Frank, ants and Mrs Stein.

Frank glanced to the side and spit out. His sputum landed on a tree root. He had found what he was looking for : a ginger ant mound, not larger than a Stetson. He turned around and walked to his truck.

Frank lowered the tailgate, picked up a coil of thick rope with a steel butcher's hook fastened at one end, a length of one inch extra heavy PVC pipe and a sobbing, writhing mass of teenage girl, 'bout a hundred pounds' worth of senior psychology student.

Frank watched her stand uneasily for a minute, naked but for the harness, eyes darting wildly, mascara runs every which way, trying desperately to signal something or the other past the ballgag and the leather moonglove. The sunshine of the early Monday morning filtering through the trees gave the scene an idyllic quality.

He dragged her by the hair to the spot of his discovery, propped her against the tree, hoisted the rope over a branch, hooked it to the steel ring behind her neck and raised her up about two feet in the air.

As she was dangling in the air squirming her legs he removed her stretcher plug. The pop was audible, the hole left behind generous. It's always the skinny ones that have the bigger buttholes, Frank thought. He shoved the plastic pipe deep inside her, then guided the other end gingerly as he slowly released the rope. The pipe went about six or eight inches into the mound when he stopped, fastened the rope's end against the tree, turned around and started off.

She started emitting a deep, chilling sort of growl, about how you'd expect a turtle to whine if turtles could somehow whine. Frank turned, looked at her for a moment, and then reasurred her in a melodious drawl : "Dun' worry yourself any, the pipe's smooth, they can't climb it." Then after a moment he added "Jus' be careful not to shit. Once it dries they can climb on that."

Frank tipped his hat and took off.

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Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Friday, 27 January, Year 9 d.Tr.

Fifi, hamburguesas bimbo

So I got this idea for a diary-style item describing the summer of some 15yo girly that got invited by her aunt to be gangbanged by a bunch of young'uns because the aunt runs a sort of slavery farm for young boys and she decided they're old enough now and could benefit from some exercising of their inborn male sadism.

But then I didn't actually write anything because I was busy with Fifi. Here's an amusing insider joke cum name coincidence and other cheezy things.

Do I get the George Burnsi award yet ? No ? Okay then, you asked for it. Here's a piece of tail :

Please excuse the fuzzy quality. I think it might've been overexposed.

Oh, and speaking of making streetwalkers go barefoot where the garbage juice swamps and puddles, check out this bat-sized butterfly!

It was literally ten centimeters across if it was a foot. Let's see some detail, and then we're off to commercials.

———In case you're wondering, I just re-viewed The Sunshine Boys, which is a great film (principally because that Central Casting advertising model Lemmon is not there), and I decided to make things easy for myself in my old age by producing some material that'll allow for easy coherence points by comparison in thirty to forty years. Good plan huh. [↩]

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Category: Zsilnic

Saturday, 19 August, Year 9 d.Tr.

Feeeelings... tis only feeeee-eeelings!

From #eulora :

mircea_popescu AUCTION : 5 stacks lbn, q 237, opening 2mn. ETA tomorrow 17:00 ART.

mircea_popescu ~ the esteemed audience is cordially invited not to act the asshole now that lbn is being offered and spuriously predend like it's abundant, only to spend the remainder of the year whining about wanting to buy lbn and how they're waiting for lbn. either buy it now or stfu ~

danielpbarron 2 mn

mircea_popescu AUCTION : 5 stacks lbn, q 237, 2mn heard danielpbarron . ETA tomorrow 17:00 ART.

diana_coman bwahahaa

mircea_popescu diana_coman hm ?

diana_coman had fun with the esteemed audience thing

mircea_popescu yeah well. everyone's all "oh, lbn makes money" then expect to buy it at i dunno, 300%. fucking lbn. gimme a break. the supply is so drastically constrained...

diana_coman is calculating re lbn as last time she bought stacks and stacks she did not regret it AT ALL

mircea_popescu hey, people suck at pricing. i'm starting to believe it's the #1 characteristic of the species. in fact -- i'm starting to think the only sane definition of what "everyone knows" as emotion is exactly this : the aggregate muck and gunk that prevents correct pricing. much like there's a word for gunk in an engine there is a word for gunk in a head.

diana_coman well, what everyone knows is by definition rather doomed to be largely irrelevant unless things really don't change at all - by the time everyone finally gets the memo, most of it is lost on the way and meanwhile it probably doesn't apply anymore anyway. not to mention it is "knows" rather than knows there.

mircea_popescu yet the emotion thing is invariant across cultures and times. kinda what the mpex accounting tongue in cheek refers to as "intangibles" for this reason. "you spent 5mn on your wife, do you have a wife worth 5mn ?" "no, i have a 20 dollar bitch and 5mn worth of sentiments".i

diana_coman by emotion thing you mean "it's safe and cuddly to go with what everyone knows"?

mircea_popescu nope, i mean everything. humiliation, elation, everything in between, all everyone ever "feels" is obtained through taking two values, diffing them, and allocating a name to the result. it's after the fact, see, not before. the emotion is what you CALL the heading. quite literally tokenized as in the results of the craft, "i went in with 100k worth of materials and got out 20k worth of the tool i was making + 80k worth of TINKERER'S SENTIMENTS!!1"

diana_coman 3mn on the lbn mircea_popescu

mircea_popescu AUCTION : 5 stacks lbn, q 237, 3mn heard diana_coman . ETA tomorrow 17:00 ART.

danielpbarron mircea_popescu, 3.25 mn

diana_coman I'm not sure I fully grasp the theory re emotion there

diana_coman 4mn

mircea_popescu AUCTION : 5 stacks lbn, q 237, 4mn heard diana_coman . ETA tomorrow 17:00 ART.

mircea_popescu let's work it with reference to dream states. a dream state differs from the waking state in that there not being an objective reality to keep the entropy clock (see here also) the brain is stuck doing the timekeeping. and what the brain does is on-demand timekeeping, which is to say that IF you ask about symbol X, THEN the antecessor AX of symbol X is produced ; and if you ask of AX, THEN AAX is produced. AAX does not exist beforfe AX, but comes after AX ; it's not AAX that defines and creates AX nor AX that flows necessarily from AAX but vice-versa.

mircea_popescu now then. in this structure, we can understand "emotion" or "feeling" : it's not what CAUSES an action, behaviour, activity, whatever phenomena, but how the phenomena IS EXPLAINED. after the fact. it's not "i love my wife therefore i spend a dollar on her" but "since i already spent the dollar let's call it love". the example with the wife is rare ; in general it's more like "it's not that i'm lazy because i don't like math ; it's that since i'm lazy anyway may as well call it not liking math". entirely the economy of internal self-indulgence. which is why once confronted with the stick, and the very strict "you'll either math OR DIE" they struggle ~against the question~ (in torquemada's acception of what "the question" is, let us put them to the question) while that lasts ; but once it is no longer feasible to keep up the struggle... they... like math. but not before. before, it's all "our democracy".

