larvatus prodeo
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
Below are the 30 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Michael Zeleny" journal:[<< Previous 30 entries]
|
12:10 pm
[Link] |
HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE
Welcome to the online journal of larvatus. Stable texts are open to the general public. Squibs and sallies, schemes and stratagems, jaunts and taunts, are restricted to friends. Please note that locked texts subject to third party copyright are provided to my friends under the doctrine of fair use, subject to implied consent by all their readers to abstain from redistribution. Reciprocal friendship shall be extended to all sane, sound, and disinterested personae. Comments and critique are always welcome. Marriage proposals and death threats shall be entertained in the order received.
The House Rules are few and lax. All anonymous comments are initially screened. They shall be revealed or answered at your host’s discretion. All signed comments are initially presumed welcome, until and unless they cause an affront to your host. Thereupon their author shall become banned from further contributions to this journal. Otherwise, anything goes. SAY WHAT?
ÇA ?
Tristan Corbière
A treatise? You don’t say! I haven’t treated squat!
A study? Slothful wretch, my culture fetid rot.
A volume? Random heap, sheets stacked in disarray.
Good copy? Not with me enmired in the fray.
A poem? Not today, my lyre is being cleaned.
A book? Of fusty tomes far better to be weaned.
A song? Would that it were, my ear is made of tin.
Fun pastime? Sordid den, dire boredom dwells within.
A cadence? Rhythmic flow is broken by dull grind.
A product? I divide what others multiplied.
A story? Handicapped, my lame and laggard Muse.
Clear proof? My mind is fraught by grief and lit by booze.
High fashion? Wealth and style inform nowhere my dress.
Grandstanding or grand mal? My spasms fail to impress.
Evicted from the hall, I lurk behind the stage,
In transit, poised to choose: a joy house or a cage.
Too old? But to retire, my tenure won’t suffice.
Too young? My hectic life will rid me of this vice.
A sage, a slob, an ace, a master, and a clown,
A stud without a flock, a king without a crown.
THIS is without pretense, and yet a blatant pose.
It’s life and nothing but, confessed in deathless prose.
A masterpiece? Could be, I never made one yet!
A farce? A waste? A bomb? Decide and place your bet!
I bet… and I shall sign herewith my humble name;
My child shall overcome each tainted libel claim.
Through chance it will prevail, its fate a stroke of luck…
Art knows me not at all — and I don’t give a fuck.
— traduced by MZ, 6 September 2005
Tags: doggerel, vanity
|
10:00 am
[Link] |
for the anonymous troll
Over sixteen years online, I have received a broad spectrum of threats and pitches, and entertained a commensurate range of slurs and plaudits. This experience has crystallized two iron laws of online communications.
The first law is a corollary of Occam’s razor. No matter what you are promised or threatened on the Internet, the most you will get out of it is oral ministrations. In other words, there is no downside in moving virtual bluster to realspace. Yonder puffed-out sock puppet is as unlikely to escalate its verbiage to physical damage, as the heiress of an African potentate, to bestow her commission upon Americans paying their facilitation fees. By contrast, that virtual fellatrix yearning to reward your eloquence with expert suction may well come through as promised, especially if you overlook minor discrepancies ranging from mien to gender.
The second law of Internet intercourse is a corollary of the first. Only a clueless newbie responds personally to an anonymous troll. To illustrate its application, whenever one of the latter kind feels the urge to share its thoughts about anything but one of the former, it should take them instead to someone who can relate to its bogus persona. It makes no difference whether a figment of this sort touts itself as a public intellectual in mufti, or poses as a skank that services barnyard livestock for spare change. In the immortal words of Jack Nicholson, sell crazy someplace else, we’re all stocked up here.
A final notice to the insistent incognito. When you surpass words in punishing my excesses, make sure that your hostile deeds leave me unfit to retaliate. My reckoning will define the remainder of your life. It’s happened to your betters before. Don’t let it happen to you.
Tags: bullshit, stupidity, violence
|
|
06:07 am
[Link] |
это мы, эдички
Эдуард Лимонов: “Voleur un jour,—voleur toujours”,—гласит французская пословица, т.е. своровавший однажды,—вор навсегда. В данном случае предавший однажды, предаст еще раз.
Эдуaрд Кузнецов: Способов загнать жертву в западню много. Обычно «авторитетный вор», облюбовав «красюка», демонстративно приближает его к себе, пока тот не привыкнет к заискивающей почтительности. Потом втравливает его в карточную игру и оплачивает его долги, но, когда они достигают значительной суммы, вдруг впадает в гнев и требует вернуть все истраченные и проигранные деньги. Но где их взять? Вчера еще в почете, вчера ещё он сам травил, избивал, а то и участвовал в убийстве «неплательщиков», а сегодня… Кругом виноват, всякая шавка, недавние льстецы и лизоблюды теперь язвят и оплёвывают его всенародно. И сроку всего два дня… Затравленный, считая себя сплошь виноватым, он, съёжившись от страха, ждет смерти или чуда. «Не боись, паря,—хрипит ему искуситель.—Никто не узнает. Опять заживём как боги… Не боись: один раз—не пидарас…». И всё, человеку конец.
Tags: jews, politics, russia, russian, sex, sodomy, virtue
|
05:24 am
[Link] |
opportunity costs
Foreign Opportunity The Home Front
Tags: persiflage, politics, sex
|
|
03:15 pm
[Link] |
молебен за безбожника
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mike67: ( Read more... )
Но что такого демонстрирует крестик? Почему человек, подвергшийся (ну скажем так) в детстве крещению, ведет себя как зэк, обнаруживший, что случайно поел из “зашкваренной” посуды или поздоровался за руку с “петухом”? Почему крестик на шее вызывает чувство омерзения, а обручальное кольцо или татуировка – не вызывают? Причина одна: крестик демонстрирует, что есть идеология, считающая какое-то поведение греховным. Получается, что раздражение вызывает сам факт существования религии, как мировоззрения, оперирующего понятием греха. То есть связка “Бог есть, значит не все дозволено” вполне материальна. Не хотят слышать упоминаний (даже молчаливых!) о грехе те, кто догадывается о существовании порока. А закроешь глаза – вроде и нет его.
larvatus:
О существовании порока люди догадывались вне каких-либо упоминаний о грехе. Наглядный пример, пересказанный Ксенофонтом в «Воспоминаниях» 2.1.21-34, найдётся у Продика, учителя Сократа. Так что раздражение у неверующих может вызывать не столько сам факт существования религии, как мировоззрения, сколько пафосная готовность личного признания человеческой моральной несостоятельности перед сверхъестественным паханом.
