else was doing this stuff at the time (or they were but no-one had heard of them yet). These two tunes were, moreover, direct descendants of my song ‘Super Tuff’ from the XTC album (btw, that title came from the strapline of a Bruce Lee movie ‘Bruce Lee - Super Tough - but also Tender,’ so I was also anticipating Tarantino and all that kitsch martial arts movie stuff from the 90’s - could I be any more prescient?) Actually, exciting self delusion aside, I claim only to have had my finger on an historical pulse which had been throbbing away since the 70’s and which obviously many others had also been party to. As I say somewhere else ‘it’s ok to have a great idea but you have to get off your chuff if you’re going to start a cultural movement’. I wasn’t dedicated enough, clearly, but I was quietly and briefly, a canary in that particular coalmine.

The idea of reggae as this parallel exotic, possibly dangerous sub-track to Pop/Rock had been around for quite a while and kept bubbling up out of the Zeitgeisty swamp to varying amounts of mainstream attention. Bob Marley (pretty much just him) had Broken Through to become the reggae artist that unitiated white people liked and played at parties to show Cool. U Roy, Big Youth, Scratch et al remained the province of hip white people (as we liked to think of ourselves). But, under the audacious banner of ‘Fuck Art, Let’s Dance’ the Ska revival, the Two Tone label, Madness etc were to mine the accelerated beats, fruity grooves and edgy vibes of Jamaica (along the lines of Desmond Dekker and Toots and the Maytals) to international chart success. Of which more in a minute..

Since Punk there had been this strange symbiosis (which is easy to forget, it’s so non-intuitive) of reggae with Punk which had continued, unabated since the days of the Roxy Club. This, eventually, had permeated the wider scene. So, when XTC would play, in 78, gigs in Birmingham or Leeds, the disco would always be alternating, say, the Drones, Chelsea or the Pistols with Althia and Donna, Steel Pulse or Culture. It was a tacit admission, I would say, that the Punk formula was a limited one and, while its brutal austerity had been bracing (and a welcome antididote to Old Fart music), people still needed melody and sensuality and Actual Dancing.

But, there had been, in my late schooldays (early to late 70’s) an earlier, more schismatic appearance of Reggae (in its proto form of Ska) which I had observed firsthand in my Comprehensive provincial schooldays with all its codes and brutalities (kinda charming and nostalgic now; fairly scary and intense at the time). There was a 2 tribes battle going on at my school and in the UK generally: the Skinheads and the Greboes/Hairies (vestigial, usually non-ideological Hippies, really, sometimes with a component of Biker). It was a pretty one-sided battle: the Skins were an embodiment of working class, unsmiling rage and violence (’Aggro’ and ‘Bovver’ were their coinages (graffitti in my town read: ‘S.T.A.B (= Swindon Town Aggro Boys) Kick to Kill’). It was a culture of fighting and machismo which picked on pretty much anyone (it became a white racist movement eventually of course: ‘Paki Bashing’ being one defining activity but, as is documented in ‘This Is England’ TV series, the Skins didn’t start out that way: look at all that ska and blubeat. Also, in Swindon in the 70’s there wasn’t much opportunity to get the ol’ racism going - there wasn’t a single black or Asian kid in my year at school; only one or two in the entire school - so the Hairies/Greebs would have to do as a Victim Class, I guess.

The mostly docile, pacifist, great-coat/tie-die-wearing, patchouli-smelling, Topographic Oceans-carrying quasi-hippy was always good for a bit of a kicking (though I suspect, the lack of physical challenge made them a bit uninspiring - football hooliganism probably gave the Skins more of a work-out). At any rate, the hirsute, messy look and, (NB!) the usually university-bound, middle class nature of the Hairies was a walking provocation to the neatly groomed, fashion-conscious, mostly working class (went to work instead of Sixth Form: fuck school and Uni, let’s make some short-term money - therefore doomed for life to the factory or site) Skinheads.

This schism was enacted in the music, as it often is: the long-winded, effete, sexually inert tropes of Prog, the self-indulgent, solo-wanking, adolescent-boy mirror-gazing of hard rock versus the clipped, disciplined, concise sexy beats of Ska and pop reggae (showcased particularly in the ‘Tighten Up’ series of compilations). It really was chalk and cheese.

There was, btw, a whole genre of dirty ska songs, epitomised by Prince Buster’s Big Five single (‘funky spunky man in Big Five, screaming steaming night in Big Five…there will be water all over the bed…water all over her head..’ (!)

One night after a Manfred Mann’s Earthband show at Swindon College (deep Hairy territory, obviously) when the crowd were reluctant to go home, the promoter stuck a Ska tune on the PA which cleared the room like tear gas. Hard to imagine now. Like I say, Tribal. So, when I started writing songs (Pop Songs! For Bands!) I felt I had struck a fruitful vein in observing the horrified yet strangely fascinated viewpoint of the oppressed Other (Hairy/Greeb/insert Ethnic Group) as he is subdued and brutalised by his natural predator, the Skinhead.

Form following subject matter, this would, of course, be couched in a mutated form of reggae which, though, as a fledgling Hairy (with already insufficient hair, aIas!) I was forbidden to like - I must say it did exert a fascination. It was so alien. Alien is interesting. Thus, in Vampyr Skinhead we have, again, a randomly predatory hardnut - this time he’s going door to door terrorising people (‘no compunction as he hammers down your door - or elects to clamber in the window - he is swift and he is sure..’). The image really did come to me in a dream: this ferocious little fucker doing his rounds of the estate, like a Clockwork Orange version of the Man from the Pru. Definitely a Viz magazine character there, I reckon... The sound of a Ska beat still had, for me, the menace it did when the Skins at school danced their clipped, butch, slightly-ridiculous-but-I-fucking-dare-you-to-laugh, scary little dance to it.

Non Cultural Studies note: the riff is played on a WASP synth - I guess the 1st affordable synthesiser. Fairly horrible but it had one good sound so hey... No actual keyboard - a flat plate which was murder to play and ‘explains’ the really obvious cock-up on the intro which we didn’t have time to repair. It wasn’t mine btw (the WASP not the cock up).

VAMPYR SKINHEAD Vampyr Skinhead knock at your door Don’t sell brushes or Brittanica no more He no check for pushing leaflets through the door or collecting money for the football he lives outside the law. He’s just out on the street with his boots on his feet and I would give a lot to know what he’s got Vampyr Skinhead.. Vampyr Skinhead Vampyr Skinhead strikes again Vampyr Skinhead feel no pain gonna do it again and again and again

Vampyr Skinhead come down your way and he’s not from anywhere silly in the USA. Not religion that he’s peddling door to door he’s not looking for the meter (he wouldn’t know what it’s for). He’s just out on the street with his boots on his feet and your little sister’s crying but he’s not. Vampyr Skinhead Vampyr Skinhead Vampyr Skinhead

Somebody’s gonna get uptight, gonna get hot and they’re gonna make mincemeat of him someday... Somebody like Peter Cushing gonna wreck the curtains while he’s sleeping then they’ll be nothing left but a pair of Marten’s and a pile of dust…

Vampyr Skinhead come down your street he’s a monster and he’s got sharp litle teeth. No compunction as he hammers down your door Or elects to clamber in the window - he is swift and he is sure. Out and I would give a lot to know what he’s got Vampyr Skinhead…. Vampyr Skinhead…. Vampyr Skinhead……

V.S.’s Nemesis...

