Cute Dog Sneezing (2127 A.D.?): A.K.A. "being outside in the sunlight to smell a magical cure for spring"

Dear Laws of Dickheads:

As you can see, that which:

A) talks the talk,

B) walks the walk, and,

C) squawks the squawk,

Can be properly be called:

A) an unoriginal, 

B) an a-hole-space monkey, 

C) A slob-dobbler (ca. 1990 "knob-gobbler").

Your paltry and simplistic output has lasted for years....years!!  And you have, what?  Resigned yourself to splotchy blurbs with nary a Neanderthal pun in which to find something, anything, that is, shall we say, intelligent, or at the very least, "sharp?"

Get with it, shysters.  Faith is gonna move ya.  Brothers gonna work it out.  God Save the Queen!

You runt-nuts!!  Dare I say:  Russian warship, go fuck yourself!  Get, with it, "blog!!"  Do some ding-a-ling à la a no-bling, flava flav, 'larm clock:  Wake up, bitches!!!  Wake the fuck up!!!"

And so on.  Word to the wise, shit-heels:  Stop phoning it in.   At least have the balls and realpolitik 'nuff to know ya gotta make some bank, yo.

And, oh yeah, at the top of this page there's this weird, looped image of what appears to be a so-called "Border Collie" sneezing, with a demeanor that betrays a feeling somewhere between cute chagrin and total terror.  The striated B+W, 1970's TV-like image could come from 1957, 2047, or today, but it's a transmission, baby, and it was beamed into my head by the pedophile "coronavirus cabal" that has infiltrated the world:  the G-7, NATO, the Bilderbergs, the CIA, FBI, KGB, Star Fleet, the Deep State, the Scottish Rite, the Order of the Arrow, the Rotarians, the UN, etc. et. al. ad nauseum.

Remember, I love you.  But these other chain-yankers do not.  By any means necessary, one way or the other, you must survive this war, and well, so far, you have been getting your asses kicked six ways to Sunday by the brutal boot-heel of everyday living.  Simple shit.

Like I said:  You suck.  Your blog sucks.  Your life sucks.  Close up shop.  STFU.  Give it up, wusses.

Kind Regards,
Théophile Prades
Beaupuy, France

Gerda Meyerhof: émigrée, photographer, friend to the Whole Sick Crew

W.A.S.T.E

One Matthew Cissell made his post a p-post, he posted to the the p-list, a Pynchon mailing list, about our interview with Tod Perry: Cissell was looking for info about Gerda Meyerhof and to what extent she and her husband's home functioned as a kind of informal literary salon during Pynchon's days in NYC just after graduating from Cornell.

Cissell didn't get any responses.

So, I've linked to his message here in the hopes that someone might come across this post and be able to answer his question.  His email can be found at the original post.

If you know something, do be a dear and help Matthew about.  If I can reach Mr. Perry, I'll ask him.  We'll see....

Here's the query in full:

Hello p-listers,

I know folks are gearing up for the BtZ read, which I'll have to sit out,
but I come to you with a query.

   In an interview with the good people at the Laws of Silence blog, Tod
Perry (a former classmate of Pynchon's and part of the Whole Sick Crew)
stated that:

 " On the East side we had other amusements.  And there was the fabulous
table and hospitality of Hans + Gerda Meyerhof.  They entertained a really
amazing group of intellectuals from CCNY and Columbia and elsewhere--art
historians, scholars, artists.  Often we had dinner there, Dick, Kirk, Tom,
Bob, Robin.  Frau Meyerhof sometime shook her head and said it was like
listening to a convention of the poetic plumbers.


  This piqued my interest, so I started looking and found Gerda and Hans
Meyerhof in New York (census record 1940, though the records have her
living in Queens at the time). I also came across reference to a young
jewish gal who was helping some famous photographers before coming over to
the US. This same Gerda Meyerhof was visted by the writer Martin Beradt.
Gerda eventually moved back to Europe (Switzerland) and her photography is
still noted.

  IT sounds like she and her husband had a small literary salon of a sorts,
or at least a place where some german jewish refugees visited.. This
interesting because literary salons were, to some extent, leaving houses
and arising in bars like the White Horse or San Remo.

I am pretty confident that this is the same Gerda Meyerhof. I find it
interesting that she was a photographer; perhaps this is where the young
Pynchon first started to think about light and cameras?

Can any New York Greenwich Village historians help out?

