The Quotable Pessimist-Realist

The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.
- J.G. Ballard

Things could be different, but they're not.
- Kevin Barnes

Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.
- Otto von Bismarck

We have smothered ourselves, buried ourselves, in the vast heap of information which all of us have and none of us has.
- Gamaliel Bradford

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department.
- Wernher von Braun

Life is one long process of getting tired.
- Samuel Butler

It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyze before we can live happily in this world.
- Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort

Fate towers so high above us, the squall carries us off like fleas in the water.
- Louis-Ferdinand Céline

I have never voted in my life... I have always known and understood that the idiots are in a majority so it's certain they will win.
- Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting - or he'll come along and nibble your brain.
- Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The Bourgeois shits and he is hungry, thats all... the worker's ideal is to have twice as many bourgeois pleasures just for himself.
- Louis-Ferdinand Céline

To place confidence in man means already letting oneself be killed a little.
- Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
- G.K. Chesterton

The problem with killing yourself is that one is always too late.
- E.M. Cioran

Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.
- E.M. Cioran

Only light souls can be saved: those whose weight will not break the wings of angels.
- E.M. Cioran

Man is fulfilled only when he ceases to be man.
- E.M. Cioran

Once the animals no longer need to fear each other, they fall into a daze and take on that dumbfounded look they have in zoos.Individuals and nations would afford the same spectacle if some day they managed to live in harmony, no longer trembling openly or in secret.
- E.M. Cioran

The only profitable conversations are with enthusiasts who have ceased being so-- with the ex-naïve. Calmed down at last, they have taken, willy-nilly, the decisive step toward knowledge-- that impersonal version of disappointment.
- E.M. Cioran

The curtain of the universe is moth-eaten, and through it's holes we see nothing now but mask & ghost.
- E.M. Cioran

In most cases we attach ourselves to God in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better, and we also attach ourselves to God in horror of men.
- E.M. Cioran

Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.
- E.M. Cioran

Melancholy redeems this universe, and yet it is melancholy that separates us from it.
- E.M. Cioran

The limit of every pain is an even greater pain.
- E.M. Cioran

Give me crack and anal sex, take the only tree that's left and stuff it up the hole in your culture.
- Leonard Cohen

We live as we dream, alone.
- Joseph Conrad

Desinent homines tum demum stultescare quando esse desinent. [Men will cease to be fools only when they cease to be men]
- Democritus

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein

Life is short and love's always over in the morning.
- Andrew Eldritch

The place where optimisim most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
- Havelock Ellis

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret.
- Benjamin Disraeli

The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.
- Ronald Firbank

To be stupid, selfish and have good health are the three requirements of happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
- Gustave Flaubert

The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.
- Charles de Gaulle

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
- Andre Gide

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it raging and roaring like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free and ending just where it began.
- William Hazlitt

The average man's judgment is so poor, he runs a risk every time he uses it.
- E.W. Howe

Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man.
- William Ralph Inge

Of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made.
- Immanuel Kant

The best proof adduced of the wretchedness of life is that derived from contemplating its glory.
- Kierkegaard

Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.
- Stephen King, The Stand

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people meaner.
- Karl Kraus

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death.
- Fran Lebowitz

Do not expect too much of the end of the world.
- Stanislaw J. Lec

Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.
- Giacomo Leopardi

They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool.
- John Lennon

You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Many are saved from sin by being so inept at it.
- Mignon McLaughlin

Most of our diversions do not so much delay death as accustom us to it.
- Mignon McLaughlin

Many of us go through life feeling as an actor might feel who does not like his part, and does not believe in the play.
- Mignon McLaughlin

There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today.
- Mignon McLaughlin

We would all like a reputation for generosity and we'd all like to buy it cheap.
- Mignon Mclaughlin

When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one.
- Mignon McLaughlin

What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
- Mignon McLaughlin

There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later.
- Mignon McLaughlin

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.
- Mignon McLaughlin

People are like birds: on the wing, all beautiful; up close, all beady little eyes.
- Mignon McLaughlin

We semaphore from ship to ship, but they're sinking, too.
- Mignon McLaughlin

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
- H. L. Mencken

Misogynist - A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
- H. L. Mencken

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.
- H. L. Mencken

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
- H. L. Mencken

It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
- H. L. Mencken

The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
- H.L. Mencken

The truth that survives is the lie that it is pleasantest to believe.
- H.L. Mencken

Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers.
- H.L. Mencken

The moon to whom the poets croon has given up and died; astronomy will have to be revised.
- Stephen Merritt

You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.
- Octave Mirbeau

We have art in order not to die of the truth.
- Nietzsche

I would ask something more of this world, if it had something more.
- Antonio Porchia

He who tells the truth says almost nothing.
- Antonio Porchia

You will find the distance that separates you from them, by joining them.
- Antonio Porchia

Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides.
- Antonio Porchia

[Euphemisms] cover up the facts of life--of sex and reproduction and excretion--which inevitably remind even the most refined people that they are made of clay, or worse.
- Hugh Rawson

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.
- Friedrich Schiller

Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
- George Bernard Shaw

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, get an ugly girl to marry you.
- Jimmy Soul

The man don't give a fuck.
- Super Furry Animals

It is childish to ask were the war is, a border itself is a war.
- Sun Tzu

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.
- William Makepeace Thackeray

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
- Henry David Thoreau

Slander a man as much as we like, and he will still deserve twenty times worse in reality.
- Ivan Turgenev

Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, and those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied by drink.
- Mark Twain

Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion.
- Miguel de Unamuno

I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.
- Linus Van Pelt

There ain't no devil, just God when he is drunk.
- Tom Waits

Give a man secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.
- Arthur Young, Travels in France

Inspirational Christian Verse Of The Day

Mommy she loved Jesus, but not like others did
For she had a special bottle in which our savior lived
Mommy she loved Jesus, but not like others did
For she could unleash His vengeance by unfastening the lid
- I Dream Of Jesus, Dead Milkmen

Alternative National Anthems Of The World

African Union
Alternative National Anthem: "Africa" by Toto
Key Lyric: "I know that I must do what's right, as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serangetti"

Canada
Alternative National Anthem: "Proud To Be A Canadian" by Dayglo Abortions
Key Lyric: "I'm proud to be a Canadian / Pass me another welfare check / I'm proud to be a Canadian / Hold my seat while I go out and cash it / I'm proud to be a Canadian / Hold my seat while I fuck her up the asshole"

Greenland
Alternative National Anthem: "Greenlander" by Pavement
Key Lyric: "On an icy island north in the woods beside the church / We can bury crimson lockets filled with dirt"

Haiti
Alternative National Anthem: "Voodoo People" by Prodigy
Key Lyric: "The voodoo, who-do-what-you-don't-dare-to people"

Israel
Alternative National Anthem: "Israel" by Siouxsie & The Banshees
Key Lyric: "In Israel / They sing Happy Noel"

Mozambique:
Alternative National Anthem: "Mozambique" by Bob Dylan
Key Lyric: "There's lots of pretty girls in Mozambique and plenty of time for good romance"

Saudi Arabia
Alternative National Anthem: "Arabian Nights" by Siouxsie & The Banshees
Key Lyric: "Veiled behind screens, kept as your baby machine / Whilst you conquer more orifices of boys, goats and things"

Sweden
Alternative National Anthem: "Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin
Key Lyric: "We come from the land of the ice and snow / From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow"

Uganda
Alternative National Anthem: "Do the Uganda" by Controllers
Key Lyric: "You can't leave Uganda, yeah the joke's on you!"

United States Of America
Alternative National Anthem: "Amerika" by Rammstein
Key Lyric: "Coca-cola, sometimes war."

Adolf Hitler On: Canada

In the only recorded mention by Hitler of Canada I've found, the dictator seems to liken us to a nation of ornery lumberjacks. Would we Canadians still beat up Churchill if he sought refuge on our shores? A question of national identity to ponder.

"Churchill is the very type of a corrupt journalist. There is not a worse prostitute in politics. He himself has written that it’s unimaginable what can be done in war with the help of lies. He’s an utterly amoral repulsive creature. I’m convinced that he has his place of refuge ready beyond the Atlantic. He obviously won’t seek sanctuary in Canada. In Canada he’d be beaten up. He’ll go to his friends the Yankees. As soon as this damnable winter is over, we’ll remedy all that."
- Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), Feb. 18, 1942, to his guest at dinner, General Rommel. Published in Hitler’s Table Talk, pt. 3 (1953).