Taking Over ICI was an attempt at a pure pop reggae tune - with a socialist/punky spin. Lovely playing by Rob (gtr) and Marion Fudger (ex wife of Dave Fudger, charming chap who used to write for Sounds and now worked for Virgin Publishing - he got me the gig with Iggy Pop). Rich Wernham (also of the Motors). Cracking organ solo dontcha think? I had chops in those days - before Quantise fucked me up.

TAKING OVER ICI Alone I just didn’t dare make my move to trash organised laissez-faire but since you nibbled my ear Cadbury-Schweppes and Lever Brothers quiver in fear. All the multiples are whining. All the big nobs are resigning. Since I found out you loved me, I’m taking over ICI Taking over ICI Alone I couldn’t handle myself let alone the redistribution of wealth. But, since I found out you care, I could trash the System single-handed I swear. Can’t handle all their wheeler-dealing - prefer to hear rich people squealing… Since I found out you loved me, I’m taking over ICI Taking over ICI… Taking over ICI..

Big Soft Safe Family Rather as ‘Paranoiac’ was: a one-off, never to be repeated thing. Deeply and nakedly autobiographical. Musically quite original, I venture. Shmershy chords the like of which I hadn’t used before and a confidently slow groove. Vignettes of my respectable working class, late 60′s, Mike Leigh previous life suffused with the cheap cynicism of a young sprat who didn’t realise how lucky he was. They’re all gone now.. and - spoiler - I actually never had an aunt from Torquay (but she rhymed).

BIG SOFT SAFE FAMILY The relatives are all on their fifth cup of tea. Their rapid eye movements are something to see - all lying to each other and smiling alternately. Your mum and your dad and your aunt from Torquay they are none of the same as they once used to be but they’re all of them, gloriously in the Big Soft Safe Family

We all of us have a particular smell I know their’s and they know mine habitually well. They worry about me and I worry about them I’m surprised you can’t tell. We use the same toilet and eat the same food and we savage each other when we’re not feeling so good but blood is thicker than water and ultimately we’re a Big Soft Safe Family

We’re slowly aquiring the things that we need they’re very pleased with our progress indeed. They were saying we looked very happy and of course we agreed. Respect due to father and love due to mum and the daughter is lovely and so is the son. Illusions die obstinately in the Big Soft Safe Family

#shriekbackmusic #Shriekback.com #xtc band #punk rock #roxy club #skinheads #two-tone #70s

12 notes · View notes

multipleservicelisting · 4 years

Text

A Call for Unity to a Nation Facing a Pandemic and Division

WASHINGTON — In the end, the inauguration triumphed over the insurrection.

President Biden’s plea for national unity in his Inaugural Address on Wednesday was rooted in a belief — born of decades working inside the fractious institutions of government — that America can return to an era where “enough of us have come together to carry all of us forward.”

It was a call for the restoration of the ordinary discord of democracy, with a reminder that “politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path.” The words were made all the more potent because they were delivered from the same steps at the entrance to the Capitol where a violent attack two weeks ago shocked the nation into realizing the lengths to which some Americans would go to overturn the results of a democratic election.

Mr. Biden’s inauguration was notable for its normalcy, and the sense of relief that permeated the capital as an era of constant turmoil and falsehood ended. Yet he takes office amid so many interlocking national traumas that it is still unclear whether he can persuade enough of the nation to walk together into a new era, to get past the partisan divisions that made mask-wearing a political act, to win acceptance from tens of millions of Americans who believed a lie that the presidency had been stolen in ways that were never made clear.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is hardly the first president to take office in a moment of national desperation and division. Lincoln, whose inauguration amid fear of violence hung over this moment, faced a country fracturing into civil war. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was in his third term when Mr. Biden was born, faced a nation mired in depression, with “Hoovervilles” in the shadow of the Capitol.

While Mr. Biden does not face a single crisis of equal magnitude, he made clear — without quite making the comparison — that none of his predecessors confronted such a fearsome array of simultaneous trials.

He listed them: a devastating pandemic that in one year has killed more Americans than the nation lost during World War II (he could have added Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan), an economic downturn that brought with it “joblessness and hopelessness,” a crisis of racial justice and another of climate, and, for tens of millions of Americans, a collapse in their faith in democracy itself.

And finally, he argued, American healing would require an end to partisan self-delusion, and to the era of alternative facts.

He never referred to President Donald J. Trump, but he was clearly talking about him — and the more than 140 Republicans in Congress who voted not to certify the election results, despite an absence of any evidence of widespread fraud — when he said that “we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.”

Mr. Biden’s presidency is predicated on a bet that it is not too late to “end this uncivil war.” Even some of his most ardent supporters and appointees, a generation or more younger than he is, wonder whether his calls for Americans to listen to one another, “not as adversaries but as neighbors,” are coming too late.

“Like Lincoln, Biden comes to power at a moment when the country is torn between conflicting visions of reality and identity,” said Jon Meacham, the presidential historian who has occasionally advised Mr. Biden and contributed to his Inaugural Address.

“Too many Americans have been shaped by the lie that the 2020 election was somehow stolen,” he said. “The new president’s challenge — and opportunity — is to insist that facts and truth must guide us. That you can disagree with your opponent without delegitimizing that opponent’s place within the Republic.”

Mr. Biden’s speech was about restoring that world, one that existed in the America he grew up in, from the arguments over civil rights and Vietnam to the culture wars that raged on through the most recent election. It is the argument of a 78-year-old who has endured tragedy after tragedy in public and who, in a reverse of the usual order, took on the manner of a statesman before he returned to the campaign trail as a politician.

But what millions of Americans hear as a heartfelt call to restore order, millions of others believe masks deep partisanship, or a naïveté about what has happened to America over the past four years, or the past 20.

In fact, beyond the call for unity, Mr. Biden’s speech was littered with phrases bound to reignite those arguments.

His references to the “sting of systemic racism,” to “white supremacy” and “domestic terrorism,” and his insistence that the climate crisis ranks among the nation’s top threats, were meant to signal to the progressive side of his party, which always viewed him as too conservative and cautious, that new priorities have arrived.

But they are also triggers to those who oppose him: Just on Tuesday, his last full day in office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a broadside on Twitter, where the president was silenced, against “woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they’re not who America is.”

Updated

Jan. 20, 2021, 3:30 p.m. ET

Mr. Biden planned his inauguration to declare the opposite, that they are the modern America.

And his anticipated actions in his first days in office — rejoining the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization, vowing to find a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants and to re-enter the Iran nuclear agreement — are meant to reinforce the point.

He paired that with a warning to American adversaries, who spent the past four years, but particularly 2020, filling power vacuums around the world as America counted its dead and took to the streets.

Mr. Biden cautioned them not to mistake the din of the past four years for weakness.