Если предположить, что душа связана в теле и прилеплена к нему, и вынуждена рассматривать и постигать сущее не сама по себе, но через тело, словно бы через решётки тюрьмы, то наглядное пресмыкание души перед её беспощадным тюремщиком предосудительно в тех же рамках и в той же мере, что зэк, открыто сотрудничающий с лагерной администрацией, заслуживает порицания в качестве козла. ( Read more... )
Tags: atheism, god, religion, russian
|
|
04:55 pm
[Link] |
doggy stylings
Some time ago I wondered, what Aristotle might have meant by claiming in the Rhetoric 2.24, at 1401a22, that to be without a dog is most dishonorable. My solution arrived ( Read more... ) Crossposted to larvatus, linguaphiles, ancient_philo, classicalgreek, and classics.
Tags: greek, latin, philosophy, sex, traducement, translation
|
|
11:17 am
[Link] |
brothers: 1927, 1942
Tags: family, father, jews, russia, war
|
|
05:17 pm
[Link] |
submersible self-esteem
Inspired by his skills as an escape artist, Harry Houdini sought to help deep sea divers unable to extricate themselves from a pressure suit upon finding themselves in trouble. On 1 March 1921, he received U.S. Patent Number 1,370,316 for an new and improved diver’s suit. By comprising two halves with a locking joint in the middle, Houdini’s invention enabled the trapped deep sea diver to slip out of the suit quickly, while submerged. He would then have a chance to escape and reach the surface without assistance. The construction also enabled the diver to don and doff the suit without assistance.
A more intimate application of Houdini’s invention went unappreciated heretofore:
Уже давным-давно замечено,
как некрасив в скафандре Водолаз.
Но несомненно есть на свете Женщина,
что и такому б отдалась.
Быть может, выйдет из воды он прочь,
обвешанный концами водорослей,
и выпадет ему сегодня ночь,
наполненная массой удовольствий.
(Не в этот, так в другой такой же раз).
Та Женщина отказывала многим.
Ей нужен непременно Водолаз.
Резиновый. Стальной. Свинцовоногий.
Вот ты,
хоть не резиновый,
но скользкий.
И отвратителен, особенно нагой.
Но Женщина ждет и Тебя.
Поскольку
Ей нужен именно Такой. |
Well known by folk forever and a day
is the deformity of Diver in his suit.
It’s just as true, and well beyond dispute,
that Woman dreams of him, having his way.
Consider him,
sprung up in fetid spray,
festooned and fringed in glutinous seaweed.
He’s looking forward to a night of sensual play.
(If not this once, just down the road he will succeed.)
The Woman that a myriad wooers mooted,
she needs her Diver, not some substitute.
So rubbery, so steely, so lead-footed.
You there,
if not so rubbery,
yet clammy,
and sickening, seen tumid, pale and nude.
But Woman yearns for You,
craving your whammy,
for only your Kind puts her in the mood. |
| ―Владимир Иосифович Уфлянд, 1959 |
―traduced by MZ, 29 April 2009 |
Vladimir Ufliand, 21 January 1937 – 14 April 2007
Tags: poetry, russian, sex, traducement
|
|
07:40 pm
[Link] |
in memoriam
This picture was taken on 5 July 1913. It shows a newlywed Jewish couple, residents of Uman. The man kept books. The woman played a piano. Their daughters were born in 1923 and 1925. The man succumbed to a cardiac arrest in 1938. The woman carried on.
Uman was occupied by the Wehrmacht on August 1, 1941. On Wednesday, 15 August 1945, Oberlieutnant Erwin Bingel recounted the events of 16 September 1941. He was under orders to set up guards on all railways in the area, and around the Uman airport, which contained the town’s Jews, assembled there on a census roll call posted throughout the region. The shooters of Einsatzgruppe C, led by Otto Rasch, holder of two university doctorates in political economy and philosophy, ordered each successive row of Untermenschen to move forward to a row of tables where they had to undress completely and hand over everything they wore and carried. They were made to stand in line in front of the ditches. The Einsatzkommandos then marched in behind the line and mowed it down with submachine guns and Parabellum pistols. Thereupon, the Jewish men in each successive row were ordered to step out and take shovels with which to heap chloride of lime upon the bodies convulsing in the ditch. At last they returned to the tables and undressed to embark on the same last walk.
On the following day, Oberfeldwebel Renner and another man under Bingel’s command were taken to the Lvov field hospital with “complete nervous breakdowns”. In his postwar deposition, Bingel estimated that 24,000 Jews were killed in his sight on that day. This woman and her mother numbered among them.
Two Formal Elegies
For the Jews in Europe
1
Knowing the dead, and how some are disposed:
Subdued under rubble, water, in sand graves.
In clenched cinders not yielding their abused
Bodies and bonds to those whom war’s chance saves
Without the law: we grasp, roughly, the song.
Arrogant acceptance from which song derives
Is bedded with their blood, makes flourish young
Roots in ashes. The wilderness revives,
Deceives with sweetness harshness. Still beneath
Live skin stone breathes, about which fires but play,
Fierce heart that is the iced brain’s to command
To judgment—studied reflex, contained breath—
Their best of worlds since, on the ordained day,
This world went spinning from Jehovah’s hand.
2
For all that must be gone through, their long death
Documented and safe, we have enough
Witnesses (our world being witness-proof),
The sea flickers, roars, in its wide hearth.
Here, yearly, the pushing midlanders stand
To warm themselves; men brawny with life,
Women who expect life. They relieve
Their thickening bodies, settle on scraped sand.
Is it good to remind them, on a brief screen,
Of what they have witnessed and not seen?
(Deaths of the city that persistently dies…?)
To put up stones ensures some sacrifice,
Sufficient men confer, carry their weight.
(At whose door does the sacrifice stand or start?)
—Geoffrey Hill, 1959
Tags: death, family, germans, jews, poetry, russia
|
|
11:40 pm
[Link] |
april showers
California leads our nation in liberty. Writing for the U.S. Ninth Circuit in Nordyke v. King, Judge O’Scannlain has opined that the right to bear arms is “deeply rooted in the history and tradition of the Republic” and “necessary to the Anglo-American regime of ordered liberty”. Concurring, Judge Gould pointed out:We recently saw in the case of the terrorist attack on Mumbai that terrorists may enter a country covertly by ocean routes, landing in small craft and then assembling to wreak havoc. That we have a lawfully armed populace adds a measure of security for all of us and makes it less likely that a band of terrorists could make headway in an attack on any community before more professional forces arrived. While Nordyke echoes the Heller ruling in stressing that “the recognition of the individual’s right in the Second Amendment, and its incorporation by the Due Process Clause against the states, is not inconsistent with the reasonable regulation of weaponry”, it is evident that judicial reason has parted ways with the citizen disarmament lobby. Henceforth banning legitimate means of defense shall join in odium muzzling of free speech and establishment of official religion.