Thanks
MC

There goes the neighborhood

Friday I posted (bit actually wrote on March 5, 2021) about the minor brouhaha over the stage design of the 2021 CPAC.  Seems it was basically the Odal rune (ᛟ), a symbol used by a variety of SS units and subsequently a number of white supremacist groups.  Intentional or not, the appearance of a symbol favored by Nazis is sadly appropriate for an event in which Trump is the star of the show.  We'll get back to the Odal.

This morning I read in WaPo about a bit of a kerfuffle in Linden, NC.  Apparently, the Parkers Grove United Methodist Church, strapped for cash, sold their church building last year.  They are now mortified that the buyer is a Neo-Pagan group called the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA).

The AFA has been called a "hate group" and a "white supremacist group".  I don't know to what degree they are hateful, but they are certainly all for separation of the races.  They claim to support any ethnic group which strives to develop their people in matters both of the spirit and the world, and for all I know, they do.  But it's hard to read their views and feel a benign vibe.

Their Declaration of Purpose is clear about their agenda (from Pt. II "The preservation of the Ethnic European Folk and their continued evolution"):

If the Ethnic European Folk cease to exist Asatru would likewise no longer exist. Let us be clear: by Ethnic European Folk we mean white people....All native religions spring from the unique collective soul of a particular race. Religions are not arbitrary or accidental; body, mind and spirit are all shaped by the evolutionary history of the group and are thus interrelated. Asatru is not just what we believe, it is what we are. Therefore, the survival and welfare of the Ethnic European Folk as a cultural and biological group is a religious imperative for the AFA. (Boldface added)

So, that's pretty clear; they want to preserve and advance the spiritual and material welfare of white people.  I also emphasized a second sentence to show that they conflate their spiritual identity with their ethnic identity.  They reject Christianity one supposes not so much for its theology and teachings, but because it is alien; it is the spirituality of another race.

Pt. 4 of their Statement of Ethics ("The Family Principle") reiterates this concern for white people:

We in Asatru support strong, healthy white family relationships. We want our children to grow up to be mothers and fathers to white children of their own. We believe that those activities and behaviors supportive of the white family should be encouraged while those activities and behaviors destructive of the white family are to be discouraged.

Miscegenation, it would appear, isn't one of their favorite things.  Clearly for Asatru, white people should marry white people and have white children.  This concern for "keeping the numbers high" is a pretty common anguish among the alt-right, and there's a lot of hand-wringing over declining birth rates among whites in Europe versus the much higher birthrates among immigrants from Africa, the Maghreb, and Asia. Changing demographics terrify these people.

Asatru's ultimate concern for having kids is quite simply a reflection of the alt-right's obsession with maintaining a white majority in Europe and the USA.  Or a least making sure there are enough white people to maintain the machine with white people at the helm.  Having kids is about maintaining the privilege of being in the dominant group.  The US today is one of de facto white supremacy in its political and financial institutions and its assumptions of white cultural and moral superiority.  Why?  How do we know we are superior?

Because Gott Mit Uns - God with us - or so it says on the Wehrmacht belt buckle sitting on the table next to me.  Because In God We Trust, and God Bless America and God is my co-Pilot. Groups in power have always sought to justify their actions by linking themselves with the gods, or to God.  Manifest Destiny.  This hasn't gone particularly well for Africans and Native Americans.

Enter again the Odal rune.  

Continuing my visit to the AFA website, runestone.org, I clicked onto the "Kindreds" page (the Kindreds are local groups affiliated with the AFA). What immediately caught my eye was a picture of Kindreds Coordinator Jason Gallagher.  He sports a prominent Odal rune pendant. Continuing through the page, one can also see that least 5 flags of regional Kindreds also feature the Odal rune:  Wisconsin, British Columbia, Minnesota, Colorado....

Detail from the Vedrfolnir Clan flag; Wisconsin

But so what? The runes themselves aren't inherently evil.  Heck, even the swastika was a universal symbol of all things good until the Nazis turned it on an angle and ruined it perhaps forever.  One can't tar the entire Neo-Pagan world, and one can't even tar the Odinist and Teutonic groups with the racist brush due to others.  True, there have been a lot of overtly racist groups within these spheres, long a source of frustration for those groups who aren't.  Unfortunately one can't say this about the AFA.  Their mission statement is unambiguous, as is their whites only policy

