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You know when you finish a book and you're sad because you know you won't ever write anything nearly as good?
That.
That.
TV SHOW MEME (Part 2)
Jul. 5th, 2015 02:10 pmI could not resist doing this again.
1. Comment to this post with "I surrender!" and I'll assign you the basis of some tv show idea. (Science fiction show, medical drama, criminal procedure, etc...)
2. Create a cast of characters, including the actors who'd play them
3. Add in any actor photos, character bios and show synopsis that you want.
4. Post to your own journal.
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smhwpf gave me period drama and initially specified pre-1815, but my burning period drama idea takes place in 1907, which is nearly 100 years ago so ought to qualify in terms of lavish costumes and set design.
Apologies in advance for the profusion of British white dudes playing Russian white dudes. This is a Beeb production. It's 90% dialogue and largely an excuse to get really talented actors to shout at each other. Russian and French dialogue is in English with the actors' actual accents; dialogue in German and Polish is subtitled.
The show is called Common Cause (Общее дело).
It's 1907. The first attempt at revolution in Russia two years ago was a miserable bloody failure; the movement's surviving leaders are scattered in exile throughout Europe or rotting in Tsarist prisons. Lenin's just declared that it'll be twenty years before they have another shot at overthrowing the Tsar. Some elements are trying to reunite the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, as well as the Social Revolutionaries and anarchist groups in a common struggle; other forces work behind the scenes to undermine any cohesion or unity.
The one group that does take the revolutionaries seriously is the Okhrana. In an attempt to prevent a repeat of 1905, the Tsarist secret police has dispatched agents and infiltrators to destroy the various revolutionary movements from within; in fact, as in Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, the Parisian emigré community has more informants than actual activists, and they've been entirely successful in hobbling the movement.
Until now.
( based on a true story )
I expect it would run for two or three seasons (with six episodes each) and then get abruptly cancelled. There is also a made-for-TV movie, set during the Berne Trial, that reunites the surviving characters and ends the series.
1. Comment to this post with "I surrender!" and I'll assign you the basis of some tv show idea. (Science fiction show, medical drama, criminal procedure, etc...)
2. Create a cast of characters, including the actors who'd play them
3. Add in any actor photos, character bios and show synopsis that you want.
4. Post to your own journal.
smhwpf gave me period drama and initially specified pre-1815, but my burning period drama idea takes place in 1907, which is nearly 100 years ago so ought to qualify in terms of lavish costumes and set design.Apologies in advance for the profusion of British white dudes playing Russian white dudes. This is a Beeb production. It's 90% dialogue and largely an excuse to get really talented actors to shout at each other. Russian and French dialogue is in English with the actors' actual accents; dialogue in German and Polish is subtitled.
The show is called Common Cause (Общее дело).
It's 1907. The first attempt at revolution in Russia two years ago was a miserable bloody failure; the movement's surviving leaders are scattered in exile throughout Europe or rotting in Tsarist prisons. Lenin's just declared that it'll be twenty years before they have another shot at overthrowing the Tsar. Some elements are trying to reunite the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, as well as the Social Revolutionaries and anarchist groups in a common struggle; other forces work behind the scenes to undermine any cohesion or unity.
The one group that does take the revolutionaries seriously is the Okhrana. In an attempt to prevent a repeat of 1905, the Tsarist secret police has dispatched agents and infiltrators to destroy the various revolutionary movements from within; in fact, as in Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, the Parisian emigré community has more informants than actual activists, and they've been entirely successful in hobbling the movement.
Until now.
( based on a true story )
I expect it would run for two or three seasons (with six episodes each) and then get abruptly cancelled. There is also a made-for-TV movie, set during the Berne Trial, that reunites the surviving characters and ends the series.
Sorry for so much fashionblogging lately* but this amuses me so I'm sharing.
I have bad purse luck. Part of this is owing to the fact that I object to purses being a thing. Men's clothes have pockets in them. Deep pockets! Sometimes pockets that are hidden in waistcoats. You have all heard this rant before, but there is no reason beyond The Patriarchy for women's clothes having a paucity of pockets. I do not like having to haul a purse around, particularly in this day and age when so much stuff is compact and would fit in pockets if my clothes had the correct amount.
