tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-322940082024-03-13T17:53:15.184-04:00J to the Power of 7ADVENTURES IN WRITING! Operating from Northern Indiana, this blog will cover aspects of culture with a bent on humor and the relentless belittling of the mainstream media, politics, and the syphilitic GOP (both major parties). News analysis happens. Put on your adult diapers, this gwine'-a'-be a bourgeois hoot. Some much needed hilarity for working class North Americans and international readers. I'm the part of this human world that bites back. Let's roll.Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.comBlogger1749125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-39923418136382539482022-04-21T21:44:00.001-04:002022-04-21T21:44:24.381-04:00Whores and Agendas<p> <span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b><span style="color: red;">I'll make this short:</span></b></i> Not so long ago, I was contacted once more by an unreliable narrator who was a marginal player in the DC Madam case, someone who Jeane consulted briefly before her trial in the spring of 2008, a long time ago. I am not and will never be willing to compromise with the factual-and-objective information I experienced and uncovered before, during, and after, the DC Madam's legal proceedings. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is never going to change. Not for money, or any other reason. I know what happened and what happened to me during the legal proceedings. The sad reality in the United States today is the complete ditching of context by some along with a fundamental disrespect for the truth. Unless it serves someone's personal or political agenda, they don't want to know, and we're talking about an all-ages club here, a pervasive American attitude. This is nothing new in American history; we've been running from the truth since well before Lexington and Concorde, which is running from your problems. I think we decided a long time ago as a nation that these very real social problems aren't problems at all, but just one more way to turn a buck, the original point of Anglo-America. Fine at least if one admits it from the onset and remains consistent on the point. Everyone knows that we were founded by a corporation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I knew when I began assisting the late Ms. Palfrey that it wasn't about money, and it wasn't. There's no way that I will have ever profited from my involvement in the case. Insisting on the truth of the matter precludes that in a culture which has and is hostile to truth, whatever it may be, in whatever context...that dirty word again, that abomination to would be tyrants everywhere. The case was and will continue to be a barometer for this climb backwards into the darkly peculiar history of the United States. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">We've been here before, in the 1830s and 1840s, when the kind of demagoguery was being pioneered by Andrew Jackson whose shadow looms over the current mess that is the U.S.; it's no secret that it's particularly evident in the southern states and those whose formation came about as a result of the Mexican-American War. Money is all in this, the final white supremacist holdout. I wrote over a decade ago that America is an oligarchy; we have a contemporary aristocracy, and the DC Madam case was just an expression of that fact. These congressmen generally live above the law.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Hardly being alone, the U.S. is a lawless nation and has yet to become fully civilized. In this context, I always have and will consider Palfrey more akin to a 19th century madam than anything, curious anachronism in a former colonial jerk-water, one that became a world power for a time. That time is over. One day, perhaps, young people will want to learn the truth about this and many other events and stories of the first decade of the twenty-first century. If others were serious about portraying the DC Madam case either dramatically or in a documentary, I would know about it. There have none up to the time of this writing. What will young people think about the case in the future? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If there's one message that I would send them, it is this: understand that the people who often govern your lives are lesser than you are, that they can sometimes be beaten, they are human, and, therefore, fallible. More often you'll begin to see as you grow older that the bastards undo themselves with their moronic and self-destructive behavior. The best cure for all of this is heading them off at the pass by filtering them out of politics. Get involved in taking down the local Goliaths, forget national politics, start at the bottom...but don't think you're not corruptible, you are.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p>Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-43689053167310038432020-10-12T00:36:00.001-04:002020-10-12T00:36:23.772-04:00Eat at Joe's<p> <span style="font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="color: white;">America, you have colonized yourself, which takes a lot of effort, congratulations. You're no quitter, only non sequitur.</span></span></p>Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-41146897365253798522019-02-18T22:48:00.000-05:002020-03-13T01:19:20.170-04:00Anthropos<br />
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "mongolian baiti" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: large;"><u><b>Prologue</b></u></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">The
incomplete text below was found in the pocket of a murdered Italian
banker in the early 1980s. Another section of it was discovered later
in the 1990s in the safe of a deceased senior member of Italy's
military intelligence:</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">...but what did the
primary witness, this surveyor named Rampali, say he saw? This comes
down to us from his recently rediscovered journal entries in a
forgotten cabinet in a local municipality and from local folklore in
that part of the Campania, the lore itself almost lost in the face of
an encroaching technological-industrial modernity and its attendant
cultural homogenization due to consumerism, most Italians now
communicating in Tuscan, and so on... </span>
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">After several days of
uneventful entries, Eduardo Rampali, who was a learn ed man from Pisa
and a prominent vassal of the Spanish Bourbons wrote on a summer day
in 1713: </span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in; page-break-before: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">July 19,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Work hath progressed
slowly [with] the first well sunk. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Workmen frightened, seeme
to be slowing dig [with] purpos[e] lazy sods. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">[cont.] I decide to go
down into the hole thus sunk...</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My lords, I can not put
upon paper what I have witnesseth with mine own eyes as God is my
guarantor [and] I must convey onle that we appear [to have]come
[upon] what is statuary but a most curious one at that for [it]
appears to have station of its own [and] puts thought into motion. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">[cont.] It grabbed my
hand [and] it spake my lords [and] its agency ceased. I can discloose
[sic] no more [and] will apprise you of the details with your
audience.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in; margin-right: 1.04in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">E.R. ...</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And at that, Mr. Rampali
vanishes and the trail disappears like so many others from the
historical record, perhaps to be unearthed another day as Truth is
most patient. This, we fear, might one day happen in this case. But
at present the narrative has no other supporting documentary record.