“America has been tested, and we’ve come out stronger for it,” he insisted, promising to “repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.”

But he never once mentioned the country that poses the longest-term challenge to American pre-eminence — China — or any of the array of lesser challengers seeking to disrupt, to build nuclear weapons, to undercut the United States by manipulating its computer networks or exploiting social media.

And in the parts of the speech that sounded more like fireside chat than soaring rhetoric, he acknowledged that America’s diminished status can only be restored by ending the damage at home, and replacing an “America First” swagger with a dose of post-Covid humility.

The scope of that damage could be seen from the West Front of the Capitol. Gone were the throngs of hundreds of thousands who usually witness, and cheer, a ritual of American democracy that Mr. Biden was determined must look just as it always looks to the millions tuning in.

As long as the camera shots were tight, it did: the new president and vice president, the large family Bible, the chief justice, the former presidents. But the absence of Mr. Trump, the central, disruptive figure at the center of the nation’s four-year drama, the first president in more than 150 years to refuse to attend his successor’s inauguration, could not be erased. Neither could the prospect of Mr. Trump’s second impeachment trial, an in absentia event that could start in days, perhaps reigniting the divisions that Mr. Biden came to heal.

When the camera shot widened, the “American carnage” Mr. Trump had vowed to end in his own inaugural speech four years ago was on full display, in ways that were unimaginable on Jan. 20, 2017.

The armed camp he had left behind was testimony to the divisions Mr. Trump left in his wake as he flew over the city one last time on Wednesday morning in Marine One, to the closest any American president has come to internal exile since Richard M. Nixon resigned in 1974. (Mr. Trump’s last words to his supporters at Joint Base Andrews, “Have a nice life,” seemed to underscore his own inability to find a way to process the damage done.)

It wasn’t the empty National Mall that struck attendees as much as the miles of iron fencing, topped with razor wire and surrounded by thousands of National Guard troops. There was no more vivid illustration of the state of the nation that Mr. Biden was inheriting.

Sometime in the next few days and weeks, that fencing will have to come down. Mr. Trump’s trial in the Senate, most likely a brief one, will have to end.

Then will come the test of Mr. Biden’s declaration that “without unity, there is no peace.”

And while an array of leaders from both parties flocked to the inauguration and clapped at the sentiment, it is far from clear that the country is truly ready to move on.

In a nation that cannot seem to share a common set of facts, agree on the utility of simple masks, on the safety of vaccines, or on whether a vote was rigged, fulfilling Mr. Biden’s dream of restoring orderly debate on policy may seem like the triumph of hope over lived experience.

“I am desperately grateful that the institutions of democracy have held, despite the damage President Trump and his enablers have inflicted these past four years,” said Kori Schake, a Republican who held positions in the Pentagon and the National Security Council and is now at the American Enterprise Institute.

“But for President Biden, the challenge won’t only be governing, but also restoring strength to the battered institutions of our democracy,” Ms. Schake said. “We Republicans have a responsibility to restore public trust in the integrity of our elections, because we’re the ones who called them into question.”

Multiple Service Listing for Business Owners | Tools to Grow Your Local Business

www.MultipleServiceListing.com

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/3qH79G2

#multiple #service #listing #news #local #business #ads #near #me

0 notes

axekerose54 · 4 years

Text

Read A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book PDF

(EPUB Kindle) [Download] A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD (PDF Kindle) [Download] A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book EBOOK EPUB DOWNLOAD

[EPUB & PDF] Ebook A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book | EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD

by Sarah J. Maas.

Ebook EPUB A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book | EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD Hello Guys, If you want to download free Ebook, you are in the right place to download Ebook. Ebook A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD in English is available for free here, Click on the download LINK below to download Ebook A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book 2020 PDF Download in English by Sarah J. Maas (Author).

Download Link : Download A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book

Read More : Read A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book

Description

This must-have companion invites readers to experience the vivid imagery of Sarah J. Maas's #1 New York Times bestselling A Court of Thorns and Roses series. 46 pieces of stunning original artwork bring to life favorite characters, creatures, and moments, including the lush beauty of the Spring Court and the glimmering vibrancy of the Night Court. Join Feyre as she falls in love, wages war, and explores the haunting and deadly world of the Fae.

Tag the PDF

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas Ebook PDF

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas PDF Download

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas EPUB

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas EBOOK

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas PDF Online

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas E-BOOK Online

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas PDF

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas ebook library

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas pdf document

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas pdf reader

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas ebook creator

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas ebook deals

A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book by Sarah J. Maas ebook kindle

Let's be real: 2020 has been a nightmare. Between the political unrest and novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it's difficult to look back on the year and find something, anything, that was a potential bright spot in an otherwise turbulent trip around the sun. Luckily, there were a few bright spots: namely, some of the excellent works of military history and analysis, fiction and non-fiction, novels and graphic novels that we've absorbed over the last year.

Here's a brief list of some of the best books we read here at Task & Purpose in the last year. Have a recommendation of your own? Send an email to [email protected] and we'll include it in a future story.

Missionaries by Phil Klay

I loved Phil Klay’s first book, Redeployment (which won the National Book Award), so Missionaries was high on my list of must-reads when it came out in October. It took Klay six years to research and write the book, which follows four characters in Colombia who come together in the shadow of our post-9/11 wars. As Klay’s prophetic novel shows, the machinery of technology, drones, and targeted killings that was built on the Middle East battlefield will continue to grow in far-flung lands that rarely garner headlines. [Buy]

- Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief

Battle Born: Lapis Lazuli by Max Uriarte

Written by 'Terminal Lance' creator Maximilian Uriarte, this full-length graphic novel follows a Marine infantry squad on a bloody odyssey through the mountain reaches of northern Afghanistan. The full-color comic is basically 'Conan the Barbarian' in MARPAT. [Buy]

- James Clark, senior reporter

The Liberator by Alex Kershaw

Now a gritty and grim animated World War II miniseries from Netflix, The Liberator follows the 157th Infantry Battalion of the 45th Division from the beaches of Sicily to the mountains of Italy and the Battle of Anzio, then on to France and later still to Bavaria for some of the bloodiest urban battles of the conflict before culminating in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. It's a harrowing tale, but one worth reading before enjoying the acclaimed Netflix series. [Buy]

- Jared Keller, deputy editor

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett Graff

If you haven’t gotten this must-read account of the September 11th attacks, you need to put The Only Plane In the Sky at the top of your Christmas list. Graff expertly explains the timeline of that day through the re-telling of those who lived it, including the loved ones of those who were lost, the persistently brave first responders who were on the ground in New York, and the service members working in the Pentagon. My only suggestion is to not read it in public — if you’re anything like me, you’ll be consistently left in tears. [Buy]

- Haley Britzky, Army reporter

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry

Why do we even fight wars? Wouldn’t a massive tennis tournament be a nicer way for nations to settle their differences? This is one of the many questions Harvard professor Elaine Scarry attempts to answer, along with why nuclear war is akin to torture, why the language surrounding war is sterilized in public discourse, and why both war and torture unmake human worlds by destroying access to language. It’s a big lift of a read, but even if you just read chapter two (like I did), you’ll come away thinking about war in new and refreshing ways. [Buy]