Accordingly, when I get a purse, I need to fill it with All the Things to justify its existence. Which means that my purses seldom last long. Also, women's clothing and accessories are manufactured to fall apart quickly so that you buy more of them because Invisible Hand of the Free Market.
So I've been quite happy with my CBC bag that I've had for a few years. It's cute, it's large enough to fit most things, and it's patriotic in an ironic way. The only problem is that it only has a snap to close, making it easy to open when you do not want it to open, and also that it's falling apart. Which has been a tolerable situation for awhile, but as you know, Bob, I'm headed to Morocco basically any second now, and probably having an easily opened purse whilst travelling is not the wisest.
To cut a long story short, it died. Large swatches of fabric around the snaps essentially disintegrated, as if it became cognizant of its own impending obsolescence and just gave up. I was sad.
But! I had a back-up bag, a cute little teal number that matches my hair. Just large enough to accommodate the necessities, though kind of a pain if I'm trying to fit the Little Red Book in there or get something out easily. Ah, it would do for an everyday purse, or so I thought.
Alas, no. The universe tends towards entropy, and one of the buckles on it that are necessary for keeping it closed decided to tear. Which is weird, because there was no actual structural strain on it.
This necessitated buying a new purse.
A little while ago, when I had two non-broken purses, I saw a purse I liked at a shop and thought, "hey, if I didn't have enough purses, I would buy that one." It kind of looked like a book. Cool, but I have limited storage space and am not one of those women who hoards tons of purses.
So naturally, when mine died, it occurred to me that the shop might still have purses that looked like books. And, lo, it did! Which was when I saw the other side of the thing:
Which is why I now own a purse that looks like War and Peace and I crack up every time I see it.
* Kidding. I'm not sorry at all.
I have bad purse luck. Part of this is owing to the fact that I object to purses being a thing. Men's clothes have pockets in them. Deep pockets! Sometimes pockets that are hidden in waistcoats. You have all heard this rant before, but there is no reason beyond The Patriarchy for women's clothes having a paucity of pockets. I do not like having to haul a purse around, particularly in this day and age when so much stuff is compact and would fit in pockets if my clothes had the correct amount.
Accordingly, when I get a purse, I need to fill it with All the Things to justify its existence. Which means that my purses seldom last long. Also, women's clothing and accessories are manufactured to fall apart quickly so that you buy more of them because Invisible Hand of the Free Market.
So I've been quite happy with my CBC bag that I've had for a few years. It's cute, it's large enough to fit most things, and it's patriotic in an ironic way. The only problem is that it only has a snap to close, making it easy to open when you do not want it to open, and also that it's falling apart. Which has been a tolerable situation for awhile, but as you know, Bob, I'm headed to Morocco basically any second now, and probably having an easily opened purse whilst travelling is not the wisest.
To cut a long story short, it died. Large swatches of fabric around the snaps essentially disintegrated, as if it became cognizant of its own impending obsolescence and just gave up. I was sad.
But! I had a back-up bag, a cute little teal number that matches my hair. Just large enough to accommodate the necessities, though kind of a pain if I'm trying to fit the Little Red Book in there or get something out easily. Ah, it would do for an everyday purse, or so I thought.
Alas, no. The universe tends towards entropy, and one of the buckles on it that are necessary for keeping it closed decided to tear. Which is weird, because there was no actual structural strain on it.
This necessitated buying a new purse.
A little while ago, when I had two non-broken purses, I saw a purse I liked at a shop and thought, "hey, if I didn't have enough purses, I would buy that one." It kind of looked like a book. Cool, but I have limited storage space and am not one of those women who hoards tons of purses.
So naturally, when mine died, it occurred to me that the shop might still have purses that looked like books. And, lo, it did! Which was when I saw the other side of the thing:
Which is why I now own a purse that looks like War and Peace and I crack up every time I see it.
* Kidding. I'm not sorry at all.
Gravydämmerung: Pravda
Dec. 6th, 2013 06:38 pmQ: So why is the mayor allegedly hanging out in a crack house in Etobicoke?
Doug Ford: Well, you know something, I know, OK, let me cut to the chase, Don (Peat, Toronto Sun reporter). Because your paper’s gone a little offside.
Q: The paper that endorsed you in 2010?
Ford: Everyone changes. Until the media —
Q: So did the mayor.
