I Corrupt All Cops

Medieval Land Fun-Time World

Vietnam 1965 - 1975

Nauri

Who wants to throw the Zigendung?


Zigendung


That I want to throw in the sky


Sky


That it may let some water fall on me


some water


That the burned grass may grow a little


fresh grass


That my old cow may eat


Old cow


I want to kill her for the vultures there


The vultures there


That they may give me their feathers


feathers


Those I want to fix to my arrow


arrow


I want to hunt the enemy's oxen


oxen


to receive my wife


wife


That she may give me a child


child


that it may pick my lice


lice


that an old man I may go and die with them

Come on, and ride, in my muscle car

Camaro

Chevelle

Camino

Daytona

Trans Am

Mustang

Charger

GTO

To be governed

To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. 

Idée Générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle [The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century] (1851); Proudhon

Requiem for a Clown

“Finish in 20 minutes or you’re dead”

- the first rule of clowning.


Boris the Clown turned off the engine and sat in the car outside 3301 Forrester Avenue.

(listen to me, it don’t matter if the name stinks - what name comes up first when people type Chicago Children’s Clown into Google? That’s right, Boris the fucking Clown, that’s who.)

A high pitched wail drifted out of the dark brick bungalow. It was quickly joined by another, an octave above. Girl screams. Boris sighed, the order form had said it was Sasha’s 5th birthday. Wasn’t Sasha a boys name? It had been when he was young, oi! imagine if he had told Sasha Ivanovich in 4th grade that he had a girl’s name? Boris smiled, he would have beat me bloody.The smile faded. Well, beat me bloody more often.

Another banshee joined the chorus. Boy parties were more trouble than girl parties, but girls were screamers. And these were drilling right into the fifth of Zubrowka vodka that was sitting inside Boris’ head. As he closed his eyes against the screams, he remembered the reason for his hangover and the smile returned.

(so you want the name, the website boristheclown.com, the outfit, the wig, the client list, the blacklist. All of it... and you’ll pay me how much?)

The signed contract sat on the dashboard. But this gig at Forrester Avenue had been paid in advance. Once he was done here he would put the contract in the mailbox. Boris picked up a small suitcase off the back seat and walked up to the house. He pushed the doorbell and waited. Maybe they didn’t hear it. He raised his hand again.

The door opened on a small dark-haired WASP woman. There it was - the classic three stage reaction. Shock at the appearance of a grease-painted man with an orange wig; then recognition that this was the clown she had ordered on-line two months ago; and finally pity, at seeing a grown man dressed that way. It was the pity that always stung.

She recovered quicker than most. “Ah, Mr Sokolov, please come in.”

Boris smiled at the mangled pronunciation. “Please, call me Boris.”

She smiled back. “Thanks Boris, I’m Sarah, Sasha’s mom. They’re all in the living room.”

The screams redoubled when he entered, all eyes fixed on his outfit and wig. Boris worked his way through the maelstrom of pigtails and tiny fists and set down his suitcase on the table. He looked at the clock - 3:30pm on the dot. There was no point calling for attention, the best thing he had learnt was just to start. He launched into his routine.

The screaming stopped immediately. Boris glanced up from where he was pulling a rope of knotted handkerchiefs out of his fist, worried that the kids had all disappeared into thin air. But he saw something even more incredible, they were watching him. Each face rapt with attention at his every move.

The deafening silence attracted the parents from the kitchen who gathered at the back of the room to watch his schtick. But it was no longer schtick, it was a performance. Everything worked perfectly - the timing, the sleight of hand. He wasn’t just interesting, he was leading them by the nose, telling them what emotions they should be feeling - happy, curious, worried, relieved. They were hooked.

Boris looked back at the clock - 3:50pm. He had to stop. But the upturned faces stared at him in fascination. Even the smirks on the adults had been replaced by broad smiles. He had captured them, like he had captured his first audience all those years ago. That first hot shot of acting that convinced him he had to live his life on the stage. That half-forgotten thrill, like seeing an old lover again for the first time in years, crept up his spine. He had to hold this moment. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a deck of cards.