diana_coman hm, I don't think that follows as such because decision is not baked-in; what you describe is likely the path of least resistance and therefore the most commonly seen meaning that emotion marks a hole and easiest to fill the hole is by "calling it love/not liking maths" but this doesn't mean that emotion WAS the hole - I think it's just the marker; (I already tried to write on the topic recently)

mircea_popescu so you're calling misnomer ? ie, just because idiot calls clay pot porcelain doth not follow porcelain dun exist ?

diana_coman I do. at the same time I admit I can't claim I have proof as in mathematically sound proof.

mircea_popescu yeah i see no argument. after all, if they can't just up and call whatever it is they happen to be doing "politics" or "scholarship" or "speaking latin" just on the flimsy strength of "that's what they happen to be doing", why exactly would we call emotion what they happen to be doing ?

mircea_popescu turns out that most walkers today are in dire need of a sentimental education, along with everything else. they can't math nor can feel. in typical fashion, the codicil is there from the get-go : "the only sane definition of what "everyone knows" as emotion". I suspect this also has something to do with the old observation that "they don't have feelings" - not in the sense that they can't claim to "feel" this or that, cry or whatever, but in this deeper sense of something else than a name for ...basically convenience I suppose which ends up in what was discussed underneath the sociopathy article : yes, "sociopaths" aka actual people can't possibly love the muggles aka "our democracy" pretend-people. for the same reason you can't love a cow, there's nothing there.

diana_coman quite, yes. one can be fond of a cow though, so "fond of" works, sure

mircea_popescu indeed.

The next step is the gassing chambers, just so you know.

———"Adevarat, e tare pizda ta. Vreo trei ar da la ea, fiindca restu-au dat deja. N-are nimic in cap, se vrea a fi vedeta, tu bagi banii ca-n depozit ca vrea eticheta." [↩]

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Category: Trilterviuri

Wednesday, 01 February, Year 9 d.Tr.

Family Business

Family Businessi is a very optimistic take on that age old problem of the rotten son (and very strictly a story of men, like all stories ever were, and forever will be). It goes like so : Mac marries some Sicilian woman (did you know Sicilians have nigger blood ?) who gives him a wet noodle for a son. That washcloth in turn marries some brownie masquerading as a jewess and, irony of ironies, sires the very WASP-ish Matthew B out of her wasted, shriveled up flesh.

The son comes to the grandfather with a sweet score, which is aptly chosen to symbolize the American way : some bezzle cocksuckers want the Irish in us to cover up -- not merely for their impotence, but also for the pantently false nature of their loud claims to the contrary. In this sense, the tragic figure of the son truly stands out. He has a choice, don't you know it! He either gives his life away to justify the silly edifice of obnoxious old women through dedicating it to "a master's degree in biochemistry" and its despicable, crawling swampspawn ; or else he gives his life away to still justify, but in the negative this time, the silly edifice of obnoxious old women and Darius fucking Groza, through "that's why we couldn't discover useful genetic engineering, cuz this man stoled it and then ated it!!!". That's what happened dontcha know, if only there weren't men in this world the old women would have long ago flown to the moon powered by naught besides their own putrid mouth-farts!

Anyway, the old man is not smart enough to know it, but instead follows his blood, and so they end up sucking a rat into the set-up : the boy's own father, the old man's own son. Then things go exactly as you'd expect them to : the kiddo fucks up, he gets dropped, the squealler yells copper and rolls up the whole thing. Except, of course, for the part where men will be menii, and money will be moneyiii, and the only thing a rat can do is take himself out.

Eventually the old man dies, and the first and last time the two others see each other is at his funeral. Watch this thing fifty times if you have to, but watch it until you fucking get it. There is no fucking future, and no fucking anything for you on that side. If your brain works enough to read these words, your brain works enough to know that much. Nevertheless, the film is optimistic in that it misrepresents the concentration of men in the sample (2/3, really ?) and from there all sorts of things -- for instance they're so overabundant they can afford not to excruciate (and I mean this in the most physical, bloodied sense possible) the brownie. In actual reality, she's dogmeat.

There really isn't anything else to say ; other than perhaps take your "civilisation" and shove it so far up your stupid ass it tickles your stupid mother's cunt in a pleasurable fashion.

———1989, by the very competent Sidney Lumet, with Dustin Hoffman, Sean Connery, Matthew Broderick. [↩]And women will be women -- point in case being the shithead shyster who genuinely thinks she's talented for doing what the system fucking expects needs her to do. She thinks this. And she also imagines she should get paid for doing nothing, just like the other whore, just like any other useless pointless whore since the dawn of time. What, she sat, ain't good enough ?! [↩]Haha-hahaha what, you thought the SOPS get a say in re the money flow ?

Lolz. [↩]

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Category: Trilematograf

Sunday, 17 September, Year 9 d.Tr.

Eulora Special Playable Character List

I started re-writingi the list of SPCs for Eulora like normal people, on a napkin. Then it ran long so I moved to a machine, but as I was firing up the editor I realised I'm actually trying to use the wrong tool for the job. After all, youii'd just as rather peek, right ? So here goes :

The Vampire. Should be a superset of the thief style (can't go into towns, has to live off land broadly speaking) with the added benefit of only being able to move at night and having to feediii off people'siv BPsv. Gets some vampire-ish bonuses and of course the point of being a special in the first place : Immortalityvi. Social.vii

The Lich. The oldest and therefore one of the most fleshed outviii of these, the Lich is basically a town-degrader / living curse with fixed position. It will be expensive to get, tough as nails yet very rewarding if destroyed.

The Ent. You know, ancient tree. Roughly the opposite of the Lich, except not as effectual, and also not ~actually~ immortal.ix About as expensive to get as the vampire, but not social.

The Grim Reaper. You probably need to be sitting down for this. So : when a character's time comes, his name is put in a list. The Grim Reaper goes through that list, pops out of nowhere and... attacks the player. If the Grim Reaper is defeated, the victor can... step up and... take up his mantle, thereby becoming the next Grim Reaper! Yep, that's right, PC Grim Reaper and also the ultimate PvP character : you get to teleport to players at the head of armies you didn't even have to pay for and pluck their head off like a chicklet's. How about that ?