Tags: freedom, guns, law
|
|
04:48 am
[Link] |
siren song
She sings incessantly every waking moment. She has long since ceased to recognize faces. There is no knowing whether she is suffering. Never a whiner in her full, she gives no sign of complaining on this slide. Her erosion is a lot to envy. Five years ago being scorched into slow extinction seemed the worst lot available to man. All love meant then was wanting to assume it upon oneself. That old longing is back in force. How can she consume this degradation? Why must it remain hers alone? This privacy of laggard death is beguiling. It is worth reaching for. It will not elude your grasp forever.
Tags: death, failure, father, love, mother
|
|
05:07 pm
[Link] |
poke a patriot
Keen observer of Italian realities, Perry Anderson pointed out a few years back:In diametric contrast [to the fond dicta of foreigners] stands the characteristic tone of native commentary. Most languages have some self-critical locution, usually a wordplay or neologism, to indicate typical national defects. Germans can cite Hegel’s contemptuous description of local identity politics, Deutschdumm; the French deplore the vauntings of franchouillardise; Peruvians term a hopeless mess una peruanada; Brazilians occasionally mock a brasileirice. England seems to have lacked such self-ironic reflexes: ‘Englishry’ – the gift of Tom Nairn, a Scot – is without currency in its land of reference. Italy lies at the opposite pole. In no other nation is the vocabulary of self-derision so multiple and so frequent in use. Italietta for the trifling levity of the country; italico – once favoured by Fascist bombast – now synonymous with vain posturing and underhand cynicism; bitterest of all, italiota as the badge of an invincible cretinism. It is true that these are terms of public parlance, rather than of popular speech. But, as the familiar contempt of the phrase all’ italiana (divorce etc) testifies, the lack of self-esteem they express is widespread. The good opinion of others remains foreign to the Italians themselves. It appears that England’s lack of terms for national self-deprecation extends both to Russia and the United States. To be sure, neither land comes short in the production of mockery either non-verbal or all too prolix. This week alone, on April Fool’s Day Russia’s performance artists rewarded their incorruptible leader Vladimir Lenin with a gaping hole in his rear, and on the next day an American jury awarded $1 to a professor fired for an essay that characterized the 9/11 attacks against the United States as defensive acts of war. But pithy epithets seem to be in short supply. On the Russian side, one finds alienated cavils concerning “this country” («эта страна») and liberal mockery of “kvass patriotism” («квасной патриотизм»). But the land of the free and the home of the brave is suspiciously bereft of such terms. We fall short of spoofing ourselves, as witness Roy Blount’s lack of traction in disparaging the Supporters of Our Troops as “flaggots” and Team America’s failure to brand its anthem, “America, Fuck Yeah!” While this country still goes without a good five-cent cigar, what it needs is a garland of four-letter words to leaven its embattled self-esteem. Any suggestions?
Update: Russian national self-loathing is well captured by the hypocoristic toponym Рашка and obscurely expressed by Judaeo-Bolshevik epithets руссопят / руссопятство.
Crossposted to larvatus, ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) linguaphiles, and ru_translate.
Tags: america, persiflage
|
|
08:40 am
[Link] |
virgin asswipes
“I really do think it is overwhelmingly an American phenomenom,” said Hershkowitz. “People just don’t understand that softness equals ecological destruction.”
Tags: america, bullshit, exceptionalism, phenomenom, politics
|
|
05:54 pm
[Link] |
to bourbaki or not to bourbaki?
Denken Sie an die Schlacht an der Lisaine!
Tags: birthday, french, german, mathematics, persiflage
|
|
10:15 am
[Link] |
sympathy for the devil
Double standards don’t work anymore; Germany has become too sophisticated. One way to look at Hitler’s scurrilous anti-Jewish tirades is as a provocation to focus people on the Jewish boycott against Germany, ever-increasing Jewish domination of European finance and professions, unrequited Jewish responsibility for German defeat and humiliation, and virulent Jewish contamination of Nordic races.
Iranian Nazi language can be vile, but any Islamist European peace — and engagement with Iran Germany — will have to take account of these points.
Tags: germany, iran, islam, jews, politics, violence
|
|
03:15 pm
[Link] |
notes on the sig p210 parts diagram
 ( Read more... )References: Erwin Armbruster & Werner Kessler, Begegnungen mit einer Legende — SIG SP 47/8 / P 210, Kessler Waffen AG, 2007 Lorenz Vetter, Das grosse Buch der SIG-Pistolen, Motorbuch Verlag/Verlag Stocker-Schmid, 1995, ISBN 3-7276-7123-8 H.P. Doebeli, Die SIG Pistolen, Motorbuch Verlag, 1981, ISBN 3-87943-739-4 — The author thanks Paul Kümin for his indispensable contributions of information incorporated in this article. Tags: guns, p210
|
|
06:48 pm
[Link] |
politically correct
After eight years of his third marriage, Muzzammil Hassan beheaded his latest wife Aasiya Hassan. His abridgment followed her filing for divorce that cited previous incidents of domestic violence. Both of Ms Hassan’s predecessors in Mr Hassan’s uxorial affections are on record with similar complaints. Coincidentally, Mr Hassan is the founder of Bridges TV, an award-winning television station chartered to counteract negative stereotypes of Muslims in America.
Liberal Western responses account for this act as “an anomaly, not in any way reflective of a rich, beautiful culture and a religion whose majority seek peace”. A Muslim community leader disclaims the act: “This is not an honor killing, no way.” He adds: “It has nothing to do with his faith.” After denouncing “that most basic foundation of prejudice: The insistence that one member of a group represent the entire group”, an active feminist and LGBTQI advocate blames “undeserved male privilege and the resulting second-class personhood of women”.
Indeed, the road to conclusions contradicting the title of Islam as “the religion of peace” is paved with unwarranted generalizations. On the politically correct and empirically witnessed view, the appeal of Islamic submission extends primarily to men, tribes, and nations in dire need of forcible pacification. Their violent outbreaks attest to this need without impugning their gender or confession.
Tags: bullshit, islam, politics, religion
|
|
05:37 pm
[Link] |
use and mention
Today’s anniversary tributes are missing the point in addressing Darwin the scientist and Lincoln the politician. In truth, they accrue to “Darwin” and “Lincoln”, the six- and seven-letter alibis for otherwise intelligent and conscientious people wishing to exempt themselves from contemplation of their spiritual infirmities and social rackets.