The Tearing Of Breathing Holes

Fear of being trapped, needing breathing holes, losing ownership over free will. I once dreamt I was a rat fleeing an unknown force in a pipe that kept getting tighter and tighter. I willed myself awake when I couldn't move ahead. When you can will yourself out of dreams you can will yourself out of conscious but mentally clouded situations. Force a paradigm shift by relaxing your grip; un-furrow your brow till the illusion crumbles, or change it to a more reassuring form. The exit switch is easy to spot from an elevated perspective. Satellites rain down but are not reigned upon. Dr. Bloodmoney continues transmission.

Walls crumble before whirlwind sighs: so develop an iron lung or the mind becomes a ball in an endless game of pong. Burst to freedom through suspension of disbelief, or inhabit a more interesting and livable belief. The itch will never own the finger despite bouts of temporary slavery. Simple pressures can be redeemed through metaphoric osmosis: lies so persistent they force themselves true. Questions that change the answers, like: Can sand flee the desert through a whirlwind? Or do sandstorms only spread the desert? Are they refugee Aztec disease-harbringers, or do they uncover gardens below? Bit players are stars of unseen epics.

Time eases memory or erases it. Best to keep building no matter the foundation. Self-construction versus self-destruction can at least create an equilibrium. The truth expands through the knots in your stomach. The more it entwines the freer you are. When I was at my sickest I had a fever dream that the bookcases were caving in, my possessions were no longer my own and a needle-tipped missile (originally a meteor) was pointed at my heart. Sickness changes the premise so that your actions are correct, but entirely in the wrong context. To awake from a fever dream requires recognition of the fever and the dream; even or especially when healthy and awake.

Music liquify my insides. Return this sand to the desert. I feel a mirage coming on. Learn to hum to the insect buzz. Learn to walk in self-contained wombs. Construct your own 'pataphysical mecha. The deeper the feeling the more meaning can be squeezed from the twitch of its throat. A flood or a sandstorm; illusion of choice? Illusion is choice. A song should last forever - no more breathing holes, all air. A prolonged sigh of relief can become a whirlwind. The premise drops and the stage returns to floor. Sometimes bad memories are just half-remembered fever dreams. Instead of wishing to forget, learn to remember differently. The tearing of breathing holes or the terror of breathing holes.

Barbaria: Outpost Of Civilization

Don't let the name fool you, the people of Barbaria enjoy philosophical symposiums and high tea in addition to speed-rape and competitive pillaging.

Cossack Wisdom

Friend of the blog Ioan has brought to my attention a violation of #5 on some ponce's list of Thirteen Blog Clichés. Looking over my once-bloated blogroll I agree. Many of the links I visited once and never again, or added merely because they seemed interesting without actually being interesting. I don't often visit too many other blogs regularly anyway. I don't even like the word blog. Despite using the title "Co-"Belligerents" for my blogroll (taken from Finland's official status in WWII), few of the blogs listed there could really be described as such. I've never partaken of the mutual-linkfest aspect of blogging, or the "community" aspect, preferring to bloom and die on my own virtual soil. Remember:

"If Napoleon had had Cossacks in his army
he'd have been Emperor of China long ago."
- Cossack officer to Caulaincourt in 1812

The Purpose Of Religion & The Perfect Human

"Religion is an imitation of philosophy inasmuch as while both give an account of the ultimate principles of being, religion supplies an imaginative account of things whereof philosophy possesses direct and demonstrative knowledge. Nevertheless, a purely theoretical perfection is an incomplete perfection: the perfect philosopher is also the supreme ruler and lawgiver; he must have the capacity to teach the community and form character so that everyone is enabled to achieve the perfection of which he is capable. For this purpose the philosopher will need religion, defined as the assent, secured by persuasion rather than demonstration, to an imaginative account of reality appropriate, accommodated, to the nonphilosophic multitude. Thus, the perfect human is both philosopher and prophet, combining theoretical knowledge with mastery of the arts of rhetoric and poetry."
- Norman A. Brown, Apocalypse And/Or Metamorphosis

Causes I Can Get Behind #16:

#16 on the list of causes I can get behind is an end to demoncracy and the restoration of the Solomonic dynasty to absolute power in Ethiopia.