The Shambling Abomination. This chthonic horrorh sews on parts of its defeated foes to its own body. Colossal.x

Ghost. If you die, you have the option to stay on as a Ghost. Your principal preoccupation will be to sneak around people's houses at night and torture/murder their children.xi

Players will also be able to ascend to divine status (there's a Pantheon of 7 major gods contemplatedxii plus a bunch of smaller farexiii, and players can totally become these but that's all I'm going to say for now. Also there's things players can become that don't specifically grant Immortality and therefore are not on this list (Werewolf, Spider Queen etc).

That's about it, maybe I'll add more later. Any artists feel tinkled by all this ?

———Most of what I do as head designer for that game, or as a writer, or come to think about it as a businessman generally, is re-writing. Try it sometime. [↩]The "you" being contemplated here has been following along and consequently is already well informed on the topic. There's just no practical way to provide a general purpose introduction, Eulora sits by now atop a too high pile of history and is much too complex to casually introduce in a few paragraphs for the needs of the disinterested public. [↩]You get it, everyone else has to pay for their food -- but not this guy.

As you might intuit, the Creator is not particularly fond of the accursed race! Just like in the legend, except meaningfully in context and for rather obvious reasons. This, incidentally, is my point of pride with Eulora -- that it makes sense, actual, honest to God, meaningful proper sense of all sorts of things you might have heard before playing but never actually thought about nor properly understood. Because it didn't really relate before. [↩]All the Specials are PvP oriented. [↩]Blood Points regenerate while resting, but it takes food to rest. Obviously. [↩]Immunity from old age death. [↩]Meaning it could probably start a coven. Moderately hard to achieve, as far as these go, because of the social angle. Historically vampirism has been a very transparent literary cover for homosexuality, and I intend to honor that tradition, so if you know someone who's in, you will probably be thereby able to join -- provided you can put up with the drawbacks, of course. [↩]It's interesting to read four year old statements like that. Amusingly enough, it's still broadly correct, if a little faned in the particular corners and edges that were only present there to allow some kind of solution to problems that were then perceived, but meanwhile have been otherwise solved.

And speaking of this : historically the problem with the ECu's pegging to Bitcoin was, "what happens if fiats deteriorate significantly". For practical reasons you obviously can't have an ECu worth more than the average wife, nobody'd be able to play. Yet it's obviously not fair to simply dilute people's Eulora holdings, we're not talking bullshit virtual realities here, backed by bezzle and pipedreams. Eulora is a real place, not the fucking United States. So wut do ?

The previously indicated solution to this problem was, to quote,

Minigame announced at some point (I meanwhile misplaced the reference kudos to Daniel, he had it) that should BTC/USD ratios increase significantly, it will float the ECu, but by a degree of magnitude and through the procedure of increasing everyone's cash tenfold, and then adding nine times the base value of all their other items, in cash.

Fortunately for everyone involved, the ever-expanding in-game meaning of item quality has resolved this problem in a much more satisfactory manner. Henceforth the last word on "what happens if ECu has to be floated to fiat" is : that whenever we feel like doing it, we will, by whatever arbitrary ratio. Player held cash will be multiplied by that same ratio, and qualities of items held by players will be multiplied by that same ratio as well. The output of items such as Magic Bags will also scale accordingly. This not only entirely maintains tight value coupling, but correctly rewards the veteran for his own history. How about that!

The only catch is that now that the dollar has collapsed past the tenth of a Bitcent, I no longer see the incentive to do the adjustment intimated in the linked material. So what if a base value Multifunctional Samovar is worth about a buck ? Doesn't it look like it's worth about a buck to you ?

It's true that high base values for items makes it harder to acquire them, which in principle acts as a barrier to entry of new playes. This is a legitimate concern. Yet that same high value also acts as a Veblen marker, which is a good thing in context. In the dispute between "easy and therefore worthless" vs "hard and therefore temper tantrum", the Republic doesn't usually favour the former side, and besides, as far as barriers to entry are concerned the impact of technological difficulties encountered by the walled-garden farmed chickens seems to exceed the impact of the problem here discussed by at least an order of magnitude if not more ; not to mention the happenstance that the most recent update brought about a slowing of both crafting and rare resource utilization in crafting that practically speaking has the exact same effect.

In short -- we'll probably do one of these ; but later. [↩]In the sense that you may get a decade of play out of one in opposition to the 18-20ish months the average character is currently intended to live. [↩]The game battle mechanic will follow a triplet, whereby all units can be qualified as Hero, Colossus, or Army. Armies get bonuses when fighting Heroes, Heroes get bonuses when fighting Colossi, and Colossi get bonuses when fighting Armies. So basically, if you get real high Leadership and hire a bunch of NPC archers and swordsmen and so on, you'll be moving about the map with an Army. If you just pump up your own battle skills, you'll be a hero - not really able to take on an army, no, but the only hope the town's got when the dragon comes. Or for that matter the Special Character -- no matter how rich your following they're not about to fight the Grim Reaper for your sake. [↩]Children are integral to Euloran life because when you die "you" move on to your successor. Now imagine you spent half a year grooming this future great mage only to have a ghost strangle him in the cradle! [↩]Because hey, 7 months in the Euloran weekly year. [↩]Like you know, go through a lot of bad plastic surgery, become a total gorgon and therefore the Medusa. Or fuck Diana the Virgin Huntress (aka Mary the Mother of Ineptitude in later renditions) so god damned well she makes you a slightly better hunter. [↩]

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Category: Trolloludens

Saturday, 18 February, Year 9 d.Tr.

Eulora boardroom leaks

The thing with corporate officers is that they can't keep secrets to save their lives, have you noticed ? Everything leaks like a sieve, with a tiny bit of effort and the right app their wives can read their work emails before the shareholders do.

Minigame is no different, obviously, because we're totally just as inept and incapable as the usual crop of scammers, spammers and assorted retards befouling the world with their malodorous presence. Consequently, here's a chunk of a recent boardroom conversation, leaked by unknown reality winners that somehow had the fucking sense to avoid faux "news" outlets and so preserved their anonimity.