The document has been found to be genuine, but there is no opinion on
the veracity or even meaning of its claims from the specialists
consulted to interpret it thanks to a lack of greater context.
Current corporate thinking makes a definitive explanation impossible
for the time being, and this is viewed in our circles as a positive
sign.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">During the rule of
Charles III of Spain, King of Naples and of Sicily, over what is now
most of the southern half of Italy, a decree had come from the very
House of Bourbon by way of the gendarmes, heralds, and criers, for a
series of wells to be dug around the southeastern base of Mount
Vesuvius. On its face, there is nothing special to note here and
there are many such projects that have come about over the
generations.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Among other purposes,
this dig was to feed water to one of the many estates in the Campania
for agricultural purposes and to maintain their decorative gardens
and hydraulic fountains; it was also to be connected by way of a
network of discreet, cyclopean maintenance tunnels through which the
aristocrats and their guests could make a quick exit in case of the
periodic and inevitable peasant uprisings and other foreign
invasions. For an undetermined period only the authorities and the
underworld knew of them. Certainly today, the Italian public has
knowledge of them but are also currently unaware of parallel
structures. Current knowledge of this specific network dates back
primarily to their use as air raid shelters during World War II, and
tours are often conducted in parts of them; other sections are home
to the addicted population, general derelicts, youth gangs, and
organized crime. (All heavily surveilled by numerous agencies of
government.) They sometimes serve as ceremonial chambers for the
Camorra when they induct members; usually this is children from the
housing projects of Naples and greater Campania, generally. More
often, many of the tunnels and corridors are used as garbage dumps by
the very same populations. Occasionally, one can find the burned
image of a saint lying among the rest of the decaying drug
paraphernalia and human detritus, dirty, contaminated needles
everywhere...</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But this is all
academic by now: Farmers around Vesuvius had been turning up relics
tilling their fields for centuries and, while it still occurs, these
were, as they are today, one-offs, not hordes of coins nor priceless
statuary or decorative pieces that could be exchanged in the
underworld of that era, or this one. The discovery of Herculaneum
through a series of tunnels that began their lives as farm wells had
already occurred in the region and was filling the king's private
museum in Naples with a growing hoard of lost masterpieces. The
digging itself was not a criminal act, but the secreting away of
antiquities was, even under the very loose statutes and customs of
the day, it was grave robbery. This digging and pilfering would
continue until the revolutions and shortly after Johann Joachim
Wincklemann's (ironically, an antiquarian from the Prussian city of
Stendahl) essay on the treasures and Weber's work outlining the
layout of the legendary villa of the papyri. The overarching story is
universally known and is considered infamous in the history of
archeology. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As yet another test dig
close by progressed, a rather familiar pall of secrecy began to
blanket the undertaking. It seems that the young king smelled more
treasure to loot. Gangs of prisoners were brought into the area close
to the coastline and strictly overseen by the King's men, literally
mining the volcanic earth for treasure as it was little more than a
form of looting. While many passages have collapsed and are no longer
accessible to the public, the Bourbon tunnels still worm their way
through the buried sections of Herculaneum and can be considered a
very old crime scene, a crime as it were, against humanity. There
would be many more in the new modern era.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Though there are
similarities to the separate finds the wells dug close to the base of
Vesuvius must be considered a completely separate venture from the
tunneling into Herculaneum and decades later at the site of Pompeii. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There were some
peculiar problems encountered with the sinking of the first well: the
site chosen by the court engineers had encountered a hard volcanic
crust and then subsequently uncovered what seemed to have been a
village dump at one time; the workmen were finding numerous bits of
cloth, old olive oil lamps, bits of parchment, curious “can-like
cylinders” that may have been metal scrolls, mule bones, bottles,
broken farm implements, but nothing of any ascertainable value. You
first had to dig through the thick layers of rich, volcanic soil to
be carried away plat-by-plat in the punishing Mediterranean sun,
leaving the diggers open to all four elements. These were the labors
of slaves who worked with primitive spades, staves, and wooden
barrows. And this was also a military venture. By the third day of
digging, the first well sunk was only fifteen cubits deep, incredibly
slow going, even in those days; load after load of loose limestone,
dirt, sand, gravel and tufa came up with each hoisted basket. The
hole only got deeper and wider with intensive sifting and careful
horizontal exploration. A few more days passed. In that meantime the
overseer, a local surveyor, a rare vocation in the region at the
time, had decided to split his workers in order to sink several more
wells. The hole seemed to feed on their labor, and the more they dug,
the less it seemed to relent, as though time was standing still and
the dirt dug magically re-appeared from whence it came. Things keep
their secrets, he recalled, and so, the engineer decided to
reconnoiter the first well to see for himself what was slowing the
work. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Rampali's log tells us
that the encrusted rural workers and prisoners cleared out of the
hole and that down went the engineer “sans his tricorner” with a
boxy oil lamp. Descent into the hole was like running a gauntlet of
outstretched skeletal-arms, thick, hard weeds nearly choking any view
of the bottom, scratching any exposed flesh. The diggers had somehow
made it down to twenty-four cubits by now, well under half the normal
rate of speed. There was an ineffable smell he could not pinpoint,
well beyond his experience, not even in war, dense in its character.