As much as anything is logical regarding white supremacy, rejecting Christianity in favor of Norse mythology makes sense.  Christianity is a Romanized Mystery religion born from a non-white Semitic people.  But through an impressive feat of mental gymnastics, the spiritual racist can turn to a Christian identity-based congregation.  These churches racialize Christianity, and make Europeans the true Israelites and descendants of Abraham, Isaac, et. al., whereas the Jews are the cursed offspring of Cain.  They are openly white supremacist.  Yet despite the symbolism, we'd never mistake such a group as an accurate representation of Christianity as a whole.  The same would go for Neo-Paganism.  The racist spirituality of the AFA shouldn't be taken to represent any kind of other pagan group, whether they venerate Norse, Celtic, or Germanic gods.  Heck, neo-Pagans have it tough enough already; being branded as Satanists is bad enough.  Racists too?

One local reverend said local residents are disturbed by the group’s white supremacist beliefs. “But at the same time, it’s safe to say they may be either as concerned or possibly more concerned about the group’s pagan beliefs,” he said.  At least one African-American resident interviewed seemed nonplussed about the group's white supremacy and in fact, doesn't associate with non-Christians anyway.

I don't think this incident in any way sheds light on the CPAC / Odal "controversy," but it is a nifty example of how a frequency phenomenon begins. Go through life never having heard of an Odal, and it comes up twice in 2 days, an interesting billboard along the trail beginning with the CPAC conference and ending passing the Asatru "whites-only" church. 

It seems that every day I see a headline about the threat posed to American security by white supremacist and other far-right groups.  The risk of terrorism from a white "identitarian" is as likely if not more likely than from a Jihadist, so they say.

I'd say it's worth shedding a bit of light on this area of the American demographic.  The extreme fringes of the right and the alt-right are not some monolithic group, but a spectrum of groups with a varying degrees of radical beliefs.  The Tea Party movement is a part of it, moving through Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and more extreme and overtly racist groups. Charlottesville, the the tiki torches reminiscent of Nazi night parades, the chanting, the fisticuffs:  You will not replace us!  Who's "you?" And who's "us?"  "Make America Great Again!"

25/02  Found I'd never published this one. I suppose it's because I never finished.  I don't think I will, just publish it as is....

"Russian warship, go f--- yourself!" (a.k.a. "Nuts!")

I.

December 22, 1944.  Battle of the Bulge.  German General Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz attacks the 101st Airborne with a superior force and issues an ultimatum (excerpted):

To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.

There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.

         The German Commander.

The response of General Anthony McAuliffe:

          To the German Commander.

NUTS!

The American Commander.

The 101st held off the Germans for two days until relieved by the 4th Armored Division.  Those dudes had Nuts....

II.

February 25, 2021.  Invasion of Ukraine.  A Russian warship confronts 13 Ukrainian border guards stationed on Zmiinyi (Snake) Island:

“This is a Russian military warship. I suggest you lay down your weapons and surrender to avoid bloodshed and needless casualties. Otherwise, you will be bombed.”

 The Ukrainian response:

"Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

The 13 border guards were all killed.  (Or were they?  27/02:  The guards may have in fact been captured and taken to Sevastopol...Good news for the guards, but the propaganda value is somewhat diminished.  Dying for one's country against unwinnable odds, Russian ruthlessness....There's a good lesson here.  In war, truth is often the first casualty.  Gonna have to hold my tongue a few days before reacting to news from Ukraine, perhaps.  Also, the article to which I've linked says many people are comparing the "Russian warship" riposte to McAuliffe's "Nuts!"  I knew I wouldn't be the only one to grok that....)

III.

13 guards on a 40-acre island.  It shows both the ruthlessness we can expect from Russian forces and the Ukrainian resolve to resist the invaders.  Apparently Ukrainian troops are putting up stiff resistance and have repulsed more than one Russian incursion.  Thousands of ordinary men and women are taking up arms.  I saw an interview with Ukrainian MP Kira Rudik who said she and her staff were armed and ready to fight.  In another interview ex-President Petro Poroshenko said Ukraine will never surrender and showed CNN the Kalashnikov he will use to participate in the defense of Kyiv.  President Zelensky has urged citizens to start making Molotov cocktails.

Sadly, without heavy artillery and air support, the vastly outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainians have little chance of defeating the Russians.  But one never knows.  The Afghanis and Chechens proved superior firepower doesn't always ensure an easy victory over partisans with the will to fight.  Many Russians are aghast at Putin's invasion, and I'll bet many soldiers aren't that enthusiastic either.  And the Ukrainians don't want to live under the yoke of a Russian autocrat.

