[The picture has been changed. This photograph just made more sense. This alarm is buried in Rutherford South, first floor, beside those strange Alice In Wonderland chairs. See subject of this post AND the beginning of the previous post for greater clarity and understanding.]
I totally lifted this post from my Myspace blog, because, don't you know, I accidentally deleted my original post for THIS blog. So, imprimis:
Senator McCarthy labelled as deviantly Communist those people he believed to be harmful to his vision of society, and then used this imposed label to expel them and those who protested against McCarthy from the real living breathing world we are all supposed to share.
Matthew Hopkins, who used an ingenious method of discovering a person's inner witch (throw them, bound, into water and if they die, they are normal, but if they survive, they are witches), labelled those who did not follow societal norms as witches, and had them burned. These people were often mental incompetents or merely loners or even just elderly unmarried women who happened not to be friendly.
To impose upon other people is one of the greatest crimes this world knows; such imposition takes many forms. Newspapers, for instance, if they misrepresent facts or slander people, impose upon their readers and the truth. And people, by forcing their sisters and brothers to unwillingly change, impose, every day, upon freedom and democracy and kindness. These are just two methods of imposition in a world of restrictions and persecutions.
These two methods of social injustice, however, are being used at the University of Alberta.
"Students across campus might soon be able to exit a building without having to plunge into a cloud of smoke or trample on a carpet of cigarette butts if third-year Physical Education student Shereen Kangarloo gets her wish," writes Ross Prusakowski in a front-page article for the University of Albertas campus newspaper, The Gateway. "Trample on a carpet of cigarette butts"? When was the last time any student on campus had to "trample" (and why, btw, would they "trample", particularly?) across ground covered with so many cigarette butts that the earth underneath them could not be seen? And, also, when was the last time any student plunged into a cloud of cigarette smoke? Seriously, "plunged"? "Cloud"? Prusakowski makes the exiting student resemble Moses going up the mountain to talk to God. The only cloud here is the highly metaphorical and extremely negative one Prusakowski is creating with his words.
Shereen Kangarloo wishes students wouldn't smoke? Well, I do, too, but I also respect the wishes of others. It's part of taking classes at a supposedly liberal university. Ah, but we mustn't let our wishes cause harm to others' wishes, must we? Fair enough. The smokers can smoke outside, then, where their second-hand smoke will quickly and harmlessly dissipate into the air. Smokers get to smoke; non-smokers don't have to suffer smoke. To impose myself on smokers, of course, when they are not harming me, would be to harm them, to needlessly stamp my image upon their wishes. I would be practicing fascism. Fascism, it turns out, is exactly what Shereen Kangarloo is practicing.
I am not a smoker. I believe smoking is harmful. I believe second-hand smoke, in large quantities, can adversely affect those who are forced to breathe it. I also believe that far more adverse and far more harmful to my well-being and to the well-being of my culture are people like Kangarloo and Prusakowski.
McCarthy and Hopkins capitalized on the widespread fears of their respective ages in order to create a society after each mans personal vision. This vision was a vision which excluded certain people. Shereen Kangarloo's and Ross Prusakowski's world is a world of exclusion, whose only citizens are those people who resemble Ross Prusakowski and Shereen Kangarloo.
Cochrane: Britannia's Sea Wolf + Donald Thomas I've read and posted on this book before, I'm going to read and post on it again. Sir Thomas Cochrane is my hero, for absolute real. Napoleon called him The Sea Wolf. Lord Nelson was absolutely jealous of him. Cochrane's wife adored him. British Parliament tried to run him out of office but Cochrane's constituency wouldn't vote for anyone else. His crew said they would follow him to hell (one of his officers, Marryat, became the author who started the entire sea-hero fiction genre—based on Cochrane's adventures!). Remember that movie starring Russell Crowe—Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World—and remember how Captain Jack Aubrey placed a lighted buoy in the water at night, thus misleading and escaping his much-stronger enemy? Cochrane actually did that, and a hundred other splendid things. Cochrane was so hated by the corrupt that their descendants, two hundred years later, were still trying to defame him. Queen Victoria personally intervened for his memory, that he might be honoured after his death. He once took a Spanish hilltop fort and constructed a Katamari Damacy dynamite ball and rolled it down the hill against the Spanish. He freed Chile. He freed Brazil. He could not be stopped, he was a tiger, a lion, a bright and terrible angel, he was what men ought to be and are not, he was integrity.
I'll post about music later tonight. Yes, and I'll correct my spelling mistakes, too. Don't crowd me, I've got adamantium claws.
Right, so, as usual, I switched my citizenship to procrastination. Over a day later, and that time isn't coming back, is it? So, make-up style, I'm posting three burners off of three monster releases, going way-back-track style to 2001. Last April's "My Friend Dario" starts the car up, of course. Have you seen the video? Crazy lips on that girl, bikinis everywhere and Finland loses all air-guitar cred forever! I have the idea that Pascal Arbez aka Vitalic mixed this business in the morning, in a windowless room. That he started out, not with a computer or a crate, but by throwing furniture at the wall. This release makes me want to break tables with axe handles, look out for the killing at 1:00 and 1:50, and, especially, 2:48. OK, right, yes. Toning it down then (not that much), "We Share Our Mother's Health", an original gypsy flamethrower by The Knife. "We Share Our Mother's Health" is the entire jungle trying to prance slowly through the door, with bones. It cannot be resisted. Don't even try. This is Shere Khan without the limp, a tiger without fear, and you must not look him in the eye, don't you dare, just listen to him growling music and high synth as he goes by. Oh, I almost went with classic "Heartbeats", but this pick makes a better combo. Done. Next song. Let's talk about vampires and Batman and Salton Sea Val Kilmer going crazy without his sax and beating the drugs out of Trent Reznor. Let's talk about The Faint's "Glass Danse". A friend of mine was going to the mountains and burned this onto a mix. Everyone got high and, as they approached a long wide turn in the highway, this song clicks on and the driver starts yelling that he can't turn his arms. The drop at about 14 seconds into this song has to be experienced at high volume to be believed, it's craziness, you'll probably eat your own face. This song is ONLY for the emotional stable. If you are in any way anything but Commander Data in your emotional outlook, remove anything breakable from the room in which you hear this synth. Remove, remove, and DANCE!
"My Friend Dario" + Vitalic
"We Share Our Mother's Health" + The Knife
"Glass Danse" + The Faint
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