“Take a card, any card,” he gestured to the nearest girl. “But don’t show me.”

She grinned and drew one out. Boris’ heart pounded. Now for the grand finale.

Like a shark swimming up behind its prey, a small girl had circled around Boris, her dorsal fin sliding below his peripheral vision.

“And now I predict... ” Boris began.

With a swift jab, the shark behind Boris lashed out and jabbed his left knee. The knee that Sasha Ivanovich had broken all those years ago; that was held together by small strands of sinew and cartilage.

Boris collapsed, the house of cards in his hands flying out over the audience - every one of them was a seven of diamonds.

The spell broke. The children leapt up and started throwing the cards at each other. The smirks had returned to the lips of the parents. Jabbing needles shot up through Boris’ body as he knelt on the carpet. The pain matched only by the humiliation of his failed act.

Sarah walked over to him and took him by the arm, helping him stand.

“Oh dear, I’m so sorry Boris, I didn’t see little Sasha there behind you. Are you OK?”

Boris gritted his teeth as he stood and looked at the mock sincerity behind the smile. “I’m fine, I’m fine. That was how I meant it to end. Ha, little bubelah - she’ll be a performer herself one day.”

Sarah beamed at the fake praise.

Boris walked out the front door and limped back to the car. Slumping into the front seat he tore off the wig and threw it onto the floor. He picked up the contract sitting in front of him. It was the end of the shame, the ridicule. But still, he’d had them, hadn’t he? Even if it was just for a moment?

The grease paint stained the paper as Boris sat and stared at it for a long time.

A Piece of Steak - Jack London

With the last morsel of bread Tom King wiped his plate clean of the last particle of flour gravy and chewed the resulting mouthful in a slow and meditative way. When he arose from the table, he was oppressed by the feeling that he was distinctly hungry. Yet he alone had eaten. The two children in the other room had been sent early to bed in order that in sleep they might forget they had gone supperless. His wife had touched nothing, and had sat silently and watched him with solicitous eyes. She was a thin, worn woman of the working-class, though signs of an earlier prettiness were not wanting in her face. The flour for the gravy she had borrowed from the neighbor across the hall. The last two ha'pennies had gone to buy the bread.

He sat down by the window on a rickety chair that protested under his weight, and quite mechanically he put his pipe in his mouth and dipped into the side pocket of his coat. The absence of any tobacco made him aware of his action, and, with a scowl for his forgetfulness, he put the pipe away. His movements were slow, almost hulking, as though he were burdened by the heavy weight of his muscles. He was a solid-bodied, stolid-looking man, and his appearance did not suffer from being overprepossessing. His rough clothes were old and slouchy. The uppers of his shoes were too weak to carry the heavy resoling that was itself of no recent date. And his cotton shirt, a cheap, two-shilling affair, showed a frayed collar and ineradicable paint stains.

But it was Tom King's face that advertised him unmistakably for what he was. It was the face of a typical prize-fighter; of one who had put in long years of service in the squared ring and, by that means, developed and emphasized all the marks of the fighting beast. It was distinctly a lowering countenance, and, that no feature of it might escape notice, it was clean-shaven. The lips were shapeless, and constituted a mouth harsh to excess, that was like a gash in his face. The jaw was aggressive, brutal, heavy. The eyes, slow of movement and heavy-lidded, were almost expressionless under the shaggy, indrawn brows. Sheer animal that he was, the eyes were the most animal-like feature about him. They were sleepy, lion-like - the eyes of a fighting animal. The forehead slanted quickly back to the hair, which, clipped close, showed every bump of a villainous-looking head. A nose, twice broken and moulded variously by countless blows, and a cauliflower ear, permanently swollen and distorted to twice its size, completed his adornment, while the beard, fresh-shaven as it was, sprouted in the skin and gave the face a blue-black stain.
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Symphonie Fantastique

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

The Haymarket Martyrs

On May 1, 1886, Albert Parsons, head of the Chicago Knights of Labor, led 80,000 people through the city’s streets in support of the eight-hour day. In the next few days they were joined nationwide by 350,000 workers who went on strike at 1,200 factories, including 70,000 in Chicago.