Ford: Can you let me finish, Don? Until the media, stops it’s [sic] Soviet Stalin-era Pravda journalism, and for the folks that don’t know what Pravda journalism, back in the day of Stalin, that tries to coerce, get the people to believe in what they’re doing.
Q: What are you talking about, Doug?
The whole interview is comedy gold. Never change, Dougie.
ZOMG history!
Jul. 9th, 2013 05:44 pmHere is a thing I didn't know about:
These lovely ladies are Night Witches, female military aviators of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, who flew harassment bombing campaigns for the Soviets during WWII. We don't learn about them in history class for some reason. I blame the patriarchy. They flew utterly obsolete airplanes that made huge amounts of noise and nevertheless managed to kick serious Nazi ass. Their leader flew over 200 missions and was never captured.
Here is some more information from a website with horrible typography. And here is a Telegraph article focusing on Lilia Litvyak, who flew under the call sign White Lily and needed a cushion to see out of the windshield. I'm bookmarking this BBC segment for later. Bitch has an excellent article about them as well. From former pilot, Dr. Galina Beltsova:
Oh, and Garth Ennis wrote a comic about them. How is that not in my eyeballs right now?
( More pictures! )
These lovely ladies are Night Witches, female military aviators of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, who flew harassment bombing campaigns for the Soviets during WWII. We don't learn about them in history class for some reason. I blame the patriarchy. They flew utterly obsolete airplanes that made huge amounts of noise and nevertheless managed to kick serious Nazi ass. Their leader flew over 200 missions and was never captured.
Here is some more information from a website with horrible typography. And here is a Telegraph article focusing on Lilia Litvyak, who flew under the call sign White Lily and needed a cushion to see out of the windshield. I'm bookmarking this BBC segment for later. Bitch has an excellent article about them as well. From former pilot, Dr. Galina Beltsova:
"We slept in anything we could find—holes in the ground, tents, caves—but the Germans had to have their barracks, you know. They are very precise. So their barracks were built, all in a neat row, and we would come at night, after they were asleep, and bomb them. Of course, they would have to run out into the night in their underwear, and they were probably saying,—Oh, those night witches!' Or maybe they called us something worse. We, of course, would have preferred to have been called 'night beauties,' but, whichever, we did our job."
Oh, and Garth Ennis wrote a comic about them. How is that not in my eyeballs right now?
( More pictures! )
Electronic music. Communism. Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin. Futurism. Alchemy and the occult.
There are a few times that I've wished that I were more mechanically and musically inclined. Alas, I lack the talent to ever build one, though given that it's played by drawing, I'm pretty sure I could actually play one.
ETA: Here it is being played (starts at around 4:17):
There are a few times that I've wished that I were more mechanically and musically inclined. Alas, I lack the talent to ever build one, though given that it's played by drawing, I'm pretty sure I could actually play one.
ETA: Here it is being played (starts at around 4:17):
News to make you feel bad
Aug. 17th, 2012 09:30 pmYou know about this, I'm sure, but three members of pussy_riot got two years in jail for a political protest. Isn't it great that there's no more Soviet Union and Russian citizens are free to express their beliefs?
Here's a letter from Billy Bragg to Pussy Riot:
There was a protest today, but I missed it. At least the world is outraged? That's something, I guess.
In South Africa, police murdered 34 striking miners, because apparently we've travelled back in time to that era of labour and race relations.
In Jerusalem, dozens of Israeli youth attacked three Palestinian kids, one of whom is now in intensive care.
It's a much smaller thing and no one got killed, but apparently it's a problem to have Asians on our money. Because Canada doesn't have a problem with racism at all.
pussy_riot got two years in jail for a political protest. Isn't it great that there's no more Soviet Union and Russian citizens are free to express their beliefs?Here's a letter from Billy Bragg to Pussy Riot:
There was a protest today, but I missed it. At least the world is outraged? That's something, I guess.
In South Africa, police murdered 34 striking miners, because apparently we've travelled back in time to that era of labour and race relations.
In Jerusalem, dozens of Israeli youth attacked three Palestinian kids, one of whom is now in intensive care.
It's a much smaller thing and no one got killed, but apparently it's a problem to have Asians on our money. Because Canada doesn't have a problem with racism at all.