diana_coman altfel pt partea de autentificare: eu tot citesc pe tema si din urma si din ce citesc din aia imi pare ca nu pricep cum exact "alegem"i

mircea_popescu ce anume alegem ?ii

diana_coman pai intai daca folosim chei simetrice sau otp si hash; si de care exact in orice caz; din log am vazut ca sponge si duplex constructions alea au cam fost ceva-ceva discutate si in general considerate insuficiente pe diverse coordonate desi nu mi-e tocmai clar cat de adanc au fost evaluate concret; altminteri cat e descris ca "ce ar fi bun" e tot la capitolul "inca nerezolvat" deci naiii

mircea_popescu mda. nici mie nu mi-e clar ca de-aia am si lasat-o-n aer asa. da' plm, nimic nu-i mai prost decit ce-avem acuma.iv

diana_coman deci logic vorbind cum vad eu acum am ca optiuni cam asa: ori dau cu banul si zic luam x si vedem ce facem ca oricum tot vrem sa-l schimbam cu ce o fi cand-e-gata-ce-vremv

mircea_popescu adica la pensie.vi

diana_coman ori altminteri adun un x, y, z si ma apuc sa le evaluez la un fel macar stim pe ce baza le-am ales; evident nu-i clar ca totusi castigam mult asa dat fiind ca la final tot "vrem sa-l schimbam cu ce o fi cand-e-gata-ce-vrem". e si chestia cu pensia, davii

mircea_popescu ca aia e problema aici, repede se invata lenesu' cu gaura-n coperis. ce punem cam aia va si fi, nu se deranjeaza nimeni sa faca ceva altfel. nici daca arde ; darminte daca n-arde.viii

diana_coman daaa. teoria lui "e numa' temporar" de ma apuca pe mine pandaliile. ca stiu din experienta cu temporaru' asta cum ramane fix asa urmatorii 50 de aniix

mircea_popescu nu ma astept sa fie evaluabil diano. tot cacatu' cu evaluatu' e facut de mintile imbecile ale "democratiei moderne" in sensu' ca sa obosesti tu cautind, nu in alt sens.x

diana_coman eh bun, deci atunci dam cu banul ca na, macar e mai ieftin deci?xi

mircea_popescu cam daxii

diana_coman atunci ce sa zic, eu as merge mai degraba pe OTP si hash in ideea ca macar nu mai importam si AESxiii

mircea_popescu e o idee. cum il facem, hash-extended sau full ?xiv

diana_coman hmxv

mircea_popescu concret : fie R un bitfield random. hash-extended e asa : pentru a trimite X mesaje, se calculeaza hash pe n fragmente R/X. full e asa : se calculeaza hash de (R + hash precedent) pe n fragmente.xvi

diana_coman da, am zis hm ca incerc adica sa urmaresc mental daca gasesc anume un fel de alegere cu care sa fiu macar impacata daca nu mai multxvii

mircea_popescu oricum nu-i ce judeca aici, dat fiind ca noa, nu exista nicaieri publicata slabiciunea unui hash function. nu ~taria~, ci slabiciunea. deci orice proces e fundamental incomparabil cu oricare altul.xviii

diana_coman mda; de aia am zis "macar impacata daca nu mai mult" ca prea mult stiu ca nu existaxix

mircea_popescu in fine, cre' ca voi publica discutia, macar de rusinea lumii daca nu de altcevaxx

.

diana_coman eh, cine mai are rusine acum, ca si aia costa prea mult se parexxi

mircea_popescu mda. plus ca e si drepturile omului...xxii

diana_coman cam curg din aia, daxxiii

mircea_popescu a, apropo, ti-am povestit luzlu' lumii cu justitia-n romania ?xxiv

diana_coman nu cred sau nu realizez la ce faci referintaxxv

mircea_popescu noa. deci romania are o problema ca dureaza un proces ani. da' nu de ieri, sau de pe vremea comunistilor. in imperiu' austro-ungar erau mai multe cazuri rezolvate prin moartea partilor decit prin decizia judecatorilor.xxvi

diana_coman lol! nu stiam, dar are sensxxvii

mircea_popescu da' de cind i-o colonizat imperiul bruxellezic, subsidiara incorporata a wash dc, ii cam fute-n gura pe teme diverse, gen ca de ce un copil o sunat la urgenta ca-l bate tac-su de 5 ori in 3 ani pina s-or urnit astia, si similar, ca de ce plm dureaza in medie 21 de luni o sentinta. asa ca ei ce-or facut ? pun pe rol numa' cazuri ce is rezolvate gata, si le rezolva in 6 sapt. DAR, ca sa intrii pe rol, e o comisie speciala la fiecare curte.xxviii

diana_coman ahahhaha

mircea_popescu si dureaza... noa, cam 20 de luni asa.xxix

diana_coman loooogicxxx

mircea_popescu se caca astia bruxelistii acuma cum plm sa o rezolve pe asta. practic vorbind in anul fiscal 2016 o costat romania mai mult sa aiba guvern + parlament decit daca nu avea deloc.xxxi

diana_coman cred ca la capitolul "solutii sa zicem ca ei da' sa facem tot ca noi" nu prea au sanse sa bata ei romanii ca na, antrenament lipsaxxxii

mircea_popescu da' ma rog, astea nu-s teme-n discursu' "public" din romania de pe facebook, dat fiind ca motivele dinsus.xxxiii

diana_coman da, care discurs public, cine sa tina discurs oricum, ca public sau in closet macar, da' sa chiar fie discurs, lasatixxxiv

mircea_popescu ase m-or obosit cum il luau toti in gura pe javra de quintus. tata chestia ii sa mori batrin, la romani, aia e de baza. in rest...xxxv

diana_coman apai na, s-a "descurcat" cel mai mult (adica pt mult timp aka batran) dintre toti gen, eu asa vadxxxvi

mircea_popescu exact asa si e. "asta clar ca n-o facut nimic, altfel nu supravietuia. roaga-te pentru noi, ba asta, politrucu delegat de securitate." sfinta biserica a nedoritorilor de activitate.xxxvii

diana_coman mai pe scurt si din vechime zis a lenesilor de put, ce maixxxviii

mircea_popescu pai acuma le da deodorant pe cartela.xxxix

diana_coman a?xl

mircea_popescu sa nu mai puta.xli

diana_coman mda, anti-putoarea de lene, mdaxlii

mircea_popescu ai facut apropo o evaluare de load la rsa ala din strabuni ?xliii

diana_coman n-am facutxliv

mircea_popescu noa, cam alea-s actionabile acum -- pune rsa, ala curatat de alf de-am discutat in trilema, si vezi cit costa ; pune o implementare si de hash-otp, si vezi cam ce inseamna per kb.xlv

diana_coman cam aia ziceam cu: diana_coman> ori altminteri adun un x, y, z si ma apuc sa le evaluez la un fel macar stim pe ce baza le-am ales; evident nu-i clar ca totusi castigam mult asa dat fiind ca la final tot "vrem sa-l schimbam cu ce o fi cand-e-gata-ce-vrem". ca de evaluat ca si tarie mumu. singura evaluare e de...efort genxlvi