On May 3, August Spies, editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers Newspaper), spoke at a meeting of 6,000 workers, and afterwards many of them moved down the street to harass scabs at the McCormick plant. The police arrived, opened fire, and killed four people, wounding many more.

On May 4, Spies, Parsons, and Samuel Fielden were speaking at a rally of 2,500 people held to protest the police massacre when 180 police officers arrived, led by the Chicago police chief. While he was calling for the meeting to disperse a bomb exploded, killing one policeman. The police retaliated, killing seven of their own in the crossfire, plus four others; almost two hundred were wounded. The identity of the bomb thrower remains unknown.

On June 21, 1886, eight labor leaders, including Spies, Fielden, and Parsons went on trial, charged with responsibility for the bombing. The trial was rife with lies and contradictions, and the state prosecutor appealed to the jury: “convict these men, make an example of them, hang them, and you save our institutions.”

Even though only two were present at the time of the bombing (Parsons had gone to a nearby tavern), seven were sentenced to die, one to fifteen years imprisonment. The Chicago bar condemned the trial, and several years later Governor John P. Altgeld pardoned all eight, releasing the three survivors (two of them had had their sentences reduced from hanging to life imprisonment).

On November 11, 1886, four anarchist leaders were hanged; Louis Lingg had committed suicide hours before. Two hundred thousand people took part in the funeral procession, either lining the streets or marching behind the hearses.

Unfortunately, the events surrounding the execution of the Haymarket martyrs fueled the stereotype of radical activists as alien and violent, thereby contributing to ongoing repression.

Over the years the remains of many deceased or martyred radicals, among them Emma Goldman, Bill Hayward, and Joe Hill, were deposited at the Haymarket Monument in Chicago, where seven of the eight men on trial lie buried. Ever since that time, in almost every country except one (guess which?) May 1 has been honored as International Workers Day.

The internationalization (if not “globalization”) of the Haymarket legacy was apparent two days after the hangings when José Martí, leader of Cuba’s struggle for independence from Spain, who was then living in exile in New York, wrote a detailed, emotion-filled report of the events leading up to the executions. Full of analysis, his article entitled “A Terrible Drama” appeared on January 1, 1888, in the Argentine paper La Nación, published in Buenos Aires. Early on in his piece he notes:

“Frightened by the growing power of the plain people, by the sudden coming together of the working masses (previously held back by the rivalries of their leaders), by the demarcation of two classes within the population — the privileged and the discontented (the latter a thorn in the side of European high society) — the republic determined to defend itself with a tacit covenant, a complicity whereby criminal action is triggered by the authorities’ misdeeds as much as by the fanaticism of the accused, in order to use their example to terrify — not by means of pain directly visited upon the rabble, but by the fearsome revival of the hangman’s hood.”

At the end of his long article José Martí quoted from the Arbeiter-Zeitung issued on the day of the executions:

“We have lost a battle, unhappy friends, but we will see in the end an ordered world that conforms to justice: we will be wise like the serpent and quiet like the dove.”

In our own time the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano has commented on “A Terrible Drama” (in his Memories of Fire, vol. II):

“The scaffold awaited them. They were five, but Lingg got up early for death, exploding a dynamite cap between his teeth. Fischer was seen unhurriedly humming the ‘Marseillaise.’ Parsons, the agitator who used the word like a whip or a knife, grasps the hands of his comrades before the guards tie his own behind his back. Engel, famous for his sharp wit, asks for port wine and then makes them all laugh with a joke. Spies, who so often wrote about anarchism as the entrance into life, prepares himself in silence to enter into death.

“The spectators in the orchestra of the theater fix their view on the scaffold — a sign, a noise, the trap door gives way, now they die, in a horrible dance, twisting in the air. [Here he quotes Martí.]



“José Martí wrote the story of the execution of the anarchists in Chicago. The working class of the world will bring them back to life every first of May. That was still unknown, but Martí always writes as if he is listening for the cry of a newborn where it is least expected.”

