Roger Scruton - On Islam and the West

Anti-Oedipus

But which is the revolutionary path? Is there one? – To withdraw from the world market, as Samir Amin advises Third World Countries to do, in a curious revival of the fascist "economic solution"? Or might it be to go in the opposite direction? To go further still, that is, in the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization? For perhaps the flows are not yet deterritorialized enough, not decoded enough, from the viewpoint of a theory and practice of a highly schizophrenic character. Not to withdraw from the process, but to go further, to "accelerate the process," as Nietzsche put it: in this matter, the truth is that we haven't seen anything yet

(Deleuze in Anti-Oedipus)

Refused -- Worms Of The Senses/Faculties Of The Skull

I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland

Jewish Sephardic wedding song from Morocco

Many beginnings, only one end

Noir Desir

One of the best bands of the 1990s will see its return later this year.

Anarchy in the UK

Les colchiques

Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s'empoisonne

Cause 'n Consequence

You talk too loud
You think too straight
You act too confident
You judge too soon

Poetry evaporates
Beauty distances
Reality reasons
Gods die

(Pope Pulci of Zhu Xie the 7th)

Ihr bringt mir alle die Dinge um...

Poverty of Words

I am so afraid of people's words.

They describe so distinctly everything:

And this they call dog and that they call house,

here the start and there the end.

I worry about their mockery with words,

they know everything, what will be, what was;

no mountain is still miraculous;

and their house and yard lead right up to God.

I want to warn and object: Let the things be!

I enjoy listening to the sound they are making.

But you always touch: and they hush and stand still.

That's how you kill.

(Rilke)

The man of the new century

Amusing predictions by american fashion designers from the 1930s of what the well-dressed man and woman would be wearing in the year 2000.

Lion versus Man in the 1920s

La sortie des usines Lumière

The 'plot' is outlined by the title: the film consists of a single shot of workers leaving the Lumiere factory, and the film would be of virtually no interest (except to students of late 19th century clothing) were it not for the fact that it was the first film ever to be projected to a paying audience, and is consequently one of the most important films in the history of the cinema (IMDB).

Children

The hapless child (performed by Michael Mantler) is inspired by the books of Edward Gorey.

The Labyrinth

(Piranesi's painting (could have been Escher's nightmare))

"... It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there may be no way out of the Labyrinth. Dennis Hollier in his book on George Bataille, points out that from Bacon to Leibniz the Labyrinth was linked with the desire to get out, and science was seen as the means to find an exit. Rejecting such an interpretation, Bataille suggested that its only effect was to transform the Labyrinth into a banal prison. The traditional meaning of the metaphor was reversed: one never knows whether one is inside or outside or not, since one cannot grasp it in one look. Just as language gives us words that encircle us but that we use in order to break their surround, the Labyrinth of experience was full of openings that did not tell whether they opened towards its outside or its inside.

(Tschumi)

Rain

We Ain't Got No Money, Honey, But We Got Rain

(Bukowski)

Definitions

“Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness”

(Mark Twain)

Disclaimer

Disclaimer from the book Evasion.

Wiki says:
"Evasion is a book that spun off from a zine of the same name. It was published by CrimethInc. in 2003. The book comprises 108 pages of slightly revised text from the original zine (95% of which is retained) along with 162 pages of new material.[1] The author is not named in the book, but is referred to elsewhere as "Mac", "the Evasion Kid", or "Mac Evasion." He later wrote a column in the zine heartattaCk and has been identified as "Nigel Davis" in one bibliography.[2]

Evasion catalogs the travels and exploits of a straight-edge vegan young man who decided to not get a job or go to school after high school, despite his parents' wishes. Deciding that his life, freedom, and time were too valuable to be wasted working in a job he would despise, to build profits for a company, he stepped outside of the confines of a traditional role in society."

Complete book online, here or with pictures here.

On Bullshit (by H.G. Frankfurt)

"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory..." (Frankfurt introduction to On Bullshit)

St. Augustine

"Suppose, then, we were wanderers, and could not live happily away from our homeland, and that we felt wretched in our wandering, and wishing to put an end to our misery, determined to return home. We find, however, that we need transport, either by land or sea, in order to reach our homeland, the object of our enjoyment. But the beauty of the country through which we pass, and the very pleasure of the motion, charm our hearts, and turning these things which we ought to use into objects of enjoyment, we become unwilling to hasten the end of our journey; and becoming engrossed in a factitious delight, our thoughts are diverted from that home whose delights would make us truly happy. Such is a picture of our condition in this life of mortality".

Green, R. P . H., ed, Augustine: De Doctrina Christiana, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1995, pp.15–6;