Dope Rhymes Of The Day

Each herb and each tree,
Mountain, hill, earth and sea,
Cloud, Meteor and Star,
Are Men Seen Afar.
- William Blake, letter to Thomas Butts (October 2, 1800)

Imaginary Lullabies

I was reading an article about Don Imus settling with CBS--yes I'm bored--when this quote by Kim Gandy, head of the National Organization of Women, caught my eye: "After the heartache he caused untold thousands of young women, I find it disheartening that he would have another platform so soon on the public airways." Frankly what I find disheartening is the amount of bullshit that infests the public discourse. Seriously, name me one young woman who experienced "heartache" because of Don Imus's comment, let alone "untold thousands." Whatever young woman takes her cues from a wizened redneck radio hack does not exist in the same universe as I do. This is not an exaggeration, it's an outright falsehood; but sadly it's probably what she really believes. If I were a woman I know I'd be more offended by N.O.W.'s characterization of me as a pussywillow blown to tears because of an ignorant old man's off-colour comment, than the meager content of the comment itself. But maybe that's because I value my status as an intelligent being more than my race or sex. Can't spokesmen/women just be honest and say, "Don Imus lowered the level of public discourse with his stupid comments," rather than adding another stupid comment to this torpid stew of stupid action-stupid reaction? I dislike stupid discourse for being stupid. Whether it disheartens thousands of imaginary victims is irrelevant. Though I'd be happy to console them with some imaginary lullabies.

Song Of The Day

I like songs about historical events, and this one is admirably even-handed for a rock song. The Shah certainly was luxury's greatest fan: in 1967, in celebration of his forty-eighth birthday, 17,432 roses were scattered over Tehran by the Royal Iranian Air Force, each representing a day of his life. He did sell the English a lot of oil; though instead of making the people work the soil, he was actually attempting an agenda of modernization around the time of his fall, contributing to the unforeseen backlash. The most glaring inaccuracy in the song, however, is when the band claim Khomeini "made the people get up and da da dance." The cassettes Khomeini's network distributed contained political sermons, not Casbah-rocking agit-punk. (Which would have been a lot cooler.) In fact the Ayatollah was notoriously anti-dancing, but considering the song was written in 1979, the band's final analysis: "Said he'd set the people free, we shall see we shall see," remains as they say, fair and balanced. Compare this to "Cortez the Killer" by hippie utopian Neil Young, which is unmitigated pro-Aztec propaganda. "Hate was just a legend and war was never known"? Please! Cortez was certainly a killer but the Aztec theocratic necro-state was hardly more humane. I digress, however. Enjoy this stirring piece of politically astute synth-punk courtesy of the Stranglers.

The Stranglers - Shah Shah A Go Go

Did you hear about the man
Used to live out in Iran
He was luxury's greatest fan
People ate out of his hand
People ate out of his hand

Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go

Sold the English all their oil
Made the people work the soil
Thought his kind had got it made
But his kind just had to pay to fade
But his kind just had to fade

Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go

Then a priest in Paris, France
Made the people get up and da da dance
Sold cassettes for 60p.
Said he'd set the people free
We shall see we shall see

Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go

Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go
Shah shah a go go

The Only Way To Praise

"There is only one way to praise: to inspire fear in the figure being extolled, to compel him in fear and trembling to hide himself far away from the statue being erected, to constrain him by generous hyperbole to measure his mediocrity and suffer from it. What is an argument for the defense that neither torments nor troubles--what is a eulogy that fails to kill? Every apology should be a murder by enthusiasm."
- E.M. Cioran

The Dangers Of Staying Awake

I feel I've shed states of mind and skin. Excess consciousness, excess pity, excess emotional investment. Some words are better left unspoken, some thoughts better left unformed. It's a matter of cutting the fat of existence. Amputating the phantom limb, keeping in mind that all limbs of the mind are phantom. Stripping the past, revising memories, living to spite regret: I'm better off for where the process has left me. Of course the excess consciousness comes back at intervals, so I use it up by writing as I am right now. Then there's the matter of isolation, a natural consequence of giving up on most people. Ironically it's caused me to get along with said people much better. I save my emotional investment for books and music, leaving a happy shell to deal with other happy shells. I like being a happy shell: it's just that sometimes I don't know when I'm acting and when I'm being. It's more of a spectrum I fluctuate upon than an either/or proposition. I used to be a different person; I've shed that person. This calls basic facts of existence into question. But I don't pause to question. Instead it's: push-push-struggle day-to-day-to-day. And it has to be. Life brutalizes the weak. Or it pities them which is the weak man's brutality. I'm caught between stations to be honest. I throw myself into things to avoid being thrown. The choice will come to give up what I've built and return to the loving embrace of mechanical arms. It's probably inevitable that I surrender but I hope to build or destroy a great deal in the meantime. And there's no time but meantime! Once you let a rip develop, the void just grows and grows. Given the laws of thermodynamics, what little I understand of them, energy never disappears; it merely becomes another form of energy. Thus we are destined to devour then expunge then devour our selves for eternity. Amor fati because of or in spite of! As always the way out is through. Yesterday's disappointments today! The dangers of staying awake.