Tags:
Important announcement!
Jan. 11th, 2012 04:46 pmI have located my missing ushanka!
Now I have two. At least I was smart and got the new one in a different colour. And I do think black goes better with the Black Coat of Swoopiness. The other one is from Moscow though, and I am incredibly sentimental about it, and also it is warmer and more comfortable.
This winter has barely called for ushankas at all, not that I'm complaining.
Now I have two. At least I was smart and got the new one in a different colour. And I do think black goes better with the Black Coat of Swoopiness. The other one is from Moscow though, and I am incredibly sentimental about it, and also it is warmer and more comfortable.
This winter has barely called for ushankas at all, not that I'm complaining.
If so, you will like this badass sign made by the fabulous neko_zoi:
I am also a terriblesabotabby for not blogging on the protests in Russia at all and not making the solidarity demo here last week (when the revolution comes, I really hope it's not on a school night). Anyone have any good analyses they'd care to share?
neko_zoi:I am also a terrible
sabotabby for not blogging on the protests in Russia at all and not making the solidarity demo here last week (when the revolution comes, I really hope it's not on a school night). Anyone have any good analyses they'd care to share?Some things relating to books
Sep. 25th, 2011 06:03 pmAs promised, some words about the most horrific book I have ever read.
It's called Voices from Chernobyl: the oral history of a nuclear disaster, written by Svetlana Alexievich and translated by Keith Gessen. Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the Chernobyl meltdown, including liquidators sent in to clean up the disaster, firefighters, scientists, soldiers, family members of victims, and, most chillingly, young children. I'm not sure whether it's their stories, her editing and transcription, or Gessen's phenomenal translation, but there's a haunting lyricism to the monologues that places the reader at Ground Zero of the humanitarian catastrophe of these stories.
I think I was startled by just how compelling and awful I found this, given that I've read plenty of books on the Holocaust and Hiroshima and Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine and the Congo and Bhopal. Maybe it's because the Chernobyl meltdown happened when I was seven, and is one of those events that stuck in my mind and gave me nightmares, or because, while there are no shortage of disasters and wars and horrible things that can happen, Chernobyl was unpredictable and, as we saw in Japan, can easily happen again. Could have happened here. But it's also the luminous quality of the writing that makes the suffering and death depicted in these pages feel incredibly concrete and present.
On a more cheerful note, I went to Word on the Street today and picked up an incredible haul:
The Female of the Species, Sarah McCully. Sarah and I were friends in high school, but from the description of the book, I'd still be completely eager to read it even if I didn't know her. She's also an incredible musician and I bought her CD as well.
The Panic Button, Koom Kankesan. I know Koom as well, through teacherly things. Anyway, Alan Moore recommended it, which is good enough for me. I can't believe that someone I know (albeit not someone I know well, but still) is in communication with Moore. I seriously envision him living this Salingeresque life of hermitude that he emerges from only to write the occasional comic and make disparaging remarks about cinematic adaptations of his work.
Book of Disorders, Luciano Iacobelli.
Teaching Rebellion: stories from the grassroots mobilization in Oaxaca, Diana Denham and the C.A.S.A. Collective. I'd never heard of this book but I think it's obvious why I'd have picked it up.
Zot, Scott McCloud. I feel it is probably essential to read this.
Barnum: In Secret Service to the USA, Howard Chaykin. Never heard of it, but I liked the cover and it's by Howard Chaykin.
The Authority: Human on the Inside, John Ridley. I didn't read very far past Ellis' run on The Authority, and that clearly needed to be remedied.
I also picked up some cool t-shirts, one from Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and another from Spacing Magazine, and three issues of Shameless for my class.
I am very pleased about this, as I ran out of books that I own, haven't read, and am excited to read. I've got some holds at the library but I'm going through a new book every few days. One of my holds is Das Kapital, which should keep me out of trouble for awhile, but in the meantime I need some good commuting reading.
In other news, I have a migraine. Still. The pills aren't helping.
It's called Voices from Chernobyl: the oral history of a nuclear disaster, written by Svetlana Alexievich and translated by Keith Gessen. Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the Chernobyl meltdown, including liquidators sent in to clean up the disaster, firefighters, scientists, soldiers, family members of victims, and, most chillingly, young children. I'm not sure whether it's their stories, her editing and transcription, or Gessen's phenomenal translation, but there's a haunting lyricism to the monologues that places the reader at Ground Zero of the humanitarian catastrophe of these stories.