mircea_popescu cel putin la ora actuala.xlvii

diana_coman ok, pun asta in lucru atunci si zic cand am concret chestiuneaxlviii

———Otherwise as far as encryption goes : I keep reading on the topic, both in the logs and generally. The more I read the more it appears I don't understand what is the meaning of this "choosing". [↩]What is this chosing again ? [↩]First if to use symmetric keys or else otp+hash ; and what kind exactly in either case. From the log I've seen sponge and duplex constructions somewhat discussed, but in general with the idea of insuffiency in various perspectives though I couldn't say it's obvious just how thoroughly they were evaluated in fact. Otherwise everything described as "would be good" is without exception in the "not yet done" pile, so... [↩]Yeah. Can't say anything's clearer to me, which is why I left it ambiguous. Though nothing's worse than what we currently have. [↩]So logically, from what I can see, the practical options are either flip a coin to pick something and manage it afterwards since we're trying to change it out later when what's good is actually available... [↩]Which is to say after we retire... [↩]Or otherwise I pile up all the x, y, z and attempt to evaluate them somehow at least to know on what basis we chose. Evidently it's not clear this delivers any benefits seeing how it's supposed to be changed later anyway. And yes, the retirement point also stands. [↩]That's the problem here, quickly do the lazy become inured to the hole in the roof. What we end up sticking in there will stick, who will bother themselves to make something properly. Not even if it's burning, let alone if it's not burning anymore. [↩]Yeeeah. The theory of "just a temporary fix" gives me hives, I know from experience how's this "temporary" work in practice for the next half century. [↩]I do not expect an evaluation to be possible, Diana. The whole "evaluation" bullshit is made by the imbecile minds of ourdemocracy, in the direction of tiring you out with it and no other. [↩]Ok, so we flip on it, as it's the cheapest ? [↩]Pretty much. [↩]Then how about we do otp-and-hash, at least not import AES on top of everything. [↩]That's a thought. How do we go, hash-extend or full ? [↩]Hm. [↩]Concretely : let R be a random bitfield. For sending X messages, hash-extend is "calculate hash of n fragments R/X" while full is "calculate hash (R + previous hash) n times. [↩]Yeah, I said hm because I'm trying to figure out if I can see some kind of choice I can live with rather. [↩]I doubt there's anything to reason about. There's no work done whatsoever on a weakness of a hash function. Not on the ~strength~, but on the weakness. So any process is fundamentally incomparable to any other. [↩]Yeah, I'm discussing purely psychological factors, I know there's nothing... [↩]Whatever, I think I'm publishing the conversation, at least to shame the whole world if nothing else.

This, by the way, stands. This article, like a bunch other on Trilema, stand to the irredeemable shame of the entire world. There is no way out of this, as far as the past is concerned. [↩]Eh, who has any shame left, it's too expensive to be afforded. [↩]Myeah. Plus there's also human rights... [↩]From which the problems rather flow, indeed. [↩]By the way, did I tell you the lulz about the Romanian justice system ? [↩]I don't think so, or it's not coming to me right off. [↩]Romania has a problem whereby a court case takes years. This isn't since yesterday, or the communist regime. The Austro-Hungarian empire enjoyed more cases resolved by the death of the parties than by a judgement being entered. [↩]Lol! I didn't know, but I'm not surprised. [↩]But since teh Bruxellian Empire (incorporated subsidiary of Washington, DC) colonized them, they're kinda getting fucked in the gaping maw on various topics, such as why the fuck did it take that kid calling teh emergency hotline five times over 3 years cuz his daddy beat him, and similarily, why the fuck does a court case take on average 21 months to resolve. So what did they do ? Only enter into the docket those cases already resolved, and deal with it in 6 weeks. However, to get into the docket, there's a special commission by every court. [↩]Which takes... you know, 20 months or so. [↩]Obviously. [↩]Now teh Bruxellians are shitting themselves to come up with some approach for this novel problem. Practically speaking, in FY 2016, it cost Romania more to have a government + parliament than it'd have cost not to have them in the first place.

This, by the way, is kinda the fucking point of having penal clauses against the State : to make it unsustainable, or rather, to expose it to the sad truth of its pointlessness. [↩]I very much doubt they've a chance when it comes to "solutions to the problem of saying what they want to hear and doing what we want to do", for lack of practice. [↩]But whatever, these aren't the topics of the "public" discourse of facebook-romania, given the above stated reasons.

No, really. Thinking your "public" sphere happens on facebook is a lot like thinking your transportation happens on uber. You'd have to be uber-fucking-stupid to buy it. [↩]What public discourse, and who'd be speaking, publicly or even in their own closet, but at least a discourse, let me be. [↩]They so fucking tired me with the cocksucking of that Quintus hyena's corpse. The whole thing with Romanians is to die old, that's it. Otherwise... [↩]Well, he "managed" the most (ie, for the longest time, hence old) of all, that's what I see it coming down to. [↩]Exactly so. "This one clearly did nothing, otherwise he wouldn't have survived, ora pro nobis, you, the king of collaborationists. The holy church of they undesirious of activity. [↩]Shorter and older, of they lazy enough to stink. [↩]Eh, now they get deodorant on scrip. [↩]Hm ? [↩]So as to stay lazy but not stink anymore. [↩]Oh I see. [↩]Did you do profiling for that ancient RSA btw ? [↩]Did not. [↩]That's what's actionable now, stick the cleaned RSA alf pointed out to and see how much it costs. Similarily for a hash-otp implementation, see what it means per kb. [↩]That's what I meant above. As far as evaluating strength, good luck. The only thing left is... effort, like. [↩]At least for now. [↩]Ok, I'ma have this worked on then and will say when there's data. [↩]

« No Such lAbs (S.NSA), September 2017 Statement

Friday night, or Las Moiras revisited. »

Category: Bitcoin

Saturday, 07 October, Year 9 d.Tr.

Equus

Equusi is an obligatory movie.

The story it tells is that Failed She-societyii kidnaps a young man (because the young man is threatening to actually mature, and this is more dangerous to the socialist swamp than the Tunguska event) and brings him to a pliant idiot for reconfiguration. The young man's shocking purity however, instead of being deconstructed by the cuck "ally", ends up cracking the veener (or, in pantsuit terms, corrupting their asset). Here's the collapse in the cuck's own termsiii :

Underneath all that glowering, the boy trusts me. You realize that?

I'm sure he does.

Poor, bloody fool.

Please, Martin, dear, don't start that again.

Can you do anything worse to somebody than to take away their worship?

Worship?

Yes, that word again.

Isn't that a little extreme?

Extremity is the point.

Worship isn't destructive, Martin. I know that.

I don't. I only know it's the core of his life. What else has he got? Think about it. He can hardly read. He knows no physics or engineering to make the world real to him. No paintings to show him how others have enjoyed it. No music except television jingles. None of the other crutches we cucks use to try and pretend you and your miserable lot aren't the scum of the earth. To try and keep from strangling you on your own, foul smelling fallopian tubes for just one day more. One day at a time. No history except tales from a desperate lunatic of a mother. She is exactly like you, by the way. You'd like each other. Meanwhile he has no friends to give him a joke or make him know himself more moderately. He's a modern citizen for whom society doesn't exist. He lives one hour every three weeks, howling in a mist. "With my body, I thee worship." Many of what you falsely call men are less vital with their wives.