It was an acrid odor, and then he heard a sound, beneath him, as
though something were moving. The odor transmuted, relocating from
his nose to his mouth, becoming a very sour, metallic taste, the kind
you feel before an act of violence, although this was apparently not
the experience of synthesia. Everything is violence in our temporal
existence. The walls of the hole seemed to be undulating gradually,
and a creaking sound began to emanate from the ground beneath him
like the broken gears he had heard on a crude farm machine that was
cranked by hand, metal on metal, like some broken clock or the spokes
of a cart becoming entangled, and, rather than giving away and
eventually dying down, it was becoming an immutable and irresistible
force, crushing whatever got was in its proximity. Below him, he
could hear rocks cracking into pieces.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">He could now feel the
ground beneath his feet shaking, and a rumbling sound came from what
sounded like everywhere. A tiny mound began to form at the center of
the pit's floor that was going to be breached at any moment and he
steadied himself, reaching for his saber and hoping that his powder
was dry and his flintlock was still on his belt. What broke through
the earthen mound would be folklore in the nearby villages and towns
for generations—still told to this day—but the surveyor would
never say what it was that he first witnessed being reborn from the
earth, because no one was certain that it had ever been alive. They
weren't certain that it was dead, or alive, or what that might even
mean. These were peasants, and implications for Western technological
development escaped them completely. It would have escaped almost
anybody at that historical moment, however.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Bourbons forbade any
talk of of the “artifact,” and what happened to the object found
in the pit has never been fully ascertained by contemporary scholars
and our best technicians who have been brought into the circle.
However, through the forensic piecing together of local folk
narratives around Vesuvius and greater Campania, thanks primarily to
the noted historiographer, Giuseppe Calabrese, we have a general idea
that a statue and various other Roman era objects relating to it were
unearthed and taken away from the site by the royal authorities at
the time. What does not square with this reconstructed story is
within the narrative folklore itself which we can dismiss as being
embellished and overly imaginative superstition that could not be
possible based on our current understanding of the Hellenic world and
what it was capable of in the area of machine technology. At the same
time, something remarkable was uncovered.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Only 1% of all Roman
bureaucratic and literary output is known to have survived into the
contemporary world, while most technological artifacts of that time
would have been constructed of perishable materials, there were no
synthetics, no modern chemistry, to our knowledge, so little is left.
Conversely, there was a continuous artisanal tradition within the city
of Rome and the rest of the empire, some of it originating from the
Greek provinces and in Alexandria, a base which was more than capable
of creating at least working models—unique, and incapable of being
mass produced—on demand to what can safely presumed to be
aristocratic patrons. The island of Rhodes was well known for its special machines.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We know on the one hand
that the Roman military was equipped with construction machinery that
was on par with 19<sup>th</sup> century devices such as a primitive
construction site conveyor belt uncovered in Greece in order to
convey away soil, sand, gravel, rock, uprooted foliage, and the rest
of standard, geological detritus. It's also common knowledge that
steam-propelled toys existed as one-offs for children of the
aristocracy and were barred from further development and production by
the emperor. What other one-offs originated in the workshops of Rome?
Who forged them? Was it the god Hephaestus or was it some mortal
inventor like Daedalus? What historical processes brought these
inventions about, these curious creations that we can only guess at
for want of any concrete remains? Like so much else, this was
borrowed Greek & Egyptian technology that might have been adapted
and improved upon by the Romans in their inimitable style. As is so
often the case, we are left with more questions than answers and
physical artifacts are scanty. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Outside of the
occasional shipwreck discovery, what happened to so many of the
statues of classical Greece? Was there an Etruscan literature? Surely
there was. Who were the makers of these devices and who were the men
who thought them up in the first place? Only the dead know, and only
forensics experts—archaeologists and scholars, some of the new
priests and diviners—are listening anymore, and they might begin
listening once more to the stones, to the walls of the ruins, to the
few corpses which remain, for they whisper some of their secrets to
us, ever so lightly. The world and the Four Elements are immutable
and eternal. There is a moisture in the earth.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
… <span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">[page missing]</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">One more scrap of
Rampali's very brief existence on this earth was discovered in yet
another forgotten file cabinet in the office of the Carabinieri in
Naples in 1977: it was part of a kind of an inventory manifest of the
Villa Fraticidio that came with the fall of Bourbon rule in the
Campania listing two partial statuary found at the well site in 1713
with the surveyor's surname and initials appended to it, all listed
alone, and without any context provided, a common state of affairs in
such matters. A description states one of the statues “has seams.”