In Defense Of: The Spanish Inquisition

"In the first place there is nothing so just, so learned, so incorruptible as the great Spanish tribunals, and if, to this general character, we add that of the Catholic priesthood, we shall be convinced, before any experience, that in all the universe there can be nothing more peaceful, more circumspect, more humane than the tribunal of the Inquisition."
- Joseph de Maistre

PAAAAANDAAA AATTAAAAACK!

RELATED STORY: A month earlier, a drunken Chinese tourist bit a panda at the Beijing Zoo after the animal attacked him when he jumped into the enclosure and tried to hug it.

External False Gods

The fundamental goal I've learned over the last few years is: personal liberation from external false gods. External false gods range from money to drugs to, perhaps most commonly, other people. It's not that these things are without value; it's that their modern value has been artificially inflated to make up for the loss of former false gods like, well, God. First: other people. If approval or respect from other people is a consequence of following your true nature then that is an added bonus. If it is your primary motivation for living you are nothing more than a voluntary slave, albeit one in a thriving slave community. If you accept the basic premise, reinforced by all the evidence popular culture has provided, that the majority of people tend to have terrible taste then you should be well on your way toward liberation. By this I don't mean you should act in intentional rebellion towards common norms: people who do so are simply slaves through a reverse mirror, even more pathetic for their hypocrisy. A Satanist still exists in a Christian universe; he's simply traded black for white while maintaining belief that black and white are all there is. Similarly modern punk rockers generally have the exact same values as the "conformists" they rally against, while being even more in thrall to the ideas of fashion uniformity. Most anarchists are merely thwarted dictators, often all the more dictatorial in nature for their abject powerlessness.

The point is not that the majority is always wrong--it can sometimes, usually accidentally, be right. The point is rather that the majority opinion is by nature always fluctuating, and therefore has no monopoly on truth or values. I don't support being blindly anti-social; I just don't support being blindly, damn the costs to personal integrity, pro-social either. If majority opinion temporarily adopts some of your interests, the reaction that your values must have been wrong all along is no less slavish than those who adopted them because they were on a magazine cover. An obvious example is in music, where indie snobs disavow bands not for changes in musical style but for changes in popularity. Personally music is something I value for the emotional effects it has on me, and that is my primary criteria. I like bands that are popular in the indie crowd--Neutral Milk Hotel, Smog, Pixies; as well as bands that are popular in the general crowd--Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Radiohead. I also like bands that no one else I know has even heard of--Young Gods, March Violets, Course of Empire. I admit part of the appeal of some of the latter bands is their obscurity, but I'm an obscurantist by nature and I must remain true to myself. The only reward I get for being eclectic is personal satisfaction, and that is the reward that matters most.

Another personal example is knowledge. I recently graduated with a degree in History and people often ask me what I'm going to do with it. It's a valid question, but there's often the implicit subtext that unless you have learned "practical" skills, you've wasted your time. Practical skills matter because they make money, and money matters because, it's money! I knew various people in the Business program at my school, and none of them actually enjoyed their program. They were in it because of money. Yet despite spending years learning something they don't like often at the behest of their parents instead of even personal ambition, their time was apparently perfectly well spent. I have nothing against Business students if the marketplace is legitimately their passion; it's just that of all those I've met, personal satisfaction or self-growth has been secondary or non-existent goals compared with parental approval and job opportunities. If you're happy to spend nine-tenths of your life doing something you don't like in order to make more money than someone who makes less but lives more, so be it. As for me, I'd rather have spent four years of my life learning in order to feel more knowledgable and confident about the world and myself. It won't earn me the money to earn me the false respect of false people, and of course the false love of false women, but I can live with that. More than that, I can live with myself, and everything else is secondary.