The Tyrant Lists: Tacitus' Obituary of Petronius

According to Tacitus, Petronius' last act was to send to Nero a list of the latter's sexual partners and activities. Petronius' list in Annals 16 illuminates the structure of the Book, which conveys the tyranny of Nero's last years as a list of deaths and punishments. The nature of these lists—series of elements whose connection their authors decline to spell out—mirrors the arbitrary nature of imperial power under Nero and Domitian, which punishes according to no legitimate judicial logic. Tacitus' interest in Petronius extends beyond the latter's list to his function as Nero's elegantiae arbiter, a seemingly superficial position that Tacitus suggests actually illustrates the important function of pleasure in the principate.

I always get Bertrand Russell and George Bernand Shaw mixed up

George Shaw

Bertrand Russell

Tse Tsan-tai

Born in Sydney, Australia, Tse Tsan-tai was one of the earliest Chinese revolutionaries of the late Qing Dynasty. Tse was the first Chinese to fly an airship, China in 1899. His book The Chinese Republic: Secret History of the Revolution (中華民國革命秘史), published in 1924 by the South China Morning Post, of which he was co-founder, is an important source of studies on the anti-Qing revolution.

Battle of the Yalu River

http://www.navyandmarine.org/ondeck/1894yalubattle.htm

This was a war whose origins lay in the Korean question. In the Tientsin Convention of 1885 Japan and China had averted a war that had seemed probable by agreeing to withdraw their troops from Korea , where both parties had been building up sizeable contingents in Seoul , and by agreeing that if either country's future interests required intervention in Korea then the other country was to be forewarned and permitted to dispatch a comparable number of troops. In 1894 there occurred a rebellion in Korea in which the rebels defeated the regular army. The Korean king appealed to his suzerain power (China) to come to his aid. China responded , and fulfilled its treaty obligations by informing Japan of the dispatch of 2000 troops to Seoul. Japan reacted by occupying Pusan and Chemulpo. China restored the situation in Korea and recommended joint evacuation of the Chinese and Japanese armies , but the Tokyo government resisted , having grown nervous at the weakness of Korea and the prospect of other nations (including European ones) intervening in what she considered her essential sphere of interest. Japan asked China to initiate a number of reforms within Korea , to which China replied indignantly that the affairs of Korea were of no concern to Japan. Thus the two empires slid into war . . .

It was a short war lasting a total of 8 months

Captain Togo attacked a Chinese transport fleet in which 1200 soldiers and sailors perished. On land there was a 2-pronged attack: After the Battle of Pyongyang (15 Sep 1894) the First Japanese Army advanced northwest into Manchuria , while the Second Japanese Army landed on the Liaotung Peninsular , 24th October 1894 . They joined forces 6th March 1895 to annihilate the Chinese at Tienchuangtai.

The Chinese Navy was defeated at the Battle of the Yalu (Sep 1894) and Wei-Hai-Wei (besieged and surrendered February 1895).

With the Shantung peninsular occupied China sued for peace.

Kowloon Cricket Club

Take me back to those concrete streets

Hong Kong street art

We sail tonight for Hong Kong

Looking for the Magic

Watch of the Week - Seiko 7a28-710A

It’s 1982. The Commodore 64 8-bit home computer is launched in the USA. Heuer are still making watches like the digital Chronosplit and the Swiss watch industry is being stabbed to death with quartz crystals. But, even though some people think it is acceptable to wear a watch that is also a calculator, a compass, a barometer and a TV combined, there is a sense that digital watches aren’t quite where it is at anymore. And that’s where Seiko – as they so often do – come in.

Now, I know some watchie people are sniffy about Seiko. But it’s hard to be convincingly rude about a brand that makes one of the most accurate movements in the world (the 9F series – that’s +/- 10 sec pa) and that not only grows its own quartz crystals, but ages them for three months to maximise stability. If that ain’t a manufacture movement, I don’t know what is.