Tags: hypocrisy, politics, science
|
|
02:54 am
[Link] |
the next round
The last time I stood next to my father, he was ringing your doorbell and telling you that we loved you. The next day you scraped our child out of your womb.
Leonardo da Vinci, Feto umano nell’utero, 1511
That was nearly five years ago. Now you complain that I am harming you. You have failed at forcing the issue. You are begging me to desist. But I am not doing anything wrong. Nor am I harming you. If you want me to do your bidding, you must understand my reasons and convince me of your understanding. If you can feel remorse, we may benefit from conversation. If you stand on your rights, we have nothing to discuss.
You offer my survival in some good memories. You offer kindness and a possible friendship. But how you remember me is your business. Your kindness last screeched at me amid 57th Street. Neither of us is good at friendship. I am sorry to hear about your father’s recent death. I offer you my condolences and appreciation of your effort to be responsible. But responsibility is impossible without remorse. You will be responsible for people who love you; you are sorry if you have hurt me; you are deeply sorry for the baby; but you obsess about your reputation. You will say anything to forget our catastrophe. Is that what you call making peace with the past? You seem to be susceptible to shame. Think of it as your medicine meant to elicit remorse in regard to our common history.
There are two innocent victims in our story. Neither of us is one. But my guilt is not an issue in what you want from me. Refusal is my right. You have two ways of getting past it: either persuade me that satisfying you is the right thing to do or offer me something I want in return. You want to move on. You claim that my account deters you from doing so. It does nothing of the sort. I am nowise deterred by Usenet libel claiming that I fucked a dog. You are displeased with my versiculi. But pleasure is not your right. You need to be jarred from complacency. You have cancer of the soul. Your anguish is its symptom. I live with your disparagement. You could live with my diagnosis. Your discomfort stems from recognizing its truth. You suffer from a spiritual malignancy. Seek to cure the disease, not to palliate the symptom.
I mean to be therapeutic for both of us. I could be wrong. But you haven’t begun to persuade me of my error. As to your offers, I doubt that you have anything I want. But it doesn’t hurt to try. This is not an issue of sexual deviance. Your love of pain was entertaining. Its frustration of your own aims did not stand between us. Nor am I concerned with your failure to live up to your role models of Sex in the City, that bevy of time-worn bags traipsing around Manhattan in search of a steady regimen of penetration. You relate to women even more tenuously than you do to men. You could have friends through interest in people for their own sake, or through interests shared with other people. Neither of us is good at caring for people. But you also lack concerns that might ally you with others. You fail at concentration. Your attractions are notional. You imagine yourself in life and work without realizing any role. You have dabbled in marriage and yearned after motherhood, just as you have dabbled in design and yearned after commerce. You avoid sustained effort. You must work for a living, and you are content with the minimum of work that will keep you alive. Millions of others live like that. Unlike them, you refuse to make peace with mediocrity. You admire the drive towards betterment but fail to keep up on its path. Things get too complicated. Progress is too much to bear. It’s fun to whine about aimlessness and regret childlessness. It’s a drag to create a business or stay the course to become a mother.
Johanna Schwarzbeck, AFTER ABORTION, 1993
You might look up Johanna. She is your kindred soul, supplementing sex in the city with syringes. Even closer to your home comes a movie about a Chinese woman who seeks to reverse the effects of aging by consuming her own foetus. The only side effect of her success is a fishy body odor. George Orwell observed that in the West we are divided from our downtrodden fellows by our sense of smell. As an exile from ideology, I prefer to divide myself from the advocates of class struggle and gender privilege. Tyranny stinks. I accept the attribution of foetal cannibalism to domination by the Chinese Communist regime. The party rules you to this day. In your doctrinary moods, you always had issues with my material comforts. But the roots of your resentment may be more ancient. Think of Euripides’ Medea 1396, which David Kovacs translates as: “Your mourning has yet to begin. Wait until old age.” The Greek original is twice as concise:Μήδεια οὔπω θρηνεῖς: μένε καὶ γῆρας.
[not yet adv] [sing a dirge, wail verb 2nd sg pres ind act]: [await, expect verb 2nd sg pres imperat act] [and conj] [old age noun sg neut acc] You may have fancied yourself unwittingly, Medea to my Jason. Perhaps you deserve to address me as ψευδόρκου καὶ ξειναπάτου, breaker of [my] own oath and deceiver of a stranger. For my part, I broke nothing and deceived no one. Perhaps you fear running out of chances upon reaching your fifth decade. For my part, every day brings new beginnings. Your dirge is unripe. Oupô thrêneis: mene kai gêras.
Perhaps Latin will suit you better than Greek. As Cicero wrote to Atticus, ut aegroto, dum anima est, spes esse dicitur. It is said that for a sick man, there is hope as long as there is life. Set aside the rest of the story, from Pompey’s flight from Italy to the display of Cicero’s hands and head on the Rostra in the Forum. You may yet redeem your errors. If you could save three lives, you would restore the balance. Let me know how it goes. If you can take my help, I will give it.
Tags: death, doggerel, insanity, love, memory
|
|
11:44 pm
[Link] |
to a european gun collector
I am more of an accumulator than a collector, and either have long since ceased being a European, or never was one in the first place, depending on the truth of Metternich’s quip that “Asien beginnt auf der Landstraße”. But I buy guns in Europe now and then, most of them being Swiss and French pistols. So here are my recommendations.
The U.S. Constitution recognizes the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms. That right is even more important to Europeans, whose countries suffered from tyranny and genocide in ways unknown to Americans. A hypothetical postulation by Alexander Solzhenitsyn illustrates the best reasons for civilian arms ownership in this footnote to The GULAG Archipelago:
Как потом в лагерях жгло: а что, если бы каждый оперативник, идя ночью арестовывать, не был бы уверен, вернётся ли он живым, и прощался бы со своей семьёй? Если бы во времена массовых п о с а д о к, например в Ленинграде, когда сажали четверть города, люди бы не сидели по своим норкам, млея от ужаса при каждом хлопке парадной двери и шагах на лестнице,—а поняли бы, что терять им уже дальше нечего, и в своих передних бодро бы делали засады по несколько человек с топорами, молотками, кочергами, с чем придется? Ведь заранее известно, что эти ночные картузы не с добрыми намерениями идут—так не ошибёшься, хрястнув по душегубцу. Или тот воронок с одиноким шофёром, оставшийся на улице—угнать его либо скаты проколоть. Органы быстро бы не досчитались сотрудников и подвижного состава, и несмотря на всю жажду Сталина—остановилась бы проклятая машина!