Perfect Strangers: Beyond the Iron Curtain

KEY LINES IN BOLD

MOSCOW -- Warner Bros. is on a roll in Russia with a local version of its 1980s TV hit "Perfect Strangers," featuring two local actors playing reincarnated versions of the show's original central characters Larry and Balki -- but with the new monikers of Andrei and Ivan.

This is a distinctly Russian version of the U.S. evergreen comedy that aired on ABC from 1986-93, starring Mark Linn-Baker as Larry and Bronson Pinchot as Balki. But the local actors playing the leads were diligent about studying their American counterparts' performances before hitting their marks.

Artem Semakin, who plays Andrei (and is known to Russian audiences for his role in CTC comedy "Born Ugly"), says during a pause in the frantic production pace on the Russian set, "The American actors have that accuracy which is so necessary in a sitcom: accuracy of tempo and pauses."

Ivan is played by Anton Eldarov, who also is well known to Russian audiences from his role in military drama "Soldaty" (also on Ren-TV). "We simply show what goes on between two guys, one with a Moscow psychology, the other with a provincial outlook," he says. "Two 'grotesque' types -- exactly the same ethos as the U.S. series."

Already in its second month on air, "Perfect Strangers" -- or as Russian audiences know it "Brat'ya po-raznomu" is off to a promising start with a respectable 5% audience share.

The show is being made under a deal in which WBITV has partnered with entertainment channel CTC -- Russia's fourth-largest national broadcaster -- and Amedia, one of its leading TV production houses, to produce the formats.

And this is just the beginning for Warner Bros. International Television as it heads east in a scripted format deal with the Russians that will see its popular sitcoms "Suddenly Susan," "Step by Step" and "Full House" go Cyrillic.

"Perfect Strangers," which airs five nights a week on Ren-TV with daytime repeats, is down for 50 episodes, though its Moscow producer Dmitri Mileshin believes options for further episodes are likely to be taken up.

"The time has come for these sorts of sitcoms on Russian television; viewers enjoy the humor, and they are shows all the family can watch and relax with," says Mileshin, a large, affable and bearded man. "We think the initial 50 episodes will be extended -- there are options to continue in chunks of 26 -- because its already getting the ratings and is popular with viewers."

But Mileshin is at pains to emphasis how different the Russian version is. "We've kept the essence -- the dramaturgy -- but some 70% of the episodes have been completely rewritten," he says. "Russian audiences don't understand American jokes, and a lot of detail needed to be changed. But Hollywood is the world's master factory for television, and we can learn a lot from each other," he says, adding that WBITV executives were "intrigued" by the Russian approach to fine-tuning the show.

Four or five pilots of the Russian version were filmed before they were screened to a range of focus groups. Recordings of the laughter -- and timing between gags -- were then used to tweak the pace and rate of the comedy.

Down on the set at Amedia's sprawling new Media City studios, housed in a vast old former ball bearing factory, the good humor and buzz are much in evidence.

Director Roman Fokin -- donning a red T-shirt with an image of President Vladimir Putin on the front and the gag "dobrogo putina" -- a word play on the Russian for "safe travels" (dobrogo puti) and the president's surname -- is dashing about between takes working at getting just the right expressions of adulation from the young female extras.

Like many young directors and artists working in Russian television, his background is in KVN -- Klub Vesyolykh I Nakhodchivykh -- university comedy clubs similar to Britain's famous Cambridge Footlights.

"Andrei and Ivan are like chalk and cheese -- they have virtually nothing in common except they are distant relations," Folkin says. "But both want to try their best and are forever repeating, 'We are, after all, brothers,' which adds to the irony and comic situations."

With a tight shooting schedule -- three 26-minute episodes are shot every week, with an average day's shooting getting 12-13 minutes in the can -- Fokin has little time for reflection.

Courtesy of Hollywood Reporter

National [Socialist] Computers

Quite an operation they've got going here. The crypto-fascists at "National Computers" ensnare victims by offering free system upgrades for Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and communists. Then they club them and send them over to Herr Felix's "1 Hr. Cleaner" for "cleaning" before turning the rotting flesh over to their Japanese imperialist allies at "Sushi & BBQ," who in turn serve them to unsuspecting customers. Such Teutonic efficiency!