No living scholar has been able to decipher what this meant exactly,
but one German has put forward the most logical possibility: they
were busts, and not of Roman origin at all, a most satisfying
conclusion if unprovable, while the French schools seem to think they
might just as easily have been bronzes with casting remnants around
the edges, perhaps. From our current level of knowledge, there was
little uniformity in ancient workshops. Traces of seams in the
statuary could indicate that these were later works, possibly from
arsenal works in Corinth. They are almost certainly composed of
bronze but further analysis will be necessary as recent X-raying and
scanning of the parts and trunks have revealed they are composites of
lost-wax and beaten metal processes. In addition, most of the parts
have an outer-coating of ceramic. As always, folkloric narratives are
to be ruled out as in error and do not adhere to any standards of
evidence and more often contradict the known archaeological record
around Vesuvius, if not the very laws of physics themselves. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Irrational stories of
this kind are normal to peasant societies, but stories of the
fantastic can be found in virtually all human groupings, notably in
places known to have been the sites of natural disasters, former
battlefields of war, cemeteries and the archaic necropolis, not to
mention the tales that almost always surround the ruins of past
civilizations. They are to be dismissed as out of hand and comprise a
kind of dreamlike desire to transcend what is a very monotonous life
under a mostly banal feudal order. Such are the dreams of the
faceless man, the common man who will always elude the archaeologist,
scholar, living as it were in the shadows that border time and space,
happily anonymous until the next spade comes along to disturb their
rest, again. ...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> All contents </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">© Matt Janovic 2019</span></div>
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Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-52453291355513192182017-04-29T19:55:00.001-04:002017-04-29T19:55:46.919-04:00Monsters & Critics makes a "new" documentary on the DC Madam case<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Ed.</b>--I'm not sure anything surprises me anymore, and this "new" documentary Monsters & Critics (yet another entertainment media site) is no exception. I was never consulted because I don't (won't) support the ridiculous conspiracy theories peddled by right wing assholes and hungry media assholes who want to massage the facts or ignore them outright to fit their moron-narratives. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Why do people want to lie about the DC Madam case? Because it sells. I myself could have sold many more copies of my account of the case had I adhered to these fabrications--and that's what they are, pure fiction, from the very tiny minds of morally-impaired idiots. I also have to say that a large-swath of the American public doesn't care about truth or facts and are also scumbags of basically the same ilk.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is addressed to Harper Hill and her morally-impaired staff:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Conspiracists and those who claim to know more about 'the list' say it was murder and not suicide." Let me guess--Wayne Madsen, for one? I'm sure Mr. Sibley had a few new dark comments without corroboration as well? Oh, then there's the ever-credulous Infowars who were never players in the case as I was, only on-the-margins. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The fact that Hill never contacted me for this "documentary" (safe to assume a bad collection of hastily-assembled clips supporting an erroneous thesis based on a desire for more site hits--money--with a dumb voice-over) speaks volumes for its general lack: lack of an overall array of the primary evidence; a steering very wide-of-the-mark away from contrary evidence (me, the primary records I still possess); and an obvious lacking of a desire for the truth, what really happened.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A Safe Prediction: There will be no new information in this documentary, and it will offer no new insights into the case. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Therefore, there is no reason for this documentary to exist at all beyond the most obvious economic motivations. In short, one more gaggle of entitled assholes has come and shit upon the late Ms. Palfrey's grave, disrespecting her, her family, and what's left of her memory. Goddamn all of you. You are well-poisoners, the lowest form of human life.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was going to post this in comments but their site insists that you register an account with Facebook, something I flatly refuse to do.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-16813725684309717312016-02-18T21:11:00.000-05:002016-02-18T21:11:02.381-05:002016 election stimulates new interest in DC Madam case<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Former DC Madam civil and criminal counselor Montgomery Blair Sibley has been doing some filings recently, all covered in the press, and he wants to release the subpoenaed Verizon phone records for reasons I won't go into based on confidentiality, a promise I have made to a source. The development comes at an interesting time and I cannot fault the man for doing what he's doing and even wish him well, I hope he's successful. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">His claim that there are 815 names in the subpoenaed phone records is correct, however, I never noticed any major political names and have not gone back to them or Dan Moldea's searches of her phone records that Jeane herself entrusted to myself and others for the purposes of research for her case. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I would add that since 2008, I haven't had anyone request or tell me either telephonically, via email, or served through the postal service, to return any of those materials, not that I could if I tried since they've been so thoroughly disseminated as to render that impossible. That being stated, and I say this as a layman, I seriously doubt that anyone could even claim jurisdiction over me and them. In fact, I've published some of them on here, the raw information, but only specific names. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Here's the thing: Nearly all of the names we were able to dig deeper on are published online anyway. The Chief U.S. Courts judge, a fellow named Roberts, God help us, really just seems to hate Sibley along with the rest of the legal establishment in DC and won't let him release and publish (the most important aspect, I believe, that right) them, hoping, Sibley said, to affect the outcome of the political elections. Can he? Will he? Should he?