Если бы… если бы… Не хватало нам свободолюбия. А еще прежде того—осознания истинного положения. Мы истратились в одной безудержной вспышке семнадцатого года, а потом СПЕШИЛИ покориться, С УДОВОЛЬСТВИЕМ покорялись. […] Мы просто ЗАСЛУЖИЛИ всё дальнейшее. |
And how we burned in the camps later, wondering: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive, and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during the periods of sweeps, as for example in Leningrad, when they imprisoned a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their burrows, swooning with terror at every slam of the front door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up ambush in the hallway, of several people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were up to no good going out at night—and you would do no wrong cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out in the street with one lonely chauffeur—what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of manpower and transport and, despite all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
If only… if only… We didn’t love freedom enough. And above all—we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit, submitting with pleasure! […] We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterwards. |
In our country, Judge Alex Kozinski, a Jewish refugee from Eastern Europe, epitomized this argument in his dissent in Silveira v. Lockyer:The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed—where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. A personally owned military firearm is the most potent token of freedom available to the citizen of a constitutional republic. As such, it is eminently suitable for turning into a centerpiece of a collection. Every good collection tells a story. The best way to get the idea of this storytelling is to pick up the book by Krzysztof Pomian, Collectionneurs, amateurs, et curieux: Paris, Venise: XVIe–XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Gallimard, 1987, translated as Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500-1800, Polity Press, 1991. (The French edition is still available, but the translation is out of print.) There are three gun brands that tell a great story: Winchester, Colt, and Luger. Everything else is, at best, second-rate.
Winchesters and Colts tell the familiar story of winning the West along with two World Wars. The Luger story is more complicated. Some people balk at its Nazi connection. But its original maker, Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken (German Weapons and Munitions Works), known as DWM, was a successor in interest to Ludwig Loewe & Company, an arms maker founded in 1872. In addition to the Luger, Loewe owned the production rights to some of the finest contemporary firearms such as Mauser turnbolt rifles and Smith & Wesson break-open revolvers. This provenance makes the Luger a Jewish gun par excellence. My 1918 DWM P08 and 1917 DWM LP08 put me in touch with my inner Ernst Kantorowicz, who, but for an accident of Semitic birth, might have made an excellent Nazi.
Swiss Lugers come with their own tales of peaceful exploits, of which this one is my favorite. But collecting Lugers and Colts is a prohibitive pursuit for plebeians, with the finest specimens running into seven figures. The solution is to focus in the historically second rate, which need not be deficient from any other standpoint. My favorite autopistol is the SIG P210. For its close wheelgun counterpart, I recommend the Manurhin MR73, the last and best revolver to be designed and adopted for constabulary service. Apart from the gloomy Olivier Marchand polar, my favorite MR73 story unfolded on the day after Christmas of 1994, when Captain Thierry P. of GIGN entered the hijacked Air France Flight 8969 plane, grounded at the Marseille airport. He served as the point shooter, armed with a 5¼" .357 Magnum Manurhin MR73 and backed by his partner Eric carrying a 9mm HK05 submachine gun. Thierry killed two Islamist terrorists and wounded a third with his revolver, before taking seven bullets from an AK47 fired by the fourth hijacker. In spite of then absorbing a full complement of grenade shrapnel in his lower body, Thierry P. survived the assault, as also did 171 hostages. Not so the four terrorists, who had been planning to deploy the plane as an incendiary missile against the Eiffel Tower. Thierry could have armed himself with any firearm. He chose an MR73. I have mine at my side right now.
Unlike the 1873 and 1911 Colts or various Lugers, the P210 and the MR73 remain largely unresearched and ill-documented. This factor represents an advantage to the beginning collector, enabling him to build a world-class collection at the cost well below that commanded by the finest specimens of more historic brand. French and Swiss firearm traditions are as storied as the American one, distinguishing themselves by the invention of smokeless powder and the first adoption of an autopistol into military service. Dedicating yourself to their study and commemoration is an immensely rewarding project.
Tags: guns, manurhin, mr73, p210, sig
|
|
10:15 pm
[Link] |
odi ut amatura et amo ut osura
In his account of youthful character, Aristotle attributes all its errors to excess and vehemence in love, hate, and everything else. At their peril, the young neglect of the maxim of Chilon: Μηδὲν ἄγαν, Ne quid nimis, “Never go to extremes”. (Rhetoric 1389b4-5; Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum I.41.) And as he turns to the flaccid dispositions of old men, Aristotle observes that neither their love nor their hatred is strong; but, according to the precept of Bias, καὶ φιλοῦσιν ὡς μισήσοντες καὶ μισοῦσιν ὡς φιλήσοντες—“they love as if they would one day hate, and hate as if they would one day love”. (Rhetoric 1389b21-25; DL I.87.) Prudential anticipation of reversals in love and hatred emerged as an early modern adage. Thus Erasmus commends it in commenting upon “Ne quid nimis” in Adagia I.vi.96. Likewise, Juan Luis Vives writes on behalf of the “Anima Senis”: odi ut amatura et amo ut osura—“I hate as if one day I should love, and love as if one day I should hate”. More recently, Tancredo Neves, the hero of Brazilian Democratic Movement, is said to always have remembered the motto of Getúlio Vargas, his former patron, role model, and predecessor in election to the Brazilian Presidency: “I have never made an enemy whom I could not approach or a friend from whom I could not separate.”—“Não tenho inimigo de quem não possa me aproximar nem amigo de quem não possa me distanciar.” (Ronaldo Costa Couto, História indiscreta da ditadura e da abertura: Brasil: 1964-1985, Editora Record, 1999, p. 322.) Striving to dislodge a military dictatorship, Neves boasted during his Presidential campaign, that if he got 500 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency. He got the votes and was due to be sworn into office on the Ides of March in 1985. But a day before taking his Presidential oath, Neves fell gravely ill with a gastric tumor. Seven surgical bouts only served to aggravate his suffering. Neves died on 21 April 1985, the 193rd anniversary of execution and dismemberment of Tiradentes, the hero of Brazilian independence. Thus Tancredo Neves came to God after having slighted His will.