Ejector Seats To Greenland

I write because I'm restless. I've need of sublimation. Here's a list of things I enjoy: music, books, newspapers, sex, coffee, food, drinking, dogs, ideas, bustle. Simple things really. More or less enough to live for. Eventually I want to retire to Greenland. No blame, regret, excuses or guilt: or at least a minimum amount of each. No visible signs of weakness either. My weaknesses I will express through writing so my face can be clear of evidence. I know to act happy, and I mostly am these days, but when I'm not I know the sad evolutionary truth is that the strong survive full of love of life. So: find a way to love the sorrow and turn it into happiness. And we can learn to love sorrow if we have something to show for it. Words, music, satori: a kick in the eye. I'm happy to express my sources of unhappiness in the right circumstances, but "When in Rome..."--and this is Rome. I don't keep secrets, I just don't volunteer them. Tomorrow I can laugh at what by night I can't sleep because of. Complexity is the enemy of steamrollers everywhere. And there's always demand for more parking lots to be built. I'd rather try the ejector seat and see where it takes me. Greenland, maybe.

Conversing With Brazilians About German Bears

¡Benjaminista! says:
do you know knut
JR Muniz says:
no
JR Muniz says:
what is?
¡Benjaminista! says:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,k-7098,00.html
JR Muniz says::
yes yes
JR Muniz says:
the famous bear

Without Entourage In Babylon

Having seen approximately half an episode, I can safely say the show Entourage goes against everything I stand for. An example: two goons are trying to woo the same harlot. One starts listing facts about Sudan and the conflict there to earn points as a humanitarian. When goon #1 asks goon #2 how he knew so much, goon #2 produces his blackberry and says he read out what he just googled on the screen. The idea that anyone could actually know anything for the sake of knowing or prioritize cold hard reality over hot vacant image is beyond the show's pale. I'm not speaking as a self-righteous liberal or a disgruntled conservative here--just as a self-righteous, disgruntled viewer. The characters on Entourage exist in the same Babylon as Sex and the City, a world where everything to do with life, death and spirit is secondary or non-existent compared to sex and said Mesopotamian city. But that show doesn't bother me as much because it's for women, and I ignore it as I would a tampon commercial. Entourage is ostensibly a show for men, and the idealized image of men it projects is what bothers me.

Entourage reduces men to what the Sex and the City women want them to be: namely women in reverse, as slobberingly devoted to social relationships and the opposite sex as Carrie is. That's another thing that bothered me about the Sudan-referencing scene: the idea that knowing about the world outside of the bedroom and boutique would even impress such a person. It would only annoy her, I would think, by consciously or not reminding her of how small and illusory her sphere of existence is. A social conscience for her is limited to the occasional celebrity AIDS gala at best. She's fucks politicians for their power, not their positions; she fucks musicians for their mystique, not for their music. The substance is only useful insofar as it validates the style. To acknowledge that life is bigger than who said what to who fucked who is as uncalled for as throwing a moneylender out of the temple. And this isn't about religion despite my choice of metaphors; it's about values, which can be secular without being completely devoid of honour.

I know I was born in the wrong century or at least half-century. I admire warrior-poets not rapper-actors. And yes I'll admit this rant is based in part on a certain bitterness that my values are out of fashion. (I won't say old-fashioned; I'm not a conservative except in the sense of conserving the tradition of going through and beyond tradition.) I do enjoy my generation's hedonism when I'm drunk, but I guess I'm just not drunk often enough to give that part of me majority say. I really can't picture being sober, living like an Entourage member and not coming to hate myself and/or the world. It's said that Jews control the entertainment industry but I'd say Babylonians. There were always Israelites who turned to Baal and if Hollywood attracts a fair share of them I'm sure it pleases Yahweh as much as a wet t-shirt contest pleases Allah. As a Jew I know that my people, and humanity in general, are divided between those who climb the mountain and those who worship the golden calf. That the majority worship the calf doesn't give them the right to dictate values. Truth isn't democratic. Between Ari Gold and Franz Kafka I choose to focus on the latter as ethno-metaphysical kin. If that means I'm without entourage in Babylon so be it. Better trial without end than freedom without point.