All the same, they don't blind their wives, do they?

Come on.

Well, do they?

They bloody well should. You have no business seeing, for one. You mean he's a violent, dangerous madman who'll go round the country doing it again and again? He fucking should.

I mean he's in pain, Martin. He's been in pain for most of his life.

Yes.

And you can take it away.

Yes.

Then that's all you need to know, in the end.

No.

Why not?

Because it is his.

His?

His pain. His own. He made it.

I don't understand. I don't! There's no merit about being in pain, that's just pure old masochism.

I'm talking about passion, Hesther. You know what that word meant originally? Suffering. The way you get your own spirit. Through your own suffering. Self-chosen. Self-made. This boy's done that. He's created his own desperate ceremony just to ignite one flame of original ecstasy in the spiritless waste around him. All right, he's destroyed for it, horribly. He's virtually been destroyed by it. One thing I know for sure, that boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have known in any second of my life. Let me tell you something. I envy it.

You can't.

Don't you see? That's what his stare has said all this time. "At least I galloped. When did you?" I'm jealous, Hesther. I'm jealous of Alan Strang.

That's absurd.

Is it?

Yes, utterly. Utterly!iv

I go on about my wife. Have you thought about the husband? The finicky, critical husband, with his art books on mythical Greece? What real worship has he known? Without worship, you shrink! It's brutal. I shrank my life. No one can do it for you. I settled for being pallid and provincial out of my eternal timidity. The old story of bluster, and do bugger-all. I didn't even dare to have children. Didn't dare to bring children into a house and marriage as cold as mine. I tell everyone Margaret is the puritan, I'm the pagan. Some pagan. Such wild returns I make to the womb of civilization. Three weeks a year in the Mediterranean. Beds booked in advance, meals paid with vouchers, cautious jaunts in hired cars, suitcase crammed with Kaopectatev. What a fantastic surrender to the primitive. The "primitive." I use that word endlessly. "The primitive world," I say, "what instinctual truths were lost with it." While I sit baiting that poor, unimaginative woman with the word that freaky boy is trying to conjure the reality. I look at pages of centaurs trampling the soil of Argos. Outside my window, that boy is trying to become one in a Hampshire field. Every night I watch that woman knitting, a woman I haven't kissed in six years. And he stands for an hour in the dark, sucking the sweat off his god's hairy cheek. In the morning, I put away my books on the cultural shelf, close up my Kodachrome snaps of Mount Olympus, touch my reproduction statue of Dionysus for luck and go off to the hospital to treat him for insanity. Now do you see?

The boy's in pain, Martin. That's all I see. I understand, you know. I'm not just being Mrs. MacBrisk. You haven't made that kind of pain. So few of us have. But you've still made other things. Your own thoughts. Your own skill. Skill absolutely unique to you. I've watched you do it, year after year, and it's marvelous! You can't just sit and say it's all provincial, you're just a butcher. All that stuff is stupid, hateful. All right, you never galloped. Too bad. If I have to choose between his galloping and your sheer training I'll take the training every time. What's more, so will the boy, at this moment. That stare of his isn't accusing you, it's simply demanding.

What?

Just that. Your power to pull him out of the nightmare he's galloped himself into. Do you see?

And I will tell you. I, that have ridden horses. Properly, which I doubt anyone else can say, anyone young enough, corrupted enough to care about the little boxes with lights sufficiently so as to read this at the least. I, that have never hurt a horse, that have never had one killed under me, by friend or foe, that have never had to "put one out of its misery", its misery, don't you know, that in the first place my ineptitude, my sloth, insanity, stupidity created. Its misery, indeed, its misery of yours. I, into which horses never seen before confide, unconditionally, I, for whom they have on more than one occasion traduced the designs of those who fancied themselves on no real basis "their owners" for the mere, unspoken asking, I, slightly weeping as I write this will tell you that the blinding of six horses is exactly as the man said, "tot cela egale zero". It's nothing compared, it's not a price too small to not pay but actually a price too small to compute at all. And Equus agrees, no less, which is why horses are an important part of mankind, such as uppity old women never were. And never will be, nor ever could be.

I will tell you that I do not see, nor is anything there to see. The woman doesn't need her eyes because in point of fact she's never used them, she lives by ear, and it's intolerable.

I will tell you that by the time you see what she "sees", she's long driven metal spikes through your eyes. If you actually care, nay, if you for a heartbeat imagine it could possibly matter what she'd take over what, you've long not had anything of any import or interest to anyone.

Do not permit the butchery. Especially not of the children, but if you can't stir to care about the children, try at the least to care for yourself.

———1977, by Sidney Lumet, adapted by Peter Shaffer after his own play, with Richard Burton and the Baroness Olivier, introducing Peter Firth. [↩]Personified by some sort of SOPS clerk that very far from ever being admitted to the bar, or in a college of any description, should really never have been permitted above the station of an exoftalmic milliner, which is exactly what she substantially is, and throughout will forever remain, adornments irrespective.

No, Shaffer's discussion in terms of Dionysian values opposing Apollonian is entirely impertinent. There's nothing Apollonian in the conclave of overgrown little girls. "The boy is in pain is all I know", don't you know. Fucking whip them. All. Today. Tomorrow. Forever. [↩]Amusingly enough Burton does infinitely better a job dealing with actual horses than he ever did dealing with Elizabeth Taylor, that absolute, utterly absolute horse of a woman. On screen or off, the purple eyed whore was exactly nothing else, "all that power, ready to go anywhere under a worthy rider". She never found her rider. For his sins, she never found her rider. [↩]You should hear her shriek on utterly, at that. [↩]Pepto-bismol in alt-simple-English [↩]

« Resplenduminous

The bitter lot »

Category: Trilematograf

Wednesday, 27 September, Year 9 d.Tr.

Entomologykos, a kinda Pseudokynegetikos. It all comes from *ticos.

The first installment of our Entomologykoiala is the above wasp's nest. It supports a happy biodiversidad composed of copycat miniwaspnest made by some relatively harmless paper guys who nevertheless appreciate the security benefits conferred by proximity as well as extensive spider webs for meters around.

Freehand, with a 100gram camera. Now imagine how well I shoot, and then imagine how well I shot back when I was of shooting age.

Leafguy says :p!

On top of everything else, this guy flies, much to the pets' delight.

And that's all for today, see you next time!