God’s will has swayed the fortunes of Jerusalem since 1095. A nominally secular state, Israel was founded upon the promise made by God to the descendants of Abraham. This promise is countermanded by the founding charter and ongoing policy of Hamas, which calls for the elimination of the Jewish state and worldwide extermination of Jews. And just as the Zionist project emerged in response to the political leverage of antisemitism, so Palestinian nationalism feeds off Jewish hegemony in the Holy Land. In more generic terms, Carl Schmitt cast the essence of the political as resting on the distinction between friend and enemy:
Der politische Feind nicht der Konkurrent oder der Gegner im allgemeinen. Feind ist auch nicht der private Gegner, den man unter Antipathiegefühlen haßt. Feind ist nur eine wenigstens eventuell, d.h. der realen Möglichkeit nach kämpfende Gesamtheit von Menschen, die einer ebensolchen Gesamtheit gegenübersteht. Feind ist nur der öffentliche Feind, weil alles, was auf eine solche Gesamtheit von Menschen, insbesondere auf ein ganzes Volk Bezug hat, dadurch öffentlich wird. Feind ist hostis, nicht inimicus im weiteren Sinne; πολέμιος, nicht ἐχθρός.
—Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen: Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollarien, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1963, p. 29 |
The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship. The enemy is hostis, not inimicus in the broader sense; πολέμιος, not ἐχθρός.
—Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, translated by George Schwab, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996, p. 28 |
While Jewish nationalism emerged from the 1896 publication of Der Judenstaat by Theodor Herzl, its Palestinian counterpart originates in the 1948 dispossession of the Arab natives of the newborn Jewish state. In Aristotelian terms, their political predicament is rooted in the ardor of youth. Tancredo Neves was able to define his political mission in the terms of contingent animosities ungrounded in essential hostilities. No such definition is available to Israeli and Palestinian politicians, who continue to group their nations according to the friend and enemy antithesis. Thus the prospects of peace in the Middle East are foredoomed, as long as its neighboring and intermingled adversaries continue to regard each other as public enemies. There is as yet no basis for them to hate as if one day they should love. And for want of this basis, well-meaning Christian powers will meddle in vain.
Crossposted to larvatus and history.
Tags: brazil, german, greek, islam, jews, latin, politics
|
|
09:05 pm
[Link] |
the hunchbacks of the new york times
In the final days of the Great War, while the future architect of die Endlösung der Judenfrage was recovering in hospital from a gas attack at Ypres, Konrad Bercovici, a Jewish Rumanian anarchist scrivener, met a fellow tribesman, a financier and patron of the arts, in a swanky New York City hotel: ( Read more... )
In the land of the straight-backed, the virtual Russian Jerusalemite persona of l-u recites 10 reasons why he roots for Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In my translation, they run as follows:- In the struggle between drinkers and teetotalers I side with the drinkers.
- I prefer regimes in which a leader can be imprisoned to those in which a leader can only be killed.
- I have much more in common with men who pray standing up, than with men who pray doggie style.
- I prefer women in uniform to women in black bags.
- I do not want people who awaken every night to the shrieks of a muezzin to defeat people capable of setting an alarm clock.
- I have much more in common with men who, upon learning about the adventures of their daughters, grab their hearts, not their knives.
- I think that it is more appropriate to pay a lot of money to separate from your wife, than to buy your wives.
- I have more understanding for people who bury their murdered children at once, than for those who thrust their corpses at TV cameras.
- I have more respect for a society that ransoms their captives with hundreds of their enemies, than one, whose prisoners are valued at less than one thousandth of a captured enemy.
- I want to live in a world where no one kills women and children. And if that should happen, I would rater see military prosecutors hand out indictments, than a jubilant crowd hand out candy.
The only reason I would add is wanting to have nothing in common with brokeback burblings of Mr Cohen.
Tags: jews, jokes, politics, russians, violence
|
|
02:34 am
[Link] |
old klingon proverb
Gottes Mühlen mahlen langsam, mahlen aber trefflich klein;
Ob auß Langmuth er sich seumet, bringt mit Schärff er alles ein.
—Friedrich von Logau, „Göttliche Rache“, Sinngedichte III, ii, 24, circa 1654
Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Retribution”, Poems, Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1869, Vol. I, p. 292
ὀψέ θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτά
—Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos I, 287 ≈ Oracula Sibyllina VIII, 14 ≈ Plutarch, Moralia, “De sera numinis vindicta” 549d
Quid mihi si fueras miseros laesurus amores,
Foedera per divos, clam violanda, dabas?
A miser, et siquis primo periuria celat,
Sera tamen tacitis Poena venit pedibus.
—Tibullus, Elegiae I, ix, 1-4 and commentary
dixerat, et tandem cunctante modestior ira
ille refert: ‘equidem non uos ad moenia Thebes
rebar et hostiles huc aduenisse cateruas.
pergite in excidium socii, si tanta uoluptas,
sanguinis, imbuite arma domi, atque haec inrita dudum
templa Iouis (quid enim haud licitum?) ferat impius ignis,
si uilem, tanti premerent cum pectora luctus,
in famulam ius esse ratus dominoque ducique.
sed uidet haec, uidet ille deum regnator, et ausis,
sera quidem, manet ira tamen.’ sic fatus, et arces
respicit.
—Statius, Thebaid V 680-690
ut sit magna, tamen certe lenta ira deorum est
—Juvenal, Satura XIII 100
Itaque dii pedes lanatos habent, quia nos religiosi non sumus.
—Petronius, Satyricon XLIV,18
Et dum pro se quisque deos tandem esse et non neglegere humana fremunt et superbiae crudelitatique etsi seras, non leues tamen uenire poenas—prouocare qui prouocationem sustulisset, et implorare praesidium populi qui omnia iura populi obtrisset, rapique in uincla egentem iure libertatis qui liberum corpus in seruitutem addixisset,—ipsius Appi inter contionis murmur fidem populi Romani implorantis uox audiebatur.
—And while the people muttered, each man to himself, that there were gods after all, who did not neglect the affairs of men; and that pride and cruelty were receiving their punishment, which though late was nevertheless not light—that he was appealing who had nullified appeal; that he was imploring the protection of the people who had trodden all the rights of the people under foot; that he was being carried off to prison, deprived of his right to liberty, who had condemned the person of a free citizen to slavery—the voice of Appius himself was heard amidst the murmurs of the assembly, beseeching the Roman People to protect him.
—Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 3, 56, 7, translated by Benjamin Oliver Foster
La parole des dieux n’est point vaine et trompeuse ;
Leurs desseins sont couverts d’une nuit ténébreuse ;
La peine suit le crime : elle arrive à pas lents.
—Voltaire, Oreste, I, ii
Courage, if carried to daring, leads to death; courage, if not carried to daring, leads to life. Either of these two things is sometimes beneficial, sometimes harmful.“Why ’t is by heaven rejected,
Who has the reason detected?” Therefore the holy man also regards it as difficult.
The Heavenly Reason strives not, but it is sure to conquer. It speaks not, but it is sure to respond. It summons not, but it comes of itself. It works patiently but is sure in its designs.
Heaven’s net is vast, so vast. It is wide-meshed, but it loses nothing.