- David Roza, Air Force reporter

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor

Stalingrad takes readers all the way from the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union to the collapse of the 6th Army at Stalingrad in February 1943. It gives you the perspective of German and Soviet soldiers during the most apocalyptic battle of the 20th century. [Buy]

- Jeff Schogol, Pentagon correspondent

America's War for the Greater Middle East by Andrew J. Bacevich

I picked up America's War for the Greater Middle East earlier this year and couldn’t put it down. Published in 2016 by Andrew Bacevich, a historian and retired Army officer who served in Vietnam, the book unravels the long and winding history of how America got so entangled in the Middle East and shows that we’ve been fighting one long war since the 1980s — with errors in judgment from political leaders on both sides of the aisle to blame. “From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift?” the book jacket asks. As Bacevich details in this definitive history, the mission creep of our Vietnam experience has been played out again and again over the past 30 years, with disastrous results. [Buy]

- Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief

Burn In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution by P.W. Singer and August Cole

In Burn In, Singer and Cole take readers on a journey at an unknown date in the future, in which an FBI agent searches for a high-tech terrorist in Washington, D.C. Set after what the authors called the "real robotic revolution," Agent Lara Keegan is teamed up with a robot that is less Terminator and far more of a useful, and highly intelligent, law enforcement tool. Perhaps the most interesting part: Just about everything that happens in the story can be traced back to technologies that are being researched today. You can read Task & Purpose's interview with the authors here. [Buy]

- James Clark, senior reporter

SAS: Rogue Heroes by Ben MacIntyre

Like WWII? Like a band of eccentric daredevils wreaking havoc on fascists? Then you'll love SAS: Rogue Heroes, which re-tells some truly insane heists performed by one of the first modern special forces units. Best of all, Ben MacIntyre grounds his history in a compassionate, balanced tone that displays both the best and worst of the SAS men, who are, like anyone else, only human after all. [Buy]

- David Roza, Air Force reporter

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Alice Network is a gripping novel which follows two courageous women through different time periods — one living in the aftermath of World War II, determined to find out what has happened to someone she loves, and the other working in a secret network of spies behind enemy lines during World War I. This gripping historical fiction is based on the true story of a network that infiltrated German lines in France during The Great War and weaves a tale so packed full of drama, suspense, and tragedy that you won’t be able to put it down. [Buy]

Katherine Rondina, Anchor Books

“Because I published a new book this year, I've been answering questions about my inspirations. This means I've been thinking about and so thankful for The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender. I can't credit it with making me want to be a writer — that desire was already there — but it inspired me to write stories where the fantastical complicates the ordinary, and the impossible becomes possible. A girl in a nice dress with no one to appreciate it. An unremarkable boy with a remarkable knack for finding things. The stories in this book taught me that the everydayness of my world could become magical and strange, and in that strangeness I could find a new kind of truth.”

Diane Cook is the author of the novel The New Wilderness, which was long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize, and the story collection Man V. Nature, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. Read an excerpt from The New Wilderness.

Bill Johnston, University of California Press

“I’ve revisited a lot of old favorites in this grim year of fear and isolation, and have been most thankful of all for The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Witty, reflexive, intimate, queer, disarmingly occasional and monumentally serious all at once, they’ve been a constant balm and inspiration. ‘The only thing to do is simply continue,’ he wrote, in 'Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul'; ‘is that simple/yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do/can you do it/yes, you can because it is the only thing to do.’”

Helen Macdonald is a nature essayist with a semiregular column in the New York Times Magazine. Her latest novel, Vesper Flights, is a collection of her best-loved essays, and her debut book, H Is for Hawk, won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction and the Costa Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.

Andrea Scher, Scholastic Press

“This year, I’m so grateful for You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson. Reading — like everything else — has been a struggle for me in 2020. It’s been tough to let go of all of my anxieties about the state of the world and our country and get swept away by a story. But You Should See Me in a Crown pulled me in right away; for the blissful time that I was reading it, it made me think about a world outside of 2020 and it made me smile from ear to ear. Joy has been hard to come by this year, and I’m so thankful for this book for the joy it brought me.”

Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling author of five romance novels, including this year’s Party of Two. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, and Time.

Nelson Fitch, Random House

“Last year, stuck in a prolonged reading rut that left me wondering if I even liked books anymore, I stumbled across Tenth of December by George Saunders, a collection of stories Saunders wrote between 1995 and 2012 that are at turns funny, moving, startling, weird, profound, and often all of those things at the same time. As a writer, what I crave most from books is to find one so excellent it makes me feel like I'd be better off quitting — and so wonderful that it reminds me what it is to be purely a reader again, encountering new worlds and revelations every time I turn a page. Tenth of December is that, and I'm so grateful that it fell off a high shelf and into my life.”

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent series and the Carve the Mark duology. Her latest novel, Chosen Ones, is her first novel for adults. Read an excerpt from Chosen Ones.

Ian Byers-Gamber, Blazevox Books

“Waking up today to the prospect of some hours spent reading away part of another day of this disastrous, delirious pandemic year, I’m most grateful for the book in my hands, one itself full of gratitude for a life spent reading: Gloria Frym’s How Proust Ruined My Life. Frym’s essays — on Marcel Proust, yes, and Walt Whitman, and Lucia Berlin, but also peppermint-stick candy and Allen Ginsburg’s knees, among other Proustian memory-prompts — restore me to my sense of my eerie luck at a life spent rushing to the next book, the next page, the next word.”

Jonathan Lethem is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Motherless Brooklyn. His latest novel, The Arrest, is a postapocalyptic tale about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Riverhead

“I’m incredibly grateful for the magnificent The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer. This book — a mélange of history, memoir, and reportage — is the reconceptualization of Native life that’s been urgently needed since the last great indigenous history, Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It’s at once a counternarrative and a replacement for Brown’s book, and it rejects the standard tale of Native victimization, conquest, and defeat. Even though I teach Native American studies to college students, I found new insights and revelations in almost every chapter. Not only a great read, the book is a tremendous contribution to Native American — and American — intellectual and cultural history.”

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is author of the novel Winter Counts, which is BuzzFeed Book Club’s November pick. He is also the author of the children’s book Spotted Tail, which won the 2020 Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Read an excerpt from Winter Counts.

Valerie Mosley, Tordotcom

“In 2020, I've been lucky to finish a single book within 30 days, but I burned through this 507-page brick in the span of a weekend. Harrow the Ninth reminded me that even when absolutely everything is terrible, it's still possible to feel deep, gratifying, brain-buzzing admiration for brilliant art. Thank you, Harrow, for being one of the brightest spots in a dark year and for keeping the home fires burning.”

Casey McQuiston is the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, and her next book, One Last Stop, comes out in 2021.