I'm afraid of the rain. That's what Chernobyl is. I'm afraid of snow, of the forest. This isn't an abstraction, a mind game, but an actual human feeling. Chernobyl is my home. It's in the most precious thing: my son, who was born in the spring of 1986. Now he's sick. Animals, even cockroaches, they know how much and when they should give birth. But people don't know how to do that. God didn't give us the power of foresight. A while ago in the papers it said that in Belarus alone, in 1993 there were 200,000 abortions. Because of Chernobyl. We all live with that fear now. Nature has sort of rolled up, waiting. Zarathustra would have said: "Oh, my sorrow! Where has the time gone?"
I think I was startled by just how compelling and awful I found this, given that I've read plenty of books on the Holocaust and Hiroshima and Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine and the Congo and Bhopal. Maybe it's because the Chernobyl meltdown happened when I was seven, and is one of those events that stuck in my mind and gave me nightmares, or because, while there are no shortage of disasters and wars and horrible things that can happen, Chernobyl was unpredictable and, as we saw in Japan, can easily happen again. Could have happened here. But it's also the luminous quality of the writing that makes the suffering and death depicted in these pages feel incredibly concrete and present.
On a more cheerful note, I went to Word on the Street today and picked up an incredible haul:
The Female of the Species, Sarah McCully. Sarah and I were friends in high school, but from the description of the book, I'd still be completely eager to read it even if I didn't know her. She's also an incredible musician and I bought her CD as well.
The Panic Button, Koom Kankesan. I know Koom as well, through teacherly things. Anyway, Alan Moore recommended it, which is good enough for me. I can't believe that someone I know (albeit not someone I know well, but still) is in communication with Moore. I seriously envision him living this Salingeresque life of hermitude that he emerges from only to write the occasional comic and make disparaging remarks about cinematic adaptations of his work.
Book of Disorders, Luciano Iacobelli.
Teaching Rebellion: stories from the grassroots mobilization in Oaxaca, Diana Denham and the C.A.S.A. Collective. I'd never heard of this book but I think it's obvious why I'd have picked it up.
Zot, Scott McCloud. I feel it is probably essential to read this.
Barnum: In Secret Service to the USA, Howard Chaykin. Never heard of it, but I liked the cover and it's by Howard Chaykin.
The Authority: Human on the Inside, John Ridley. I didn't read very far past Ellis' run on The Authority, and that clearly needed to be remedied.
I also picked up some cool t-shirts, one from Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and another from Spacing Magazine, and three issues of Shameless for my class.
I am very pleased about this, as I ran out of books that I own, haven't read, and am excited to read. I've got some holds at the library but I'm going through a new book every few days. One of my holds is Das Kapital, which should keep me out of trouble for awhile, but in the meantime I need some good commuting reading.
In other news, I have a migraine. Still. The pills aren't helping.
Hey it's been awhile since I've done a Cheatsheet of Freedom. Today's offering does not particularly lend itself well to the screenshot approach, because 90% of it is people sitting around talking. However, I got kind of obsessed with it in the last few weeks, and unless you grew up in the Soviet Union in the 70s or 80s, there's a good chance you haven't seen it.
Accordingly, I watched Seventeen Moments of Springso that you don't have to to encourage you to watch it too.
Some background: According to the friend who told me about it, and what I could figure out from the intertubes, this miniseries was a huge big deal. It used to air on Russian television for twelve days in a row every year, usually around Victory Day. In 2009, it was colourized, to much outcry. More crucial to our interests here on the intertubes, it is responsible for memetic mutation (warning: TVTropes link), with jokes about the main character serving as some sort of Communist proto-Chuck Norris joke thing. It is also responsible for Vladimir Putin.
The other bizarre thing for me about this show, raised as I was on Western capitalist pigdog TV, is that there's a certain mood whiplash in regard to tone and audience. I could not, for the life of me, figure out whether this show was supposed to be aimed at children or adults. There's a good argument to be made for both, especially in the episode that contains both an adorable sequence of bear cubs that think they're people, a fairly brutal (for 70s TV) suicide, and a scene where a small baby is tortured. It's slow-moving, grim, and tense, with, as I've said, long sequences of dialogue, but there's also a strange sort of storybook narration to explain events to the viewer, which, in Western TV, you wouldn't see outside of a show for very young children.
