E.E. Cummings Month: Manunkind — there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go

via defacedbooks on the tumblr.

pity this busy monster,manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim(death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness

A hardworking Man of Science.

–electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen until unwish
returns on its unself.
                                                          A world of made
is not a world of born-pity poor flesh

12 Monkeys still via the mental shed.

and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if-listen:there’s a hell
of a good universe next door;let’s go

(E.E. Cummings, “XIV.” 1944.)

Let’s.

This poem resonates with deeply effective wordplay and metaphor that are still just exactly what. “Man-unkind.” “Electrons deify one razor blade in to a mountain range.” “A world of made is not a world of born.” “Hyper-magical ultra-omnipotence.” Just exactly. I respond strongly to it because for me it’s a true intersection of my sci-fi geek self and my literary interests. But it also rings bigger bells for me.

via nevver on the tumblr.

I think I will put together a Movie Moment soon relating this to the documentary Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1983). “Koyaanisqatsi” means an imbalanced world, or a world and life that call for another way of life. It speaks to straying so far from any possible Creator’s vision for our selves and our planet that we must change everything about all of it, and it’s something I’ve found myself thinking about a lot in the last few years.

* “The Freedom for Animals Association on Second Avenue is the secret headquarters of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. They’re the ones who are going to do it. Have a merry Christmas!”

Liberated Negative space o’ the Day: First time/Last time edition

Modest Mouse lyrics.

Talk nerdy to me: Star Wars propaganda edition

“Truth is always the first casualty of war.” — Aeschylus.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

— Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928).

“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.” –Joseph Goebbels.

“[In] Democratic societies … the state can’t control behavior by force. It can to some extent, but it’s much more limited in its capacity to control by force. Therefore, it has to control what you think.” — Noam Chomsky, Chronicles of Dissent, 1992.

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” — Adolf Hitler.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. ” — Joseph Goebbels.

“Propaganda must confine itself to very few points, and repeat them endlessly.” — Adolf Hitler.

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” — George W. Bush.

“The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.” — H.L. Mencken.

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” — Chomsky.

“Intellectual activity is a danger to the building of character … Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the state can play.” — Goebbels.

“[The propaganda system] recognizes that the public will not support the actual policies. Therefore it is important to prevent any knowledge or understanding of them.” — Chomsky.

“The truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” — Goebbels.

“Propaganda must never serve the truth, especially not insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent.” — Hitler.

“One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.” — Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

“We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.” — John F. Kennedy.

Is that so? I think I disagree, but I’ve debated this before, during Sam Haskins month, when I went off on Leni Riefenstahl. It is a damned tangled web, and the propaganda flows from all sides.

Some of those posters are by Cliff Chiang and some by Joe Carroney, and some by unknown others; see, the sources from which I gathered all these images were kind of slipshod in their own sourcing so if you know specifics please do shoot them my way because I am dissatisfied with the low-class credit attribution job I’m turning in on this one so far.

Mean Girls Monday: Inaugural Edition feat. Gone With the Wind

Last week was a rough one, so I asked my husband to mail me some of the DVDs sitting around our house in Portland and he graciously did. One of them was Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2001), a movie that I am not ashamed to call a guilty pleasure. Introducing … Mean Girls Monday! A maybe-weekly feature directly or indirectly referencing the film. Because I can.

First Edition. What if every movie were Mean Girls? As Picard would suggest, make it so. This is a wonderfully dorky meme that’s been floating around where people juxtapose lines from Mean Girls with screencaps from other flicks and I’m loving it. Thought I’d kick it off with a little classic Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939).

(God, Vivien Leigh’s faces are so priceless. I’m planning an upcoming The Way They Were on Vivien and Laurence Olivier. Mad love for my Vivs for-evvvv-errr.)

This has been your first Mean Girls Monday!