"I'm grateful for V.S. Naipaul's troubling masterpiece, A Bend in the River — which not only made me see the world anew, but made me see what literature could do. It's a book that's lucid enough to reveal the brutality of the forces shaping our world and its politics; yet soulful enough to penetrate the most recondite secrets of human interiority. A book of great beauty without a moment of mercy. A marriage of opposites that continues to shape my own deeper sense of just how much a writer can actually accomplish."

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright, and his latest novel, Homeland Elegies, is about an American son and his immigrant father searching for belonging in a post-9/11 country. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Vanessa German, Feminist Press

“I'm most thankful for Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether. It's a YA book set in 1930s Harlem, and it was the first Black-girl-coming-of-age book I ever read, the first time I ever saw myself in a book. I appreciate how it expanded my world and my understanding that books can speak to you right where you are and take you on a journey, at the same time.”

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. She is also the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Philyaw’s writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, McSweeney’s, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Read a story from The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.

Philippa Gedge, W. W. Norton & Company

“As both a writer and a reader I am hugely grateful for Patricia Highsmith’s plotting and writing suspense fiction. As a writer I’m thankful for Highsmith’s generosity with her wisdom and experience: She talks us through how to tease out the narrative strands and develop character, how to know when things are going awry, even how to decide to give things up as a bad job. She’s unabashed about sharing her own ‘failures,’ and in my experience, there’s nothing more encouraging for a writer than learning that our literary gods are mortal! As a reader, it provides a fascinating insight into the genesis of one of my favorite novels of all time — The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as the rest of her brilliant oeuvre. And because it’s Highsmith, it’s so much more than just a how-to guide: It’s hugely engaging and, while accessible, also provides a glimpse into the mind of a genius. I’ve read it twice — while working on each of my thrillers, The Hunting Party and The Guest List — and I know I’ll be returning to the well-thumbed copy on my shelf again soon!”

Lucy Foley is the New York Times bestselling author of the thrillers The Guest List and The Hunting Party. She has also written two historical fiction novels and previously worked in the publishing industry as a fiction editor.

“The books I'm most thankful for this year are a three-book series titled Tales from the Gas Station by Jack Townsend. Walking a fine line between comedy and horror (which is much harder than people think), the books follow Jack, an employee at a gas station in a nameless town where all manner of horrifyingly fantastical things happen. And while the monsters are scary and more than a little ridiculous, it's Jack's bone-dry narration, along with his best friend/emotional support human, Jerry, that elevates the books into something that are as lovely as they are absurd.”

T.J. Klune is a Lambda Literary Award–winning author and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company. His novels include The House in the Cerulean Sea and The Extraordinaries.

Sylvernus Darku (Team Black Image Studio), Ayebia Clarke Publishing

"Nervous Conditions is a book that I have read several times over the years, including this year. The novel covers the themes of gender and race and has at its heart Tambu, a young girl in 1960s Rhodesia determined to get an education and to create a better life for herself. Dangarembga’s prose is evocative and witty, and the story is thought-provoking. I’ve been inspired anew by Tambu each time I’ve read this book."

Peace Adzo Medie is Senior Lecturer in Gender and International Politics at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2020). His Only Wife is her debut novel.

Jenna Maurice, HarperCollins

“The book I'm most thankful for? Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. My mother and father would read me poems from it before bed — I'm convinced it infused me not only with a sense of poetic cadence, but also a wry sense of humor.”

Victoria “V.E.” Schwab is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including Vicious, the Shades of Magic series, and This Savage Song. Her latest novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, is BuzzFeed Book Club’s December pick. Read an excerpt from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Meg Vázquez, Square Fish

“My childhood best friend gave me Troubling a Star by Madeleine L'Engle for Hanukkah when I was 11 years old, and it's still my favorite book of all time. I love the way it defies genre (it's a political thriller/YA romance that includes a lot of scientific research and also poetry??), and the way it values smartness, gutsiness, vulnerability, kindness, and a sense of adventure. The book follows 16-year-old Vicky Austin's life-altering trip to Antarctica; her trip changed my life, too. In a year when safe travel is almost impossible, I'm so grateful to be able to return to her story again and again.”

Kate Stayman-London's debut novel, One to Watch, is about a plus-size blogger who’s been asked to star on a Bachelorette-like reality show. Stayman-London served as lead digital writer for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and has written for notable figures, from former president Obama and Malala Yousafzai to Anna Wintour and Cher.

Katharine McGee is grateful for the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Chris Bailey Photography, Firebird

“I’m thankful for the Redwall books by Brian Jacques. I discovered the series in elementary school, and it sparked a love of big, epic stories that has never left me. (If you read my books, you know I can’t resist a broad cast of characters!) I used to read the books aloud to my younger sister, using funny voices for all the narrators. Now that I have a little boy of my own, I can’t wait to someday share Redwall with him.”

Katharine McGee is the New York Times bestselling author of American Royals and its sequel, Majesty. She is also the author of the Thousandth Floor trilogy.

Beth Gwinn, Time-Life Books

"I am thankful most for books that carry me out of the world and back again, and while I find it painful to choose among them, here's one early and one late: Zen Cho's Black Water Sister, which comes out in 2021 but I devoured just two days ago, and the long out-of-print Wizards and Witches volume of the Time-Life Enchanted World series, which is where I first read about the legend of the Scholomance."

Naomi Novik is the New York Times bestselling author of the Nebula Award–winning novel Uprooted, Spinning Silver, and the nine-volume Temeraire series. Her latest novel, A Deadly Education, is the first of the Scholomance trilogy.

Christina Lauren are grateful for the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Christina Lauren, Little, Brown and Company

"We are thankful for the Twilight series for about a million reasons, not the least of which it's what brought the two of us together. Writing fanfic in a space where we could be silly and messy together taught us that we don't have to be perfect, but there's no harm in trying to get better with every attempt. It also cemented for us that the best relationships are the ones in which you can be your real, authentic self, even when you're struggling to do things you never thought you'd be brave enough to attempt. Twilight brought millions of readers back into the fold and inspired hundreds of romance authors. We really do thank Stephenie Meyer every day for the gift of Twilight and the fandom it created."

0 notes

criminalmindscastandquotes · 7 years

Text

Criminal Minds Opening and Closing Quotes: Season 4

Season 4 Episode 1 Mayhem

Hotch: Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. – Ernest Hemingway.

Season 4 Episode 2 The Angel Maker

Hotch: “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever. The goal is to create something that will.” Chuck Palahniuk.

Hotch: Wendell Berry said, “The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.”

Season 4 Episode 3 Minimal Loss

Reid: “To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.” Benjamin Franklin.

Prentiss: “Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it.” Ayn Rand.

Season 4 Episode 4 Paradise

Hotch: Thomas Fuller wrote, “A fool’s paradise is a wise man’s hell.”

Hotch: Roman poet Phaedrus wrote, “Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many. The intelligence of a few, perceives what has been carefully hidden.”

Season 4 Episode 5 Catching Out

Prentiss: “Plenty sits still. Hunger is a wanderer.” Zulu proverb.

Prentiss: “Beyond the East the sunrise, beyond the West the sea/ And the East and West the wander-thirst that will not let me be.” Gerald Gould.