Oh, and it's very good. Despite the slow pace and some weird cinematography, I was completely engrossed.
( spoilers for the show and WWII )
This show is great and you should watch it if you can. I'm fairly certain that I missed much of what was going on because of various quirks of translation and cultural differences in cinematic convention, but I nevertheless greatly enjoyed it. If someone could definitively answer whether it's supposed to be a children's show, though, I would really like to know.
And, yes, some of the Stirlitz joke-meme things were translated into English. (Warning...oh you know.) They tend to be something like this:
"On May Day, Stirlitz put on his Red Army cap, grabbed a red banner and marched up and down the corridors of the Reich Security Office singing the Internationale and other revolutionary songs. Never before had Stirlitz been so close to failure."
Accordingly, I watched Seventeen Moments of Spring
Some background: According to the friend who told me about it, and what I could figure out from the intertubes, this miniseries was a huge big deal. It used to air on Russian television for twelve days in a row every year, usually around Victory Day. In 2009, it was colourized, to much outcry. More crucial to our interests here on the intertubes, it is responsible for memetic mutation (warning: TVTropes link), with jokes about the main character serving as some sort of Communist proto-Chuck Norris joke thing. It is also responsible for Vladimir Putin.
The other bizarre thing for me about this show, raised as I was on Western capitalist pigdog TV, is that there's a certain mood whiplash in regard to tone and audience. I could not, for the life of me, figure out whether this show was supposed to be aimed at children or adults. There's a good argument to be made for both, especially in the episode that contains both an adorable sequence of bear cubs that think they're people, a fairly brutal (for 70s TV) suicide, and a scene where a small baby is tortured. It's slow-moving, grim, and tense, with, as I've said, long sequences of dialogue, but there's also a strange sort of storybook narration to explain events to the viewer, which, in Western TV, you wouldn't see outside of a show for very young children.
Oh, and it's very good. Despite the slow pace and some weird cinematography, I was completely engrossed.
( spoilers for the show and WWII )
This show is great and you should watch it if you can. I'm fairly certain that I missed much of what was going on because of various quirks of translation and cultural differences in cinematic convention, but I nevertheless greatly enjoyed it. If someone could definitively answer whether it's supposed to be a children's show, though, I would really like to know.
And, yes, some of the Stirlitz joke-meme things were translated into English. (Warning...oh you know.) They tend to be something like this:
"On May Day, Stirlitz put on his Red Army cap, grabbed a red banner and marched up and down the corridors of the Reich Security Office singing the Internationale and other revolutionary songs. Never before had Stirlitz been so close to failure."
Today in Don't You Wish You Lived Here?
Jul. 28th, 2011 10:29 pmDinner tonight:
Also, viaumadoshi: What's up with the LJ DDos attacks. I have to say, that makes me want to stick with LJ more.
Also, via
umadoshi: What's up with the LJ DDos attacks. I have to say, that makes me want to stick with LJ more.The fact that Vladimir Burtsev was a real guy and not a fictional character that I made up makes me incredibly happy.
Awesome facts about Comrade Burtsev:
1. He did not get less badass over the years, despite multiple bouts of exile and imprisonment.
2. He was so cool that the British refused to turn him to the Tsarist police.
3. He was mostly known for his detective work, rooting out infiltrators and agent provocateurs in the anarchist movement.
4. He was one of the guys who exposed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a fraud.
5. He had awesome anime hair.
So, you know, even though I am not an anarchist anymore*, I think this guy really deserves to have a comic or play or something written about him. It is also a cosmic injustice that the link at the bottom of the page to "The Sherlock Holmes of the Revolution" (apparently yes, he was called that, and by multiple people) by Rita T. Kronenhitter seems to go to a defunct page.
(I was reading about him in The World that Never Was by Alex Butterworth, who seems to take great delight in Victorian political spy games. As do I.)
* I would probably still be an anarchist if there were more badass detective anarchists with anime hair and fewer smelly hippies with questionable politics. I'm just saying.