« Qntra (S.QNTR) October 2017 Statement

No Such lAbs (S.NSA), October 2017 Statement »

Category: La pas prin lume

Sunday, 05 November, Year 9 d.Tr.

Englezu' e cel mai prost dintre oi

Earlier this morning,

diana_coman aia putinii de nu-s cazuti in cap or fi prea prinsi cu altele sa stea de online dat fiind ca e in mod evident plin de idioti

mircea_popescu asa ma gindesc si io

diana_coman idioti vocali presupun, ca nu-i ca-s lipsa altminteri

mircea_popescu "superinformatia megastrazii uneste oamenii! in tot ce au ei mai..."

mircea_popescu plm, nici irl nu vrea nimeni sa locuiasca linga sosea.

diana_coman mda; doar aici in marele ukuk am vazut faza asta: "case" facute pe o fasie practic intre...calea ferata si autostrada

diana_coman si m-am uitat de curiozitate: nici nu-s mai ieftine cumva

diana_coman care dracu' plateste morman ca sa stea...intre tren si tiruri

diana_coman ma depaseste

mircea_popescu englezu' ii cel mai prost dintre oi.

mircea_popescu apartamentele lor "eficiente" te ia voma sa mor.

diana_coman zici ca in esenta cat n-au fost prosti au fost ...francezi, danezi, ce-au mai nimerit?

diana_coman o fi

diana_coman n-am idee care-s alea "eficiente" dar nu ma mai astept sa aiba vreo legatura la capitolul asta cu ceva omenesc

mircea_popescu tu, is asa un tip de oaie. este un episod din mr bean in care el traieste intr-o garsoniera, si aia are tonomat de contor. deci bagi fisa, ai curent.

diana_coman ahhhhh, alea sunt "smart meters" tu, lol

diana_coman da, alta idiotenie

mircea_popescu este un film cu ala haios din monty python, in care el ii ceva profesor de scoala. si pute a saracie, tot in sensu' asta.

diana_coman ti le poti pune la ce puta vrei, nu-i cu apartamentul in sine

mircea_popescu genu' idiot care se imbraca in costum da' locuieste in 5 mp.

mircea_popescu pizda ma-tii, daca salariul nu-i destul sa-mi iau casa, sa poarte costum ma-ta.

diana_coman ah, daaa, aia cred ca e fix

diana_coman eh, pai oricum nu-s costume pe bune

mircea_popescu noa, stilu' asta de imperiu decazut, ca proastele de prin ro in anii 50. ea-i contesa.

mircea_popescu vezi sa nu fie, cu fintina-n curte.

diana_coman nici macar gen plastron sau cum erau, ci pur si simplu foi de plastic de ti-e scarba si sa le atingi

diana_coman da' "nu se mototolesc"

mircea_popescu "eficiente"

diana_coman da, aia

mircea_popescu exact aia. "bai eu prefer sa sed pe conuri de autostrada. is mai bune ca fotoliile"

diana_coman mda; altfel zis e la alegere intre ce fel de idioti sa traiesti

mircea_popescu deci ia sa public eu frumos, ma pis in gura lor de cacanari abjecti.

diana_coman lol

Now let's attempt to translate :

diana_coman those few who weren't dropped as babies are probably too caught in other things to sit online given how evidently full of imbeciles it is.

mircea_popescu i'm of the same mind.

diana_coman vocal idiots i suppose, not that there's any shortage.

mircea_popescu "the highformation superway! unites people! in all they have most..." fuck it, not like anyone wants to live next to the highway irl, either.

diana_coman myeah. only here in the great ukuk have i seen this wonder : "houses" made on a strip sandwiched between the railroad and the highway. i checked for curiosity, but it's not like they're cheaper or anything. what devil'd pay more to live... between the train and the semis. it's beyond me.

mircea_popescu the englishman is the dumbest of sheep. their "efficient" apartments make you puke i swear.

diana_coman are you saying that while they weren't dumb they were... french, danish, whatever they chanced ? maybe. i've no idea which "efficient" are those, but i've no expectation of any connection to humanity.

mircea_popescu eh, they're this kind of sheep. there's an episode in mr bean in which he lives in a studioi, and it has an electricity jukebox.ii so, put your coin in, there's power.iii

diana_coman ahhh, that's "smart meters", you. lol. another idiocy. but you can install them on any dickletiv.

mircea_popescu there's a film with the funny guy from monty pythonv in which he's some kind of schoolteacher. and he stinks of poverty, also in this sense. the sort of idiot who'll don a suit but live in 50 sqft. fuck your mother. if the job ain't paying enough to afford a house, let your mother wear a suit.

diana_coman ah yeeeah, that's exactly it. not like they're actual suits anyway.

mircea_popescu that's what i mean. that ex imperial style, like the dumbasses in 50s romania. she's a countess. mind that she might be, with the well in the courtyard.vi

diana_coman not even the 1910s efficiencies, but plain plastic sheets, too disgusting to touch. but "they don't ruffle".

mircea_popescu "efficient"

diana_coman exactly.

mircea_popescu precisely. "man i prefer sitting on traffic cones. they're better than armchairs."

diana_coman myeah. in other words, there's a vast palette of idiots to choose whom you wish to live among among.vii

mircea_popescu let's publish this, may i piss in their mouths of abject shitheads.viii

diana_coman lol

Now go have your fucking English breakfast. You always love a great English breakfast before sucking my dick, don't you ?

PS. Did you figure out the title ? Yes, tis vaguely inspired by "N-am vazut niciodata hot mai prost decit prostu' care se vrea hot".

Vrei sa te afirmi ? Afirma-te!

———The Romanian word for "studio" is ~a lot~ more derrogatory than the English equivalent, a testament to the fact that Romanian is controlled by ~actual thinking people~, rather than by hired copywriters like English is. [↩]The Romanian for jukebox is ~a lot~ more derrogatory than even the previous installment of this, mostly because "tonomat de muie" is how you say highway hooker. you know, the sort of girls who live out of sucking off truckers, the idea being that most of her diet comes directly -- the money's for crack not for food. [↩]It might've escaped your notice that electricity is a ~continuous~ good. Like Internet connectivity, say, or like female companionship. The value of a connection is measured in nines, naught else. [↩]Romanian distinguishes between the adult penis (pula) and the infantile or unerect version (puta), and also believes that the indistinct matter between girl's legs, especially while juvenile, is really the same thing. In which vein, a joke :

Electrician comes to fix something at some dude's apartment. The dude's at work, his wife's at home busy in the kitchen and the dude's six year old is also at home, not busy whatsoever, so he chases the poor workman around.

"Mr! Mr! What's that!"

"It's a hammer!"

"Ah, a hammer. Daddy has two -- a big one with which he works on the furniture and a small one with which he works on the car!"

...