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's possible that the names are of people who rose since I last looked at them, I don't know, frankly, there were so many.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Where does that leave me? Yes, stuck in the middle, again, somewhere in Dante's limbo, on the outskirts of mortality.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Jeane never told me or Mr. Sibley to return that information, the files, the phone numbers, the scans of her phone bills, or anything at all. Neither has the Palfrey Estate in all of eight years. I believe their time is well up seeing that the phone records were probably released online at Jeane's bequest by Citizens for Legitimate Government, hence by Lori Price. It was never a great idea to put those phone bills online for the defense, but, I must add that the above parts of this paragraph are simply my conclusions and opinions, albeit very informed ones. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Are there more names of importance in the phone records? Why wouldn't they have been found already? I'm skeptical but might be induced to take another look, maybe, just maybe, if I cared enough to. It's mostly a closed door for me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I have communicated with Mr. Sibley recently. That being said, no, I'm staying mum out of respect.</span>Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-1903937753927556352014-11-04T12:37:00.001-05:002014-11-04T12:37:45.944-05:00Comments<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">I think commenting is working now. Fire away.</span>Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-37309657903084667662014-10-26T21:14:00.000-04:002014-10-26T21:47:14.478-04:00Clive Barker's Director's cut of Nightbreed (1990/2014)<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span>emory, as they say, and assay, is a strange and curious thing: it has a plasticity that somehow still conveys the truth of something while generously protecting the mind from the horrors and chaos of an uncaring universe, the human condition reduced to its essentials.</span> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Any literature aspiring to greatness is going to explore our peculiar predicament of being sentient in what appears to be a mindless cosmos; Clive Barker's additions to the canon, Blakean in their imagery & themes, invoking love (an expression of divinity) alongside corruption (the material world), are what high art is made of. (And as with the highest forms, he takes some of his <i>prima materia</i> from the lower depths.)</span> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">From sex, to politics, and religion, it's all about bodies and who controls them, but some of this is about remembering. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I was twenty-two when I saw Nightbreed at the theater in 1990 and had come wondering what the hell it was about since 20th Century Fox insisted that it be marketed as a slasher. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">When you're that young, you frankly don't know shit, yet paradoxically believe you know everything, you're molten, outside, unassimilated into society at that point--therefore, "dangerous." Obviously, I've changed a lot since then: now I know how little I know and knew then. At that time, romantic love meant everything to me, now, not so much, yet, life being circular, you tend to come back around to things. Experience leavens base innocence. Barker had a very ambitious agenda indeed when he attempted to foist his non-Manichean monster movie onto an unsuspecting American public used to a more black and white storytelling; what you had was a collision of "mindsets" (his term for it) about fictional monsters being fodder for militarized "heroes." In 1990, no one wanted to try to the understand the other whether they were human or a fictional monster. That should be a reminder that there are no others ultimately, and that the monsters we've conjured in storytelling are often mirrors of ourselves to get beyond that screen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Context being everything, this all came to a head on the eve of the first Gulf War when the public was being whipped into another cycle (see?) of hating the other; additionally, the movie was released just weeks after the illegal invasion of Panama. The Soviet Union was busy collapsing; German reunification occurred just three days before its release, the release of Nelson Mandela from prison after twenty-seven years, less than a week earlier. Old habits tend to continue on anyway, anachronistically.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The timing was bad on all fronts for Barker who was nobly spitting into the cultural trade winds with his film version of his 1988 novel<b><i> Cabal</i></b>: unfortunately, the suits at Morgan Creek wanted something more like <b><i>Hellraiser</i></b>, the idea of the monsters in a horror movie (really, a fantasy with elements of horror) being the good guys didn't sit well with them, and they rejected it as out of hand and demanded Barker make extensive cuts and reshoots. What it did was to place the psychotic psychiatrist character played by legendary cult director David Cronenberg more at the center of the story; they also demanded that there be more of an emphasis on the menacing qualities of the nightbreed. Not only did they miss the point of most classic monster movies, they just wouldn't listen to Barker, and so, what went out into the world was a confused fusion of his and their ideas. The good side is, they weren't able to remove the sympathy for the breed, outsiders all, but they did incredible harm to the love story between main characters Boone and Lori with all their meddling. A movie that cost $10 million--and a bargain for Morgan Creek at that--made less than nine, and that was that, it bombed, having an afterlife on cable and home video. Part of Barker's legend as a prodigy was that the total cost of Hellraiser had been under $1 million USD. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Say what you want, but he made an epic with his second film, and that's where the money people come in, and serendipitously perhaps, the themes in the original story material got underlined in real life. The failure haunted Barker for years.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The more jaded among us might see one reading the movie as a parable of the modern world crashing into the author's anachronistic fantasy world with sadly predictable results. Occasionally, the universe smiles and throws something unpredictable out there: a small but fundamental victory for the underdog. You could write an entire book on the themes in Nightbreed, from the content of the script, to the theatrical & final cuts, and the politics of the actual making (or, really, unmaking) of the movie itself. Nothing happens in a vacuum. In the end, the breed are history's losers, and conversely, winners, like the heretics of the world religions and every other kind of social rebel that ever lived under a repressive order.