Awesome facts about Comrade Burtsev:
1. He did not get less badass over the years, despite multiple bouts of exile and imprisonment.
2. He was so cool that the British refused to turn him to the Tsarist police.
3. He was mostly known for his detective work, rooting out infiltrators and agent provocateurs in the anarchist movement.
4. He was one of the guys who exposed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a fraud.
5. He had awesome anime hair.
So, you know, even though I am not an anarchist anymore*, I think this guy really deserves to have a comic or play or something written about him. It is also a cosmic injustice that the link at the bottom of the page to "The Sherlock Holmes of the Revolution" (apparently yes, he was called that, and by multiple people) by Rita T. Kronenhitter seems to go to a defunct page.
(I was reading about him in The World that Never Was by Alex Butterworth, who seems to take great delight in Victorian political spy games. As do I.)
* I would probably still be an anarchist if there were more badass detective anarchists with anime hair and fewer smelly hippies with questionable politics. I'm just saying.
I just finished Alexei Yurchak's Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, which, as several have pointed out, is kind of the best title ever. It's about the ordinary lives of young people in the Soviet Union from the 50s to the 80s.
The prevailing images of Soviet life in the West—at least when I was growing up—were of disaffected youth who wanted nothing more than Levi jeans and Coca-Cola, quietly mouthing the hackneyed slogans forced on them by the government while privately listening to censored rock music and plotting the downfall of socialism.
And who could blame them?
Salad with mayonnaise. Check out English Russia's World of Soviet Groceries post.
Yurchak, having actually experienced the system firsthand, takes a more nuanced view, rejecting binaries (surprise! He is a post-modernist) and exploring instead the basic contradictions experienced by Soviet citizens, leading to the USSR's collapse. He begins from Claude Lefort's paradox of modernist ideology:
The result is an analysis that actually allows Soviet citizens some agency, particularly in Yurchak's descriptions of the Komsomol (Communist Union of Youth), to which most people in the USSR belonged. Loyal Komsomol party secretaries had no problem espousing a critical but supportive view of socialism, while seeing no inherent contradiction with an appreciation of what Yurchak calls the "Imaginary West" as constructed through music, shortwave radio, and subculture. In fact, it was the ideology of their institutions, which in theory promoted inquisitiveness, that led them to pursue these interests.
The first two chapters are a slog through an analysis of authoritative discourse—the "everything was forever" referenced in the title, where content became subservient to the creation of language that removed the author and gave a sense that there was a universal, static truth that everyone new. (The result of this discourse being hilarious copypasta speeches and banners where local Komsomol members would notice grammatical errors but be forbidden by higher-ups to correct them, since the mistake was in the original.) It's dense stuff, mainly dealing with the relationship between the constative dimension of discourse—which can be true or untrue—and the performative dimension—which can only be effective or ineffective. (Thankfully, we get examples. A constative statement is "I am cold"—a description of reality; a performative statement is "I vote for this resolution," which affects the nature of social reality.) At times, I felt I lacked the requisite background in linguistics and po-mo to understand what the author is on about, but he quotes Laibach along with Derrida, so I got through it.
The rest, which focuses on institutions and subcultures, was a much faster, more engaging read. He looks at concepts of svoi ("us," as in "us/them," distinguishing "normal people" and complicated social networks from activists—in this context, unquestioning pro-Soviet ideologues, and dissidents), vnye (occupying a position simultaneously inside and outside the system, but finding the official discourse "uninteresting"), and some very strange performance art. There's some really good primary source research that's just completely engrossing, breaking up the theory with letters, jokes, and strange collections of anecdotes.
Anyway, totally worth a read. If you got through the above blather, you can have a picture of a bootleg record made on an X-Ray:
The prevailing images of Soviet life in the West—at least when I was growing up—were of disaffected youth who wanted nothing more than Levi jeans and Coca-Cola, quietly mouthing the hackneyed slogans forced on them by the government while privately listening to censored rock music and plotting the downfall of socialism.
And who could blame them?
Salad with mayonnaise. Check out English Russia's World of Soviet Groceries post.