Ukraine has been described as corrupt, and the government has been heavy-handed with separatists in its eastern regions.  But the Ukrainian people clearly don't want to be occupied by the Russians and, while many have fled, many are gearing up to fight.  If and when the Russians force a military surrender, they can expect heavy losses to the citizen partisans who appear ready to die for their autonomy.  It's not Zelensky and the government I support, but the people who'd rather die than live under foreign domination.  Vive la Résistance!

Russia has just indicated a willingness to talk.  Maybe all Russia wants is to force Ukraine to abandon its desire to join the EU and NATO.  Maybe it's the first country on Putin's wish-list of countries to annex.  Russia might be coming to the table because Ukraine's military has performed better than expected.  Maybe seeing the people arming themselves has made them realize subduing Ukraine will require significant civilian, and Russian, casualties.  A lot of Russian soldiers may be hesitant to kill people who are in many ways their cousins.

One can argue that if the Allies had opposed Hitler from the get-go, after annexing Austria, WW2 could have been avoided.  Perhaps by stopping Putin now another European war can be avoided.  One hopes that Ukrainian military and civilian resistance, an unwillingness to kill large numbers of Ukrainians, and domestic dissent in Russia will make Putin reconsider.  Maybe the willingness to negotiate is another ruse.  Russia has been lying about its intentions up until and since the moment they actually invaded.

Maybe logic is something we can't even apply here.  Putin is either crazy like a fox, a "genius" as his biggest fan Comrade Trumpsky calls him, or he is, quite simply....Nuts.

P.S.  I'd be remiss not to mention the Ukrainian woman who went up to Russian soldiers and offered them sunflower seeds to carry around.  Sounds sweet.  Until she told them that the reason is so that flowers may bloom on the spot where they die.  That's Nuts in a nutshell.

Hits from the Bong

So, after visiting the Café Bong are you hungrier than before entering? 

And yes I know I'm being sophomoric.  Tell you what though, the what I think was called Hanoi coffee, with sugar and concentrated milk, was one of the oddest-tasting coffees I've ever had....Not bad, mind you, but unusual for this palate....

Reminds me of the old urban legend that Taco Bell once had an ad that said "At the sound of the bong make a run for the border."  I wish it were true!

Union of the Snake

I've done a whole series about snake imagery as it relates to the Crucifixion and the medical profession, as well as the sculpture of Bourdelle, the shenanigans of Moses, and the Black Virgins. Not sure I have more to say on the theme, but in the cause of my ongoing psychogeographical-like efforts to invest the drab and humdrum commute I am obliged to undertake in my ongoing struggle as a wage slave with some meaning, I post this. The Toulouse metro uses a symbol for each station, and the Phaculté de Pharmacie uses a serpent. 

Of course, this is self-evident. What is not is that it's one of the stations I now use frequently in my current pursuit of gainful employment. Signs and symbols keep reoccurring in my personal geography.  My psychogeography. Apophenia, red car phenomenon. Whatever.  Both objectively "true" and subjectively meaningful. As if subjective and objective mean anything anymore, if they ever did.

And hey, it sets my thoughts in motion and makes the drab and deary navigation through the stultifying urban shitscape somehow a little better than completely meaningless..... 

All Eyes on Me

 

In 2016, LoS reported about the well-meaning Spanish woman who tried to restore an old painting of Jesus and it ended up looking like a monkey.  Ecce Homo, meet Ecce Mono!

Now, in what has been called a "lapse of sanity" a security guard in a Russian museum has made news for "improving" Soviet artist Anna Leporskaya's modernist "Three Figures" by crudely drawing eyes on the faceless figures.  Maybe he was afraid the painting, Ouija board-like, would call up Slender Man? 

("In most stories his face is white and featureless, but occasionally his face appears differently to anyone who sees it....")

The painting is valued at 1 million USD and restoration at 3400 USD.  That's a lot of security guard hours.  And a lapse of sanity to boot.  

Or an homage to Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q..  Or maybe just an irresistible will to whimsy, a return to childhood.  Tell me you've never given a supermodel a blackened tooth or an eye-patch.... never put a Hitler mustache on a Rotarian! 

Maybe a security guard being paid crap wages was making a statement about the irony of a Soviet artist's painting being worth so much.  And knowing that repairing it would cost more than a few month's salary. 

I'm an art lover. When paintings are vandalized I'm scandalized. But for some reason this made me giggle.