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> You cannot kill the truth. But in 1990, history seemed settled, that seemed to be that, the show was over, and there are very few second chances with motion pictures. Did I mention that homophobia was actually worse than it is today?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">However, a lot of us out here felt that something was missing from the theatrical cut, as evinced in the opening titles of that showed scenes which were cut. (Some still are, but now we're fortunate enough to have access to the outtakes in pristine condition.) Beginning with some of Barker's public statements and various rumors over the last twenty-four years, considerable force has been gaining for a new cut. I direct the reader to search out the story of the "Cabal cut" which made a final reconstruction of Barker's original vision possible, a convoluted tale in itself. After years of searching, an announcement was made last year that the lost film elements had finally been found in a storage warehouse in Dayton, Ohio. What was once the detritus of a lost vision had become a global cause via Internet outreach and public showings of the Cabal cut. By 2013, the stage was set and cinematic history was about to be rewritten, and that's a rare occasion. Shout Factory! has made good on that promise and beyond. Its message of universal love is central, but I believe the restoration is also about fixing a work of LGBT filmmaking that advocates the same message of acceptance as Richard Oswald's <b><i>Different from the Others</i></b> (<i>Anders als die Andern</i>, 1919), the first pro-gay movie in cinematic history. Both movies were damaged for ideological reasons.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">If Barker's Cabal and Nightbreed remind us of anyone in literature, it's <b>Arthur Machen</b>. Machen was a Welsh Catholic who, ironically enough, had an intense fear of forbidden sex, a </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">kind of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">ritual sex he was made aware of by fellow occultist and American expatriate <b>A. E. Waite</b>, co-author of what is still the most popular version of the Tarot. To be a Catholic in Britain at that time was considered a little eccentric. After Cornelius Agrippa, Waite was also the first to systematically catalog and study the Western inner tradition and was a sworn enemy of Aleister Crowley. When it comes to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, there's plenty of subversive sexuality, inside and outside of the magic circles. I'm not suggesting that Barker based Nightbreed on the politics of esoteric lodges, no, albeit a lodge of that sort could be considered a "cabal" of another kind. Here, we really could go on forever, because that's how the occult works, it's a rabbit hole. Similarly, the Gnostics and other religious minorities and sects were once smeared as sexual deviants; the pagan has been equated with homosexuality; accused witches were blamed for male impotency, and so on. Being different can be dangerous in human society. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The reason I mention Machen is that he wrote similarly weird tales that dealt with shunned races who fled underground from human society. That sounds just like the tale of any human outsider. But is it really metaphor when faced with the incredible fact that everyone who isn't African has a percentage of Neanderthal coursing through their veins? And not so long ago, the bones of "Hobbits" ("<i>homo floresiensis</i>") have been found in caves on an Indonesian island, suggesting that the human story and what constitutes human beings is plastic, always changing, and open to wide interpretation and revision, if not correction. The results of some of that pondering have been catastrophic, such as in the application of eugenics philosophy to social problems, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> first, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">in North America, and not much later, Shark Island and in Nazi Germany. Artistic truth can be funny in the way that it naturally draws our attention to these truths of the human experience. A lot of what happens in Nightbreed in its final cut has a lot to do with the first half of the 20th century and the legacy of a long history of genocide.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Machen wrote most of his incredible weird tales about "little people" (and worse) living underground--"where the monsters live." </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">"This folk," I translated to myself, "dwells in remote and secret places, and celebrates foul mysteries on savage hills. Nothing they have in common with men save the face, and the customs of humanity are wholly strange to them; and they hate the sun. They hiss rather than speak; their voices are harsh, and not to be heard without fear. ... But as I idly scanned the paragraph, a flash of thought passed through me with the violence of an electric shock: what if the obscure and horrible race of the hills still survived, still remained haunting wild places and barren hills, and now and then repeating the evil of Gothic legend, unchanged and unchangeable as the Turanian Shelta, or the Basques of Spain? (from "The Black Seal," 1895)</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Basques have been found to have an unusual genetic connection to the Neanderthal. Who are the monsters, and who are the humans? Only action and love as will can tell us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And now, my memory of Nightbreed is changed forever, and base metal has been transmuted to gold. Being human is to be in the process of remembering and forgetting. Nightbreed is about remembering where we've been.</span><br />
<br />Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-73340065473120679952014-10-25T22:48:00.001-04:002014-10-25T22:48:05.119-04:00comments section<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For some reason, comments are fucked up, having problem accessing them. I'm not ignoring you. If, for whatever reason (make it a logical one please), you want to vent your spleen: <b><span style="color: #ea9999;">mtthwjanovic007@gmail.com</span></b> .</span></span>Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-50567239819833153772014-10-23T16:17:00.001-04:002014-10-23T16:19:24.257-04:00"Dude, I just realized..." [insert conspiracy theory here]<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If indeed you are sane, you need to reply immediately that, "I don't give a shit about your stupid fucking opinions, or your goddamned speculations based on a staggering ignorance of our history and human nature, fuck you very much." This won't stop them. </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Stupidity needs an airing and wants to parade itself: "No, really," says the asshole that flunked out of history and barely passed civics. "This is REALLY important, it's the truth!"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"No, really, I'm not fucking around--I don't value your opinion about anything."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Feed a cold, starve a fever dream. When you respond to a conspiracy nut, you're giving them oxygen. The same goes for political opponents. Let them suffocate alone, in silence.</span></span></blockquote>