Season 4 Episode 6 The Instincts

Hotch: “Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind and finds the readiest response.” Amos Bronson Alcott.

Reid: “I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.” Bob Dylan.

Season 4 Episode 7 Memoriam

Reid: “What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.” Friedrich Nietzsche.

Reid: “There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance.” Gilbert Parker.

Season 4 Episode 8 Masterpiece

Rossi: “Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles…” Mark Twain.

Rossi: “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Season 4 Episode 9 52 Pickup

Prentiss: Author Harlan Ellison wrote, “The minute people fall in love, they become liars.”

Rossi: P. J. O’Rourke wrote, “Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.”

Season 4 Episode 10 Brothers in Arms

Morgan: “We are all brothers under the skin, and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.” Ayn Rand.

Morgan: “… For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.” William Shakespeare.

Season 4 Episode 11 Normal

Hotchner: “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.” H. L. Mencken.

Rossi: “There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.” President Dwight Eisenhower.

Season 4 Episode 12 Soul Mates

Reid: “No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.” Sigmund Freud.

Morgan: British historian C. Northcote Parkinson said, “Delay is the deadliest form of denial.”

Season 4 Episode 13 Bloodline

Prentiss: Winston Churchill said, “There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained.”

Hotchner: Mario Puzo wrote, “The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.”

Season 4 Episode 14 Cold Comfort

JJ: “And so, all the night-tide, I lay down by the side/ Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride. In the sepulchre there by the sea. In her tomb by the sounding sea.” Edgar Allan Poe.

Rossi: “For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.” Stuart Chase.

Season 4 Episode 15 Zoe’s Reprise

Rossi: “I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” Albert Einstein.

Rossi: Austrian novelist Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach wrote, “In youth we learn; in age we understand.”

Season 4 Episode 16 Pleasure is my Business

Hotchner: “The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture.” Camille Paglia.

Season 4 Episode 17 Demonology

Prentiss: “He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.” Leonardo da Vinci.

Rossi: “There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.” James Joyce.

Season 4 Episode 18 Omnivore

Hotchner: “Fate is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity.” Roman author Publilius Syrus.

Hotchner: “Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call destiny.” John Hobbes.

Season 4 Episode 19 House On Fire

Hotchner: “We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out.” Tennessee Williams.

Hotchner: “I have loved to the point of madness; That which is called madness, That which to me, is the only sensible way to love.” Françoise Sagan.

Season 4 Episode 20 Conflicted

Reid: “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” Terry Pratchett.

Reid: “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” Stephen King.

Season 4 Episode 21 A Shade of Gray

Rossi: Dr. Burton Grebin once said, “To lose a child is to lose a piece of yourself.”

Rossi: “Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.” Andre Maurois.

Season 4 Episode 22 The Big Wheel

Hotchner: “In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.” Francis Bacon.

Morgan: “No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible.” George Chakiris.

Season 4 Episode 23 Roadkill

Hotchner: “I’m not sure about automobiles. With all their speed forward, they may be a step backward in civilization.” Booth Tarkington.

JJ: “The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still, small voice of conscience.” Mahatma Gandhi.

Season 4 Episode 24 Amplification

Reid: “It will become fine dust over all the land of Egypt and it will become boils breaking out with sores on man and beast through all the land of Egypt.” Exodus 9:9.

Reid: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.” Helen Keller.

Season 4 Episode 25 – 26 To Hell…And Back

Hotchner: “If there were no hell, we would be like the animals. No hell, no dignity.” Flannery O’Connor.

Hotchner: Sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what’s happened that day. Sometimes you do everything right, everything exactly right, and still you feel like you failed. Did it need to end that way? Could something have been done to prevent the tragedy in the first place? Eighty-nine murders at the pig farm, the deaths of Mason and Lucas Turner make 91 lives snuffed out. Kelly Shane will go home and try to recover, to reconnect with her family but she’ll never be a child again. William Hightower, who gave his leg for his country, gave the rest of himself to avenge his sister’s murder. That makes 93 lives forever altered, not counting family and friends in a small town in Sarnia, Ontario, who thought monsters didn’t exist until they learned that they spent their lives with one. And what about my team? How many more times will they be able to look into the abyss? How many more times before they won’t ever recover the pieces of themselves that this job takes? Like I said, sometimes there are no words or clever quotes to neatly sum up what’s happened that day. The Reaper: You should have made a deal. Hotchner: Sometimes, the day just… (Fade to black. A gunshot is heard) Hotchner: … ends.

#criminal minds #aaron hotchner #david rossi #jason gideon #dr. spencer reid #emily prentiss #elle greenaway #Jennifer Jareau #Penelope Garcia #derek morgan #quotes #famous #popular #enlightening

20 notes · View notes

researchprojectblog · 5 years

Text

10th November 2019, sources for research

1. Hutton, P. (1991). The Role of Memory in the Historiography of the French Revolution. History and Theory, 30(1), pp.56-69. [accessed 31.10.2019]

Hutton is a history professor as well as historian writer. This is a good source for me to use as it discusses remembering the past as well as understanding its historical context. This is relevant to my research as I want to investigate the role of historic memory in art in particular the French Revolution. Although this journal doesn’t mention art of the time or indeed at all it is helpful in that I have a better understanding on the role of tradition to gain better insight of history. This journal will aid my own paper because it helps explain some of France’s politics during and after the Revolution again adding understanding to their political climate. I won’t be able to use a lot of this journal for facts and figures it’ll be more of a context aid. Due to the fact that I will not be able to utilise this source to its full potential, I will need to look for more art centred journals. Keeping with the timeline of the french Revolution. Yet the thought of memory, history, and tradition interlinking and being responsible for each other is very fascinating.

2. Dowd, D. (1951). Art as National Propaganda in the French Revolution. Public Opinion Quarterly, 15(3), pp.532-546. [accessed 31.10.2019]

Dowd is an American historian. This source is abundant with information about the political use of art as propaganda during the French Revolution. From the various art forms that were used to the reasoning of being more accessible to the masses thus creating more a sway in the public’s perception of the politics and Revolution. There is also a fair bit of information surrounding Jacques Louis David and the deaths of prominent figure heads of the revolution as well as the spin tings that followed the major revolutionary events e.g. ‘Tennis Court Oath’ and ‘The Death Of Marat’. Dowd also talks about other artists than just David who were just as responsible to the immortalisation of events. Dowd briefly mentions the use of realism and idealism art to further his point on propaganda use which I can possibly also use to lift my own paper. This source has also opened up many more avenues of research for me so I can create a coherent paper.

3. García, M. (n.d.). The Significance of Intermediality in the Immortalization of the French Republican Nation (1789-1799). pp.61-74 [accessed 01.11.1019]

Garcia is a historian from Spain. This source explains the persuasive role of all art from during the Revolution this tipping the populous one way or another. The paper then goes on in great detail about Jacques-Louis David and his artworks: ‘Brutus’ and ‘The Oath of Horatti’ and their relevance to igniting the partnership of arts and politics within other artists of the time. The paper then discusses how art helped build a nation by the use of the image Hercules now relevant this will be to my paper is to be determined. Further on there’s mention of David paint soldiers after their deaths thus making them martyrs to the republic. As well as explanation of the French Neo-Classical style of “blending..beauty and violence” referring to masculine bodies being depicted in their youth and in statuesque poses.

