Talk nerdy to me — Winter of my discontent: Season’s Greetings from Hoth edition

In the last few weeks, everyone around me (myself included) repeatedly asserted to one another how cold it was — so cold, we said, my gosh, it’s so cold — but Hoth scenes always put it all in perspective, don’t they?

via laurenmoran on the tumblr.

So speaking of Star Wars extreme-temperature location shooting, I was watching this segment on the Daily Show recently, and it ends up that there are protests and massive government upheaval going on in Tunisia, where the Tattooine scenes for Episodes IV and I were filmed. I didn’t know that.

To clarify: I knew the Tattooine scene-filming part. I even knew there was a town there actually called Tataouine, although the Lars homestead scenes were not set there, but instead filmed near the troglodyte architectural mecca of Matmâta, which is about 70 miles north of Tataouine (R.I.P., Owen and Beru).

The life-altering modern politics, on the shameful other hand, was brand-new news to me.

Photograph by Jamal Saidi for Reuters.

This is what a futuristic rebel alliance looks like.

The ousting of Tunisian president Ben Ali came as a result of public backlash in the wake of a sham election last October, condemned by the Human Rights Watch. This was followed by incendiary WikiLeaks which surfaced, detailing the president and his family’s lavish lifestyle in an impoverished country.

The revolt was largely organized via social media, relying heavily on texts, facebook, and twitter. Search #sidibouzid for the hundreds of thousands of tweets from Sidi Bouzid, the seat of the so-called Jasmine Revolution.

via the Peace and Collaborative Development Network.

Coming so soon after the 2009 election riots in Iran, which were similarly organized, some of the power-hungry dictators in the Arab world are getting understandably nervous about the precarity of their positions. I said goddamn. How now, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? You can’t hide technology from the people forever.




What I’m also trying to say, though, with both the “it’s so cold” story and the absolute ignorance of grave disturbances in another country’s Force until seeing it on a quasi-serious news program, is that I’m a shallow, isolated slave to materialism. It is not a proud moment.

William Blake Month: Brooding cares & anxious labors that prove but chaff

Quit your job and go on tour.

“Tracy,” Ryan McGinley, 2009.

You recoil back upon me in the blood
of the Lamb slain in his Children
Two bleeding Contraries, equally true,
are his Witnesses against me
We reared mighty Stones!
we danced naked around them:

“Hysteric Fireworks,” Ryan McGinley.

Thinking to bring Love into light of day,
to Jerusalem’s shame:
Displaying our Giant limbs
to all the winds of heaven! Sudden
Shame siezed us:
we could not look on one another for abhorrence.

“Fire Flip,” Ryan McGinley.

O what is Life & what is Man,
O what is Death? Wherefore
Are you my Children, natives in the Grave to where I go

“Hanna in wheatfield in American flag chair,” Nicole Lesser. 2009.

Or are you born
to feed the hungry ravenings of Destruction
To be the sport of Accident!
to waste in Wrath & Love, a weary
Life, in brooding cares & anxious labours,
that prove but chaff.

(William Blake, Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion.)

I do believe Mr. Blake is urging you to tune in, turn on, and drop out.

Paved paradise to etc.

Are you born “…to be the sport of accident and waste in wrath and love a weary life, in brooding cares and anxious labours, that prove but chaff”? No. I have said it before as a personal manifesto and I say again now despite my despondency this month and my dwelling over death and famine, that in the final analysis I do not believe we are born to feed the hungry ravenings of destruction, I cannot take the fatalistic, world-weary view that the average man is born cannon fodder in a long war between obscure forces richer and wider-reaching than we are.

Girl welder, 12, for the Australian Air Force, 1943. National Library of Congress collection on the flickr.

I can’t believe that is God’s plan for any single individual on this earth, no one can have been born for darkness and live only to push a wheel belowdecks to power someone else’s ship. I agree with this poem — shame and fear lead us to these empty lives of capitulation and lonely servitude to ideas forged by whatever money-hungry captain of industry’s self-serving philosophies are en vogue aided by the corrupt leaders of what could be beautiful religions. That is not the intent of our creation, I feel like that cannot be so, and if it keeps getting spread around that it is so, surely enough people are going to snap from their television-enhanced fast food comas and facebook opium haze and start a serious counterargument with words and deeds. I mean, they have to. If they don’t, then, my god, what is the point of existence even.

Oh, bother. It appears between this chain of thought and yesterday’s rants about Nazi propaganda that it is shaping up to be quite a week of Opinions. “I’m just a little black raiiinclouuuud …”

Talk nerdy to me: Han’s facebook edition

Talk nerdy to me: Blinding you with science — Icelandic Volcano edition

“Ash and Lightning Above an Icelandic Volcano,” credit & copyright: Marco Fulle. via the Gentleman via Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Christopher Rouxbin: just sent you a thing
E: I am about to go read it
Christopher Rouxbin: good. you should. because i sent it.
E: wow, that looks like the cover to a heavy metal album

Unsigned heavy metal bands, feel free to contact Sgr. Fulle about the use of this shot for your next EP!

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland began erupting in late March but has gotten a lot more attention in the last week or so, as some glacial ice has melted and been reheated by the lava into badass glass particles that are floating around in the ash. Pretty hot stuff. Get it? That’s right, I like science and I make terrible puns. Try to keep your pants on!




(Please do not attempt to relate this natural occurrence to recent earthquakes in Chile and Haiti. Please do not tell me how this means we are “due” for a disastrous geological event in North America. Please have a better basic understanding of nature than that. Please. Please.)

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: The course of true love

Wisely and slow: they do stumble that run fast. (Friar Laurence, Romeo and Juliet, 2.3.97)

Or, hurry up and say screw you to the non-plungers. Not to mention that you should basically not at all listen to advice from clergy in Shakespeare plays. Like, just almost never. The dude held little to no truck with religion.

Olivia Hussey in Zeffirelli’s R and J.

I always wanted to stop them from falling in love and pursuing what I saw to be a poorly-advised infatuation whenever I read this or saw film versions of this play (in the Baz Luhrmann version I all but shriek at Juliet to choose Paris instead, because Paris is Paul Rudd plus he is approved of by her father and Daddy’s Opinions Matter) but you know what? I was Dead Wrong. Fuck their families. They don’t always know what’s best. These two kids love each other: how many people can say that, honestly, and not be lying to avoid the uncomfortable truth that they settled. Sure, it ends badly. But, hey. At least Romeo and Juliet had happiness for a little while. I bet this is what other people have always thought about this play/film, huh? Wow. I am going to bring a whole different, probably-originally-intended level of interest to this material the next time I read or watch it.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Social networking edition

Amsterdam

A touch of Das Kapital with your morning coffee. Perhaps you could add a status to the effect of “___ is: being a bourgeois pig lolz!” Marx would want it that way.

I had to shop yesterday. The mall. Toys ‘R’ Us. Borders. Target. Shoot me. On the plus side, we hit two different chain restaurants and I left space in their bathrooms highly liberated with thought-provoking suggestions about materialism and how the gifts with deepest meaning are beyond price. Except in Red Robin. They looked so harried that I left “Quit your job and GO ON TOUR.”