—Lao-Tze’s Tao-Teh-King, translated by Paul Carus, 73, “Daring To Act”
Tags: chinese, classics, french, german, greek, justice, latin, revenge
|
|
09:59 pm
[Link] |
изменник родины
larvatus:
Здесь полагаются памятка и анекдот. Вот Вам памятка:I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
—U.S. Naturalization Oath Так что насчёт “нас” и “их”, у меня с Вами общая система координат. А вот и анекдот: Для разрядки, так сказать, напряга, пожалуйста, анекдотик. Вернее, не анекдотик, а быль. Но быль до того невероятную, что она, паскудина, сама себя осознает вдруг легендарной и берет кликуху Анекдот, чтобы таким хитромудрым способом продлить на какое-то время свою жизнь. Да и само время, гражданин Гуров, само наше анекдотическое времечко недаром окрестили не столько вожди, сколько их плюгавые шестерки из поэтов и композиторов, временем легендарным.
Короче говоря, приводят к Будённому перебежчика. Белого. Так, мол, и так, Семён Михайлович, постиг я в мгновение ока происходящее, дошла до меня безысходность белого движения. Чуять начинаю за три версты красоту ваших кавалерийских идей, возьмите к себе воевать. Хорошо. Переодели, переобули, дали красавца-гнедого. Повоевал немного белый, но вдруг показалось ему, что снова постиг он в мгновенье ока происходящее и слинял к Деникину. Мужественно явился и говорит Самому: так, мол, и так, ошибся я. Будённый — полное говно, вокруг него мерзкий плебс, большей вони и совершенней лжи, чем советская власть, вообразить себе невозможно, и лучше уж, ваше превосходительство, смерть в наших безысходных рядах, чем торжество в смрадном каре обманутых маньяками плебеев. Простите великодушно. Время у нас смутное, возможен, согласитесь, поиск душой верного пути. Деникин не стал дискутировать на эту тему. Он отдал дважды перебежчика обратно Будённому. Белый стал втолковывать этой тупой усатой мандавше, что он не подлец, а человек ищущий, и наконец, в последней попытке спасти шкуру, брякнул что-то насчет раздвоения личности. Будённый вынимает саблю, пробует отточку клинка на коготище и врезает красно-белому по темечку. До самой жопы его расколол, а дальше тот сам рассыпался. “Мы—большевики,—говорит Будённый,—проблему раздвоения личности решаем по-своему: сабелькой!”
—Юз Алешковский, «Рука (Повествование палача)» Это к вопросу о паспорте, как о “средстве передвижения”. ( Read more... )
furia_krucha:
Детали могут различаться, спору нет. Но в принципе истории одинаковые так как демонстрируют, что „преданность“ (allegiance) вещь преходящая, как для вас, так и героя „анекдотика“.
larvatus:
Вы понимаете разницу между гражданским долгом проистекающим из свободного выбора и требованиями власти на основании места рождения? ( Read more... )
Tags: german, kant, philosophy, russian, russians
|
05:27 pm
[Link] |
felicitations encore
Happy birthday, sguez!
Tags: birthday
|
|
04:59 pm
[Link] |
пятая колонна гнилой цивилизации / the fifth column of a rotten culture
letopisetz:
Собственно, сторонников Израиля в России можно разделить на несколько категорий:
1. Евреи
2. Нееврейские родственники и друзья евреев, сочувствующие им
3. Юдофилы
4. Исламофобы
5. Националисты-антисемиты (те из них, которые желают запереть евреев в своеобразном израильском гетто, выдавив их из Европы)
У остальных россиян сочувствовать Израилю или поддерживать действия АОИ нет никаких причин. Даже наоборот, есть причины поддержать арабских противников Израиля. Ведь “враг моего врага— мой друг”. |
In fact, the supporters of Israel in Russia can be divided into several categories:
1. Jews
2. Jewish relatives and friends of Jews, sympathetic to them
3. Judaeophiles
4. Islamophobes
5. Nationalist anti-Semites (those who want to lock up the Jews in the sui generis Israeli ghetto, having expelled them from Europe)
The remainder of Russians have no reason for sympathizing with Israel or supporting the IDF actions. On the contrary, they have good reasons for supporting the Arab enemies of Israel. After all, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” |
larvatus:
| Не раскрыта тема номер 6, россиян-любителей вашингтонского обкома. |
You have failed to account for category Number 6, the Russian caucus of Washington’s party line supporters. |
letopisetz:
Совершенно верно.
Есть еще одна категория— российские западники, воспринимающие Израиль просто как форпост Запада на Ближнем Востоке. |
Precisely.
There is another category— Russian Westernizers who perceive Israel as a western outpost in the Middle East |
larvatus:
«Всё действительное разумно, всё разумное действительно.» Раз они нам внедряют своих продажных совков осколков империи, мы им должны внедрять наших шпионов и лазутчиков российских западников. |
“The real is rational and the rational real.” If they are infiltrating us with sell-out Homo Sovieticus specimens imperial rudiments, we must infiltrate them with our spies and operatives Russian Westernizers. |
letopisetz:
| “Мы” и “они”— это в Вашей системе координат кто? |
Who are “us” and “them” in your coordinate system? |
larvatus:
| У меня синий паспорт. А у Вас? |
I have a blue passport. What about you? |
letopisetz:
| Для меня паспорт—средство передвижения. |
For me, a passport is a means of transportation. |
larvatus:
| Вы не ответили на мой вопрос. |
You have not answered my question. |
letopisetz:
larvatus:
Здесь полагаются памятка и анекдот. Вот Вам памятка:I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
—U.S. Naturalization Oath Так что насчёт “нас” и “их”, у меня с Вами общая система координат. А вот и анекдот: Для разрядки, так сказать, напряга, пожалуйста, анекдотик. Вернее, не анекдотик, а быль. Но быль до того невероятную, что она, паскудина, сама себя осознает вдруг легендарной и берет кликуху Анекдот, чтобы таким хитромудрым способом продлить на какое-то время свою жизнь. Да и само время, гражданин Гуров, само наше анекдотическое времечко недаром окрестили не столько вожди, сколько их плюгавые шестерки из поэтов и композиторов, временем легендарным.