4. Boime, A. (1988). Jacques-Louis David, Scatological discourse in the French Revolution and the art of caricature. Arts Magazine, pp.72-81 [accessed 02.11.2019]

Boime was a journalist for ‘Arts Magazine’ as well as an art historian and professor of art history at the university of California in Los Angeles. This article shows how some of the French viewed the English by use of religious connotations if the devils anus expelling excrement. The article goes in in detail about the significance and symbolism of the anus and it’s importance to illustrate the link that the figure is to be likened to the devil. As well as explaining the role of feces being a used as a weapon in many illustrations. This paper has helped me understand caricatures if the French Revolution in particular Jacques-Louis David’s. As well as why they used the anus and fecal matter as a focal point to the illustrations.

5. Nora, P. (1989). Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations, (26), pp.7-24. [accessed 05.11.2019]

Nora was a French historian specialising in the French identity and memory. This journal explains the differences between memory and history; memory we are born with and is forever changing with each moment in life where history is a remake of events, never truly whole of what was. Memory appears to be. Ire fluid attaching itself to many things where history is more firings only being a part of things which are appropriate. This paper like Hutton’s journal “The Role of Memory in the Historiography of The French Revolution History and Theory” discusses tradition and how memory accounts for those traditions with only true connections of events not possibly being falsified from history. Although there is limited connection to the French Revolution this journal does hold a wealth of information of the French peoples history and memory with one or two links to the French Revolution.

6. BORDES, P. (1980). Jacques-Louis David's 'Serment du Jeu de Paume': Propaganda without a Cause?. Oxford Art Journal, 3(2), pp.19-25. [accessed 08.11.2019]

Bordes is a writer with books about David and his role during the French Revolution. This journal gives insight to the Paris Jacobin Club and how they enlisted David to paint (document) the tennis court oath. It also enables me to understand David’s role in regard to revolutionary propaganda. The journal goes on to explain David’s process of creating ‘Le Serment Du Jeu de Paume’ (‘The Tennis Court Oath’) as well as the difficulties he encountered during this time such as; another political party emerging and challenging the Jacobins as well as the kings attempted escape from France. These complications led David to tell the public that the figures in the painting didn’t respires t and members directly. However, it soon came to light that indeed some of the painted figures were the Jacobin Members who attended that meeting. This journal is useful for my research as it elaborates on David’s political involvement during the Revolution as well as how he was able to use his friends esteemed influence to climb his way up to more preferable commissions for example painting the king and his son.

7. Egbert, D. (1967). The Idea of "Avant-garde" in Art and Politics. The American Historical Review, 73(2), pp.339-336. [Accessed 08.11.2019]

Egbert was an art historian from America in his journal he explores the notion of religion, politics, and art. In the journal he discusses Jacques-Louis David and how he wished ‘for socially useful art’. Thus meaning that art has more use than just being aesthetically appealing. Egbert then goes on about how David’s work was understood by all no matter their social standing by use of realism. There is also mention of David’s Revolutionary role of leading the Jacobins group during the Revolution. Egbert discusses societal Marxian theory and David’s wish that art would have a pinnacle role dictated by a higher group, Egbert then explains this to be social propaganda. This source is beneficial to me as it has explained Marxism as well as social propaganda in such a way that I easily understand it. There is also relevant connection to the French Revolution through mention of David.

8. Idzerda, S. (1954). Iconoclasm during the French Revolution. The American Historical Review, 60(1), pp.13-26. [accessed 08.11.2019]

Idzerda was an American French historian. In this journal, he discusses how the visual arts were used as social control during the Revolution being used to sway the public one way or another for religious or political gain. He also mentions how revolutionaries deemed the arts to be for all classes be they literate or not. There is also mention of the assassination of Jean Paul Marat and the linking of religious symbolism and artefacts to appease his ghost. Idzerda also talks about David’s role if pushing iconoclasm, the social belief of the importance of the destruction of icons and images for religious or political gain. This new revelation in David’s character helps me understand who this man was than just a Jacobin and Revolutionary painter. This is very impactful for my research.

9. Jacques-Louis David: Artistic Interpretation in Tumultuous Times. (2008). 11, pp.1-7. [accessed 10.11.2019]

The author of this journal is unknown however the information it holds is useful to me. It discusses David’s own rendition of neoclassism and how bold he was to use it in his paintings especially ‘Oath of Horatii’ in regard to the striking colours and size of the painting itself. This aids in my understanding of David’s use of neoclassism. The journal also gives further insight to David’s political origins being when he was present and sketched the Tennis Court Oath before he was a regular up and coming artist. There is also mention of David and Marat’s friendship along with Marat’s assassination. The author discusses David’s involvement of Marat’s funeral and immortalisation through the painting ‘death of Marat’ with its idealism and religious symbolism. Idealism is mentioned further in regard to David’s paintings of Napoleon. This is a good source for me to use as it elaborates on David’s artistic style during and after the French Revolution.

10. Censer, J. and Hunt, L. (2005). Imaging the French Revolution: Depictions of the French Revolutionary Crowd. The American Historical Review, 110(1), pp.38-45 [accessed 10.11.2019]

Censer and Hunt are historians Censer specialising in art history and Hunt in European history. This source aids my research in a small way. It doesn’t hold masses of information but it does hold the key of understanding. By this I mean that it discusses the importance and accurate reliance of visual documentation of history as well as text. It also discusses an artists role of stopping time and preserving the memory. However, this does open the questions of: what is memory? What is history? Which this source does answer in a way but my other sources go in more detail. This source also hold mention of realism and idealism what is true what is false which will aid in my research. Overall, this is a useful source for me to gain understanding on history and memory in art during the French Revolution.

0 notes

swipestream · 5 years

Text

Sensor Sweep: Windy City Pulp Show, King Arthur, Star Wars Target Audience, Model T in Combat

Conventions (DMR Books): The 19th annual Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention took place this past weekend in Lombard, IL. It was a three-day affair, but unfortunately I was only able to attend for part of the day on Saturday. Five hours may seem like a good amount of time, but it wasn’t nearly enough to take in all the event had to offer.

Doug Ellis and Deb Fulton were gracious enough to share some of their table space with me so I could peddle DMR releases.

Anthologies (Tip the Wink): This nineteen story anthology is edited by one of Baen’s best, Hank Davis. Though the book is pretty new, the stories range from as early as the Thirties all the way to now. So I think it qualifies as a Friday Forgotten Book for it’s contents. For the most part, this is the kind of science fiction I grew up on and still love.

Fiction (Old Style Tales): Doyle’s final great horror story is truly a worthy swan song – a tale who’s science fiction maintains a level of effective awe in spite of having been categorically disproven by aviators a mere decade after being written. And indeed the tale is science fiction, fitting snuggly on a shelf between the speculative horror of H. G. Wells which preceded it and the cosmic terror of H. P. Lovecraft which succeeded it.e cosmic terror of H. P. Lovecraft which succeeded it.