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Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-6345402713491126242014-10-20T16:39:00.000-04:002014-10-20T16:39:54.768-04:00Another old review of an important movie...<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you haven't seen it already, I recommend seeing Terry Gilliam's <i>The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus</i>. This one still gets a lot of hits: <a href="http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2010/01/imaginarium-of-dr-parnassus-2009-review.html">http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2010/01/imaginarium-of-dr-parnassus-2009-review.html</a></span><br />
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Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-1739034075177690532014-10-20T16:31:00.001-04:002014-10-20T16:33:00.786-04:00Still true...<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">You're never gonna see a dude, dudette, or anyone, walk into a party with a big bag of pot, and suddenly, yes, instantly, they all flock/sashay ostentatiously to that person/dude, dude(tte)s. Never. Unicorn time. Didn't happen, anywhere.</span></blockquote>
Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-89877294949188474262014-10-18T15:09:00.003-04:002014-10-18T15:09:29.730-04:00Nightbreed<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">A review of the director's cut is coming in a few days. </span></blockquote>
Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-9200982435094315272014-10-16T13:36:00.001-04:002014-10-16T18:28:45.051-04:00Seattle Socialist Sawant rips fellow city leaders for ‘brazen’ retreat with corporate execs<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/seattle-socialist-sawant-rips-fellow-city-leaders-for-brazen-retreat-with-corporate-execs/#.VEACEaNi38E.blogger">Seattle Socialist Sawant rips fellow city leaders for ‘brazen’ retreat with corporate execs</a></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><i>Postscript:</i></b> I visited Seattle in 2002 and found it boring. You can have it. People pay shitloads of money to live there? They're stupid, and of course, boring. There's nothing especially exciting about the place. I' do heroin too if I lived there--if you want to call it that.</span><br />
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Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-52989325093915638782014-10-14T20:55:00.001-04:002014-10-14T20:56:33.974-04:00Libertarian Senate candidate from Iowa dies in plane crash<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/libertarian-senate-candidate-from-iowa-dies-in-plane-crash/#.VD3F2aa30MM.blogger">Libertarian Senate candidate from Iowa dies in plane crash</a></blockquote>
Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-7689642285129587692014-10-14T13:00:00.002-04:002014-10-14T13:45:01.130-04:00Sears, RIP<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Who woulda thunk that once a libertarian hedge fund manager took over at the venerable American chain, applying his dumbo dinosaur ideology to the place (important note: make all of your employees who formerly worked together to make a business a success turn on each other, crucial, really...) would destroy it rapidly? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The genius just had to "loan" Sears $400 million to save face, and now, now, Sears has posted a "dinner ring" with a swastika on it. My grandfather is turning in his grave, right now.</span><br />
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Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-84318634362933835572014-10-13T16:17:00.001-04:002014-10-13T16:17:55.052-04:00Hello, Ukraine...<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I get a lot of hits from two nations: these here United States and the Ukraine. This started before I met a number of people from the Ukraine on Twitter and France is often a close third. I thank you all for your interest.</span></blockquote>
Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-59433321388300772052014-10-11T18:14:00.002-04:002014-10-11T18:14:40.165-04:00Arianna, my first play!<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><b>Ed.</b>-I never liked this stupid asshole, never trusted her. Giving someone like her a second chance was always gonna be a mistake...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><a href="http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2009/01/arianna-satirical-play-by-matt-janovic_31.html">http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2009/01/arianna-satirical-play-by-matt-janovic_31.html</a></span><br />
<br />Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-24341226831822070832014-10-09T14:22:00.002-04:002014-10-11T14:10:42.062-04:00Clive Barker's Nightbreed Director's cut<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I was one of the first thousand to preorder it. I saw the movie back in 1990 and wasn't entirely pleased with it. Warners billed it as something like a slasher at the time, which is not. What Nightbreed was and now is again is the Citizen Kane of monster movies where the tables are turned--or that's what it was supposed to be, an epic tale, a metaphor for discrimination against LGBT people, and much more, a lost classic now found and restored to its former glory before the suits got their hands on it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A comparison is in order here: This is like the achievement of a full restoration of the first gay-positive movie ever made, <i>Different from the Others</i> (Anders als die Andern, 1919, starring Conrad Veidt, the somnambulist from <i>The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari</i>) or <i>The Magnificent Ambersons </i>(1942), it is historic.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I should receive the set by this weekend or early next week. A sprawling review and reflection on the new cut is coming. I'll also be doing a similar essay on Breaking Bad as a cultural and historical phenomenon in time now that the series has concluded and the dust has settled a bit. Expect the unexpected.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><b>Postscript, 10.10.14:</b></i> It's arrived! This is going to take some time to digest, but I should have my first observations up in about a week. The set is pretty amazing and the new artwork for the 3-BD set is better than the promotional art at the time. David Cronenberg should be pleased, he gets more screen time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><b>10.11.14:</b></i> After watching the director's cut last night, I can say that we have a new classic. What's most surprising is how what Barker intended most is a great, epic love story, a tale of universal love. Nightbreed has finally arrived to the audience it was intended for all along. There are so many things to say about it, and I will shortly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Audio and video quality are superb--it looks & sounds vastly better than its theatrical debut which is saying something. Yes, David Cronenberg has more screen time. I won't be printing any spoilers. </span> <br />