Короче говоря, приводят к Будённому перебежчика. Белого. Так, мол, и так, Семён Михайлович, постиг я в мгновение ока происходящее, дошла до меня безысходность белого движения. Чуять начинаю за три версты красоту ваших кавалерийских идей, возьмите к себе воевать. Хорошо. Переодели, переобули, дали красавца-гнедого. Повоевал немного белый, но вдруг показалось ему, что снова постиг он в мгновенье ока происходящее и слинял к Деникину. Мужественно явился и говорит Самому: так, мол, и так, ошибся я. Будённый — полное говно, вокруг него мерзкий плебс, большей вони и совершенней лжи, чем советская власть, вообразить себе невозможно, и лучше уж, ваше превосходительство, смерть в наших безысходных рядах, чем торжество в смрадном каре обманутых маньяками плебеев. Простите великодушно. Время у нас смутное, возможен, согласитесь, поиск душой верного пути. Деникин не стал дискутировать на эту тему. Он отдал дважды перебежчика обратно Будённому. Белый стал втолковывать этой тупой усатой мандавше, что он не подлец, а человек ищущий, и наконец, в последней попытке спасти шкуру, брякнул что-то насчет раздвоения личности. Будённый вынимает саблю, пробует отточку клинка на коготище и врезает красно-белому по темечку. До самой жопы его расколол, а дальше тот сам рассыпался. “Мы—большевики,—говорит Будённый,—проблему раздвоения личности решаем по-своему: сабелькой!”
—Юз Алешковский, «Рука (Повествование палача)» Это к вопросу о паспорте, как о “средстве передвижения”. |
Here we can use a reminder and an anecdote. Herewith your reminder:I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
—U.S. Naturalization Oath So in regard to “us” and “them”, you and I share the same coordinate system. And now, the anecdote:To begin our détente, so to speak, here is an anecdote. Or rather, not an anecdote, but a true story. But a true story so incredible that its lousy self suddenly becomes aware of its mythical nature and assumes the moniker of an Anecdote so as to prolong its life for a while by such mystical means. And our present itself, citizen Gurov, our pathetic times are not for nothing dubbed legendary, not so much by our leaders, but by their slavish rhymsters and tunesmiths.
Anyway, a turncoat is brought to Budyonny. A White. Blah blah blah, Semyon Mikhailovich, the hopelessness of the White movement, it all came to me in the blink of an eye. I can smell from three miles away the beauty of your cavalry ideals, so let me fight on your side. Very well. They give him a new uniform, new boots, a beautiful bay stallion. So the White fights for a little white, but suddenly the meaning of it all seems once again to come to him in the blink of an eye, and he bolts back to Denikin. He bravely presents himself to the Man himsef: Blah blah blah, my bad. I was mistaken. Budyonny is a lousy shit, surrounded by vile plebs, there is no fouler stench and uglier lie imaginable than the Soviet regime, and Sir, I would much rather perish in our doomed formations than triumph among the rancid ranks of plebeians swindled by maniacs. I beg your magnanimous forgiveness. Our times are troubled, you can understand a soul searching for the right path. Denikin did not debate this matter. He handed over the serial turncoat back to Budyonny. The White tried to explain to this moronic mustachioed louse that he was no villain, but a soul on a quest, and finally, in a desperate attempt to save his hide, blurted out something about a split personality. Budyonny draws his sabre, tests its edge against his claw, and cracks the Red-and-White right on top of his skull, splitting him all the way down to his ass, from whence he scatters on his own. “We, the Bolsheviks,” says Budyonny, “solve the problem of a split personality in our own way—with a sabre!”
—Yuz Aleshkovsky, The Hand or, the Confession of an Executioner This is in regard to taking your passport as “a means of transportation.” |
letopisetz:
| Только дегенерат может всерьез воспринимать подобные клятвы. |
Only a degenerate can take such an oath seriously. |
larvatus:
| Вам с этим заявлением—к Будённому. Я здесь ни при чём. |
Please take your pleading to Budyonny. I have nothing to do with it. |
letopisetz:
furia_krucha:
| Как так? Ведь до синего у вас верно был красный? |
How so? Didn’t you have a red passport before a blue one? |
larvatus:
| Сначала у меня был красный паспорт. Потом я продал свою библиотеку, чтоб от него откупиться. Заодно и побывал в тюрьме, чтобы не жалеть о сделке. Наконец я дал клятву, чтобы был синий паспорт. Вот и вся история. |
First I had a red passport. Then I sold my library to pay for ridding myself of it. For good measure I went to jail to forestall any regrets regarding this deal. Finally, I swore an oath to get a blue passport. That’s the end of the story. |
Tags: bullshit, jews, persiflage, phenomenom, politics, russian, russians, translation
|
|
12:37 pm
[Link] |
return of the son of felicitations
С днём рождения, vladimirpotapov!
Tags: birthday, russian
|
|
09:27 pm
[Link] |
felicitations ride again
С днём рождения, roganov_serge!
Tags: birthday, philosophy, russian
|
|
12:01 am
[Link] |
felicitations
С днём рождения, borkhers!
Tags: birthday, poetry, russian
|
|
10:26 am
[Link] |
самая мякотка, самая писечка / corpus cavernosum
Среди наших друзей возник вопрос о взаимосвязанности крутящего момента и лошадиных сил. Эффективность крутящего момента замечательно истолкована в небезызвестном чапаевском анекдоте:Полковник Бороздин зовёт денщика Петровича. «Чё изволите, ваше превосходительство?»—«Петрович, неси сюда рюмку водки и кота.» Петрович принёс. Полковник поддал. «Петрович, крути коту яйца.» Петрович крутит. Кот орёт. Полковник утирает скупую мужскую слезу: «Котик-котик, как я тебя понимаю…» Здесь никакие лошадиные силы не помогут. Действительно, представим себе, что не Петрович крутит коту яйца, а лягает их копытом белый чапаевский конь. В этом случае, вместо издавания желаемого вопля, кот либо разобьётся вдребезги, либо улетит к ебёной матери. Короче говоря, при попытке подмены крутящего момента лошадиными силами выходит пагубная неувязка. |
Our friends are puzzled by the interrelatedness of torque and horsepower. The effects of torque are remarkably illustrated in this Chapayevite tale of a certain renown:Colonel Borozdin summons his batman Petrovich. “At your service, your excellency!”—“Petrovich, fetch me a glass of vodka and a cat.” Petrovich conveys. The colonel guzzles. “Petrovich, twist his balls.” Petrovich twists. The cat wails. The colonel dabs his moistened eyes: “Kitty-cat, kitty-cat, I understand…” All the king’s horses would be unavailing. Indeed, imagine that instead of the cat’s balls getting twisted by Petrovich, they get kicked by Chapaev’s white horse. In this scenario, instead of emitting the desired shriek, the cat would either break into pieces or launch into orbit. In short, an attempt to replace torque with horsepower would result in a fatal mishap. |
Tags: gedankenexperiment, persiflage, russian, translation
|
[<< Previous 30 entries] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
larvatus's journal