Myth (Men of the West): Of all these Latin chroniclers by far the most important was Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph, who finished his “History of the Britons” about 1147. Geoffrey, as has been said, is not a real historian, but something much more interesting. He introduced to the world the story of King Arthur, which at once became the source and centre of hundreds of French romances, in verse or prose, and of poetry down to Tennyson and William Morris. To Geoffrey, or to later English chroniclers who had read Geoffrey, Shakespeare owed the stories of his plays, “Cymbeline” and “King Lear”.

Authors (DMR Books): James Branch Cabell, who was born on April 14, 1879–just over one hundred forty years ago–has slipped into genteel literary obscurity. An author once praised and befriended by the likes of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis, JBC had his entire fantasy epic, known as “The Biography of the Life of Manuel,” printed in a uniform hardcover eighteen-volume set at the height of his popularity in the 1920s and early ’30s. He was, by far, the preeminent American literary fantasist of that era. And yet, he is barely known outside hardcore literary fantasy circles now.

Cinema (Rough Edges): I didn’t mean to write about two Raoul Walsh movies in a row, but that’s the way it’s worked out after last week’s post on DESPERATE JOURNEY. COLORADO TERRITORY is a Western remake from 1949 of the Humphrey Bogart classic HIGH SIERRA, also directed by Walsh eight years earlier in 1941. Both are based on the novel HIGH SIERRA by W.R. Burnett. In COLORADO TERRITORY, Joel McCrea plays outlaw Wes McQueen, in prison for robbing banks and trains, who is broken out so he can take part in a payroll heist from a train in Colorado.

Popular Culture (Jon Mollison): Long time genre fans expect to see the usual Boomer perspectives. Naturally, his version of the story of science fiction begins and ends with the era of the Boomers. To be fair, he is a film guy making a film about film people, so it’s no surprise that his documentary would ignore the foundational stories of the genre. It does start with HG Wells, but then skips straight past four decades of science fiction to land on rubber monster B-movies. The usual Big Pub diversity hires get trotted out to offer Narrative Approved talking points about how the genre has matured under the careful guidance of perverts like Arthur C. Clarke without a mention of giants like Howard and Burroughs and Lovecraft and Merritt and the rest of the True Golden Age writers.

Star Wars (Kairos): Two cultural observations that have repeatedly been made on this blog are that Star Wars has been weaponized against its original fans and that decadent Westerners are perverting normal pious sentiment by investing it in corporate pop culture products. Now a viral video has surfaced that documents the unholy confluence of both phenomena. Watch only if you haven’t eaten recently.

Cinema (Mystery File): I’ve spoken often and highly of Fredric Brown;s classic mystery novel of strip-clubs and theology, The Screaming Mimi (Dutton, 1949) and recently betook myself to watching both film versions of it, side-by-side and back-to-back, through the miracle of VCRm watching a chunk of one, then the other, than back again…

Pulps (John C. Wright): So what, exactly, makes the weird tales and fantastic stories of that day and age so “problematic”?

The use of lazy racial stereotypes, did you say? This generation has just as many or worse ones, merely with the polarities reversed. See the last decade of Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who and Marvel comics franchises, for examples.

The portrayal of women as weak damsels in distress? I will happily compare any number of Martian princesses or pirate queens from the pulp era to the teen bimbos routinely chopped up in the torture porn flicks of this generation, and let the matter of malign portrayals of women speak for itself.

Fiction (Nerds on Earth): Howard Andrew Jones (who we’ve interviewed not once, but twice!) strikes that balance masterfully in For the Killing of Kings, the first book of an expected series. The book drops the reader right at the moment when a scandal in the Allied Realms begins. This controversy involves the legendary weapon of the most famous commander of the vaunted Altenerai Corps, N’lahr. Jones doesn’t even let two pages pass before the reader is invited into the discovery that something is wrong with this magic-infused sword, and it is that problem that carries the book’s action from start to finish.

History (Black Gate): Enter the Western Frontier Force, a hastily assembled group of men from all parts of the empire that included two of the war’s many innovations. The first was the Light Car Patrol, made up of Model T Fords that had been stripped of all excess weight (even the hood and doors) so they could run over soft sand. Many came equipped with a machine gun. Heavier and slower were the armored cars, built on the large Rolls Royce chassis and sporting a turret and machine gun.

Westerns (Tainted Archive): Geographically and historically the concept of “The West” is very loosely defined, when associated with the literary and film genre of the western. With the possible exception of the Eastern Seaboard almost every part of the USA had been called “The West” at some stage in the country’s history.

Authors (John C. Wright): Gene Wolfe passed at his Peoria home from cardiovascular disease on April 14, 2019 at the age of 87.

This man is one of two authors who I was able to read with undiminished pleasure as a child, youth, man and master.

I met him only briefly at science fiction conventions, and was truly impressed by his courtesy and kindness. We shared a love of GK Chesterton. I never told him how I cherished his work, and how important his writings were to me.

Authors (Rich Horton): Gene Wolfe died yesterday, April 14, 2019 (Palm Sunday!) His loss strikes me hard, as hard as the death last year of Ursula K. Le Guin. Some while I ago I wrote that Gene Wolfe was the best writer the SF field has ever produced. Keeping in mind that comparisons of the very best writers are pointless — each is brilliant in their own way — I’d say that now I’d add Le Guin and John Crowley and make a trinity of great SF writers, but the point stands — Wolfe’s work was tremendous, deep, moving, intellectually and emotionally involving, ambiguous in the best of ways, such that rereading him is ever rewarding, always resolving previous questions while opening up new ones.

Cartoons (Wasteland and Sky): One small loss of the modern age I’ve always been interested in is the death of the Saturday morning cartoon.

For over half a century they have lingered in the memories of just about everyone alive in the western world as part of some long ago age that will never return. But nobody talks about them beyond nostalgic musings. The problem with that is they require a deeper look than that. I don’t think it’s clear exactly why they do not exist anymore, and it is important why they do not.

Fiction (Tip the Wink): It’s the stories, not the book, that are forgotten here. From the publisher’s website:

“Known best for his work on Popular Publications’ The Spider, pulp scribe Norvell Page proved he was no slouch when it came to penning gangster and G-man epics! This book collects all eleven stories Page wrote for “Ace G-Man Stories” between 1936 and 1939, which are reprinted here for the first time!”

RPG (Modiphius): Horrors of the Hyborian Age is the definitive guide to the monstrous creatures inhabiting the dark tombs, ruined cities, forgotten grottos, dense jungles, and sinister forests of Conan’s world. This collection of beasts, monsters, undead, weird races, and mutants are ready to pit their savagery against the swords and bravery of the heroes of the Hyborian Age.

Drawn from the pages of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, this roster also includes creatures and alien horrors from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, to which Howard inextricably bound his Hyborian Age. Other entries are original, chosen carefully to reflect the tone and dangers of Conan’s world.

Sensor Sweep: Windy City Pulp Show, King Arthur, Star Wars Target Audience, Model T in Combat published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

0 notes