<br />Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-12705294977232349542014-10-08T17:50:00.003-04:002014-10-09T13:34:08.753-04:00From 2008: Some observations on the WM3<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Ed.</b>-I've written on this case several times and am always amazed at the comments my observations have generated. Have I been wrong about the case in the past? You bet, and so were many observers. Read the comments. Many of them are interesting, a few very illuminating. My deceased maternal grandparents were from Arkansas. I have some unique views on the place and its very backwards culture.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2008/01/west-memphis-3-update-terry-wayne-hobbs.html">http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2008/01/west-memphis-3-update-terry-wayne-hobbs.html</a> </span>Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-42751014164142653962014-10-07T15:17:00.000-04:002014-10-07T15:18:09.652-04:00From 2010: "Why Alex Jones Will Live Forever"<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-alex-jones-will-live-forever.html">http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-alex-jones-will-live-forever.html</a></blockquote>
Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-58491462586933247372014-10-07T15:05:00.004-04:002014-10-07T15:13:30.026-04:00to my twitter pals...<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I'm here, I'm not queer, but I accept everybody who's thoughtful. Let's talk, if you want. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Postscript:</i> And I might add: yes, there is comments moderation, but fire away, I tend to post 99% of everything that comes my way. Besides those asserting the DC Madam was murdered--I will not respond to them beyond occasionally refuting their ridiculous assertions--I'll be happy to answer any questions about the case and my book account on it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And of course, if you want to put the word out there about this site, the case, and my book, you're welcome to. It will be greatly appreciated. The information on this blog and in the text serve the public interest. </span><br />
<br />Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-31643907459381788512014-10-07T14:51:00.001-04:002014-10-07T15:07:44.329-04:00Indiana trooper pulled over woman to ask if she’d accepted Jesus Christ as her savior: lawsuit<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/indiana-trooper-pulled-over-woman-to-ask-if-shed-accepted-jesus-christ-as-her-savior-lawsuit/#.VDQ2F2h_Jc4.blogger">Indiana trooper pulled over woman to ask if she’d accepted Jesus Christ as her savior: lawsuit</a></blockquote>
Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-82857583371186690402014-10-06T22:21:00.000-04:002014-10-06T22:21:19.164-04:00and another thing...After not doing so in any sustained sense, I'm going to start drawing again. I might post some results on here. Maybe. I'll be geeking out to horror movies for the rest of the month, among other things, besides taking my sweet niece Trick-or-Treating. The Autumn is my favorite season.<br />
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Additionally: Yes, it's banal, but we're taking things in for the winter. I have some celery to harvest, some eggplants, leeks, carrots, and brussel sprouts. Except for the first vegetable, most of these do well in the cold--at least for a time.Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-81806502888099952302014-10-06T22:13:00.000-04:002014-10-06T22:13:04.416-04:00Additional cinema website coming<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I've been thinking of doing this for a long time and now that time has come: a separate blog that will contain only observations and reviews of movies, the occasional doc-men-tar-y, animated work, & series. Beyond that, there are no rules, I'll do it at leisure and much of it will be my opinions on the state of the movie business. I haven't thought of a title yet, or even given it any thought, frankly, but I will in the next week. The standard American view is to assume that the industry is shielded from all of the problems we're all exposed to in mainstream economic life and somehow exists in its own space and time. It does not. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Making motion picutres has always been a raging battle against art & commerce. As with everything else, that battle is essentially over with capital winning. The old Hollywood studio system was a separate and organic industry at one time; that time is long gone & ended with the general collapse of the labor movement and the decline of the working class. It was always about spectacle, but now power expresses itself more fully, spectacle being all that's left now. There can be no doubt that the movies were always a pallative--an opiate to calm the masses from making the natural connections about their predicament & revolting--and they still are, indeed, more than ever. It's never been a pure thing, but there was a time when you could still make relatively subversive (to power) statements. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the United States at least, most of that maverick spirit died with Sam Peckinpah, and by the late 1970s, nearly all the major studios were being bought up by conglomerates. That process was basically completed by the early 1990s with the death of Orion Pictures, the last genuine independent distributor left standing by that point. (One of their final releases was George Romero's <i>The Dark Half</i>.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Don't get me wrong, the unions in the Hollywood system cut their own throats by a thousand cuts; but they're just as much victims. Right now, most of the computer animators are watching their own jobs evaporate to overseas labor pools. I'm sure that they never saw it coming. My question is, why?</span></blockquote>
Matt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32294008.post-7812250812643006862014-10-02T17:12:00.002-04:002014-10-02T17:12:15.447-04:00A'murkaMatt Janovichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02700158612127533221noreply@blogger.com0