Back in the early ‘80s, Seiko decided that all this LCD technology was splendid, but how about building an analogue quartz chronograph? One that didn’t go ‘beep’ and flash a lot of scrolling numbers at you. So, being Seiko, that’s what they did. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the very first analogue quartz chronograph.

They weren’t shy either. Contemporary ads proclaimed “Watch history being made” and with the watch photographed against the dashboards of Porsche 911s and Ur Quattros, it was clear Seiko were pitching it high. And they didn’t mess about. The 7a series does that wonderful Seiko thing of seeming simple but actually being eye-wateringly impressive. Let’s start with the movement…

The last unreformed parliament

This is a map of the results from the last election to the UK House of Commons before the passing of the Great Reform Act; which started to move towards making Britain a true democracy. This might make no sense to people outside the UK, so I'm going to explain the UK electoral system at the time. There was (and technically still are, it only effects election expenses) two type of seats: "County" seats that predominantly represented the rural, wealthy land-owning elites and "Borough" seats, which represented towns. There wasn't a real approach in creating boroughs: they were randomly created by the King to provide a reward to towns. Many of these were enfranchised in the 14th-16th Century; and the towns that they represented died soon after but they still got two MPs in Parliament. The only reason for disenfranchisement was corruption. This led to a situation where you had seats in so-called "Rotten Boroughs" bought and sold: fathers would control a seat and pass it on to their sons; with no real chance in being defeated. The biggest example of this is Old Sarum which held a right to elect two MPs to parliament despite the fact that the town died out due to the construction of Salisbury around about the time that in was enfranchised. By this election in 1831; it had an electorate of 7; all landowners who resided somewhere else. Bear in mind that big cities like Birmingham didn't have a right to elect any MPs. The unreformed parliament is really interesting; especially since it was a den of corruption for hundreds of years (most of the little dots in Cornwall were created by Henry VIII to guarantee a parliamentary majority; and were usually hamlets by that time and were universally disenfranchised by the reform act - in 1831: Cornwall only elected 2 MPs less than the whole of Scotland! In England; the Tories seem to have 3 county seats: the rest are in rotten boroughs that had been bought over time; and were eliminated by the next election,

Its also interesting to see the amount of Tories in Scotland and Wales: that's because the County Franchise in England was 40 shillings of property: while in Scotland it was 40 shillings adjusted to inflation; meaning that many Whig voters not part of the landed elite couldn't vote. There's also a weird thing in Scotland were there were sets of twinned counties that only elected seats to alternate parliaments; which created a silly situation where bits of Scotland simply didn't have MPs for a whole parliament!

Roald Dahl

http://www.roalddahl.com/roald-dahl/timeline/1940s

After four months in hospital following his crash in Libya, Roald rejoins 80 Squadron at the Elevsis aerodrome, near Athens, Greece. This time he is flying a Mark 1 Hurricane. Roald describes arriving to join his Squadron in Going Solo and learning that his plane is one of only 15 Hurricanes left in Greece.

He says: "To some extent I was aware of the military mess I had flown in to. I knew that a small British Expeditionary Force, backed up by an equally small air force, had been sent to Greece from Egypt a few months earlier to hold back the Italian invaders, and so long as it was only the Italians they were up against, they had been able to cope. But once the Germans decided to take over, the situation immediately became hopeless."

In April, Roald and the other 11 remaining members of 80 Squadron took part in The Battle of Athens, led by Flight-Lieutenant Pat Pattle, who Roald describes in Going Solo as "a legend in the RAF." The Battle of Athens destroyed five of 80 Squadron's Hurricanes and took the lives of four of their pilots, including that of Pat Pattle.

The Dark Tower

More than 25 Million Poems about the Midwest

http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue113/poems/best.html

the chicago weatherman: he lied again. who can we trust if our tv’s can’t
lop off anything vestigial. the ritual of circumcision &
so what if the previous night had been black as a murder
within itself, coiling in that unexpected way. & then
a flatlander who’s running & plotting against all rationale.
it must. but listen: the midwest is filed with years of wrong impressions.