Yurchak, having actually experienced the system firsthand, takes a more nuanced view, rejecting binaries (surprise! He is a post-modernist) and exploring instead the basic contradictions experienced by Soviet citizens, leading to the USSR's collapse. He begins from Claude Lefort's paradox of modernist ideology:
[T]he split between ideological enunciation (which reflects the theoretical ideals of the Enlightenment) and ideological rule (manifest in the practical concerns of he modern state's political authority) [...] In the society built on communist ideals, this paradox appeared through the announced objective of achieving the full liberation of the society and the individual (building of communism, creation of the New Man) by means of subsuming that society and individual under full party control. The Soviet citizen was called upon to submit completely to party leadership, to cultivate a collectivist ethic, and to repress individualism, while at the same time becoming an enlightened and independent-minded individual who pursues knowledge and is inquisitive and creative.
The result is an analysis that actually allows Soviet citizens some agency, particularly in Yurchak's descriptions of the Komsomol (Communist Union of Youth), to which most people in the USSR belonged. Loyal Komsomol party secretaries had no problem espousing a critical but supportive view of socialism, while seeing no inherent contradiction with an appreciation of what Yurchak calls the "Imaginary West" as constructed through music, shortwave radio, and subculture. In fact, it was the ideology of their institutions, which in theory promoted inquisitiveness, that led them to pursue these interests.
The first two chapters are a slog through an analysis of authoritative discourse—the "everything was forever" referenced in the title, where content became subservient to the creation of language that removed the author and gave a sense that there was a universal, static truth that everyone new. (The result of this discourse being hilarious copypasta speeches and banners where local Komsomol members would notice grammatical errors but be forbidden by higher-ups to correct them, since the mistake was in the original.) It's dense stuff, mainly dealing with the relationship between the constative dimension of discourse—which can be true or untrue—and the performative dimension—which can only be effective or ineffective. (Thankfully, we get examples. A constative statement is "I am cold"—a description of reality; a performative statement is "I vote for this resolution," which affects the nature of social reality.) At times, I felt I lacked the requisite background in linguistics and po-mo to understand what the author is on about, but he quotes Laibach along with Derrida, so I got through it.
The rest, which focuses on institutions and subcultures, was a much faster, more engaging read. He looks at concepts of svoi ("us," as in "us/them," distinguishing "normal people" and complicated social networks from activists—in this context, unquestioning pro-Soviet ideologues, and dissidents), vnye (occupying a position simultaneously inside and outside the system, but finding the official discourse "uninteresting"), and some very strange performance art. There's some really good primary source research that's just completely engrossing, breaking up the theory with letters, jokes, and strange collections of anecdotes.
Anyway, totally worth a read. If you got through the above blather, you can have a picture of a bootleg record made on an X-Ray:
Hah, I like these guys
Dec. 24th, 2010 08:53 amInterview with Russian anarchist art group Voina.
[Voina paint a huge dick on the Liteyniy Bridge. As the bridge is raised—well, you can figure it out.]
Anyway, half the members of Voina, whose mandate is to confront the Russian state on issues around racism, homophobia, and totalitarianism, are now in prison. Here is the Free Voina site, with ways to help.
The language of our art is really able to resist the coming right-wing reaction. When our Dick on the Liteyniy bridge – 65 meters high, 26 meters wide, weighting 4 tonnes - rose menacingly into the windows of the FSB-KGB headquarters the authorities couldn’t find any other reply but to illegally put us away by a false accusation.
[Voina paint a huge dick on the Liteyniy Bridge. As the bridge is raised—well, you can figure it out.]
Anyway, half the members of Voina, whose mandate is to confront the Russian state on issues around racism, homophobia, and totalitarianism, are now in prison. Here is the Free Voina site, with ways to help.
Vladimir Putin sings "Blueberry Hill." Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell, Mickey Rourke, and a bunch of other famous actors sing along.
I don't know. This video might actually be too post-modern even for me.
Vladimir Putin Action Comics
Nov. 9th, 2010 05:31 pmSometimes I think life really isn't worthwhile. And then springheel_jack posts Hipster Hitler*, through which revolution_grrl discovers Vladimir Putin Action Comics, through which I find the resolve to live another day.
( You'll see why )
* I cannot has a Heilvetica t-shirt.
springheel_jack posts Hipster Hitler*, through which revolution_grrl discovers Vladimir Putin Action Comics, through which I find the resolve to live another day.( You'll see why )
* I cannot has a Heilvetica t-shirt.