"Mr! Mr! What's that!"

"It's a surubelnita!"

"Ah, daddy has two -- a big one with which he works on the furniture and a small one with which he works on the car!"

and eventually, the man has to go take a leak. The child unabashedly follows.

"Mr! Mr! What's that!"

"That's my dick."

"Ah, daddy has two -- a small one with which he takes a leak and a big one with which mommy brushes her teeth!"

So now you know. (And btw, I believe the Romanian word ordering convention -- brushes mommy her teeth -- is actually superior.) [↩]Clockwise, with John Cleese. [↩]Ie, no running water. [↩]Get a better language, amongamonga. [↩]Technically "cacanar" might be one who runs the truck that drains septic tanks, but in practice it's used to denote something between unpleasant and mean/cheap. It's basically how you say "Englishman" in Romanian, a language that ain't fucking kidding but rather takes the signification function pretty damned seriously. [↩]

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MiniGame (S.MG), March 2017 Statement »

Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Tuesday, 04 April, Year 9 d.Tr.

Dupa dealuri

Dupa dealurii tells a story, in the extremely well researched and thus perfectly reconstructed environment of contemporary Eastern Orthodoxy. If you are curious as to how the muslim-catholics live today, you'll greatly benefit from watching. It's not just the civilisation, the objects, the deep pre-Iron Age flavour that is correctly conveyed ; but actually the culture, with its oppressive classical Greek rootsii is there entire.

You may, of course, reconstruct the story in your own terms (the man telling the story and the man hearing the story do not share a story ; the story told and the story heard are not the same story). What you can't do is hear the story retold in the teller's own terms. I can however, and here it is : A young man, for pride and vanity, separates from the flock and aims to build himself, and for the glorification of his own pride and vanity, a church apart.

The secret young men do not know, and generally with their perdition find, is that the church as a body, in congregation and comunion, is protected by the Lord with immense, unspeakable power from the immense, unspeakable but ultimately not sufficient lures of the Enemy. For as long as he stands with the others, and in comunion with Christ's own bride, the young man is protected, and what's more, and what's infinitely worse -- feels powerful. Riding on a narrow plank atop a thin separation line between two fluid media the surfer thinks he feels "the power of the ocean". He doesn't, not really. The subdued ocean he feels is the subdued ocean he feels, not the ocean altogether.

So it follows here : the Enemy sends balm to the vanity, in many ways unseen, and seen as well, such as in the shape of the local herd preferring the fallen church up the hill to the proper church down in the village. This is what "the people" are for, but how to tell this to the young'un ? The Lord sends word, through the hierarchy, in the shape of the Bishop refusing to sanctify the item, and in other ways. What's easier for the prideful youth than to imagine himself better informed, more intelligent, and in all respects above the Bishop who actually owns him ? Of course "the public" is right and of course the Bishop is wrong, especially given this view is a lot more actualizing of the young man's potential (as he sees it ; and in a sense, as it is).

The elaborate trap for yet another soul is ready, and the Enemy proceeds : he sends a Succubus with Janus' face, expert, delightful, manifested as two different girls that nevertheless are oneiii. The young man falls, and that's the endiv. It was, as always, a story of men -- the herd of hysterical she-cattle there present drive this point home better than a thousand writs.

The moral being that just because I can afford to despise the pre-Iron Age primitives does not mean your own situation is above the Stone Age necessarily. It isn't, as it happens, and you will know this is the truth by that simple sign -- that all the foregoing is not something that'd have ever occurred to you.

And so it goes.

———2012, by Cristian Mungiu, with Cosmina Stratan, Cristina Flutur, Valeriu Andriuta. Magnet. [↩]"The man who leaves and the man who returns - they aren't the same man." says the old(er) man to the young lesbian, and the young lesbian repeats to the woman that loves her. Indeed. [↩]Through marriage, you know, unity of body is achieved. Did you know ? [↩]Not really, for he confesses in the end, after the fall, and the ending's unclear even if it doth not look so good. [↩]

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Category: Trilematograf

Wednesday, 04 January, Year 9 d.Tr.

Donald Trump speaks before the American Judges Association

An unannounced visitor in Cleveland this September was Mr. Donald Trump, President of the United States.

Unexpectedly present at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel this morning, Mr. Trump addressed some apparently unscheduled comments to the congregation before the opening of the conference, originally slated to discuss bail reform, court fines and a few other topics. Understandably, his words resonated through the legal profession, and generally the nation. Here they are :

Gentlemen, I have a few words to say to you, and I would like you to pay attention now because I won't be saying them again.

I would like you to meet my pen. [Holds out a black inkwell pen.]

This pen has the interesting power of pardoning anyone in this country, for any reason or for no reason whatsoever. All that's needed is my hand pushing for it to work its magic.

Attached to that interesting power is then necessarily also the power to render a good chunk of this profession obsolete, and send the majority of you good folk into an early retirement. Should I decide tomorrow to pardon everyone involved in criminal legal proceedings in the United States, this place might as well be converted to a bingo hall.

Considering that I have done no such thing yet, the behaviour of some of your colleagues over the past year should suddenly appear in its proper light : not merely monstrously impudent, but rather of the substance of a death wish.

I do not expect to encounter anything of the sort in the future. In fact, I expect to encounter nothing but the most solicitous support from the bright legal minds of this country for the following seven years. But expectation aside, should the unthinkable occur and isolated members of the legal community decide to act in the manner of the common terrorist, setting up bombs and starting up fires which the rest of the community will be stuck putting out and cleaning up, I will not hesitate to use those powers the Constitution has vested in me specifically for the purpose of checking terrorists, and preventing bombs and fires.

I will not detain you any further. You certainly have work to do now, discussing these matters among themselves, and I won't keep you from it. I have no doubt you will emerge from this conference stronger, united, capable and ready of presenting a single front firmly oriented towards the protection of the country, and the elimination of those dangerous elements which, either due to mental disease or otherwise under the influence of our many enemies within and without, would threaten to poison national consensus.

I wish you the very best, and let's work together to make America strong again!

What now ?

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Category: SUA care este

Wednesday, 06 September, Year 9 d.Tr.

Do you understand how the world works ?

diana_coman Here's a thing : from tens of thousands of pointers in this ps I end up using practically none. I guess their habits programming Java or whatever the hell are showing, "everything's a pointer".

mircea_popescu Java doesn't have so much to do with that I don't think. The "webdev" level idiots don't even know that much Java in general. Maybe Ruby, but even that bar's a little high. They know javascript, excel, some mysql in the sense of "excel in a client-server model, like lotus 1-2-3 meets novell netware!"

diana_coman Whence all the spurious pointering then ? Not that it matters, whatever.

mircea_popescu I think that's c++.

diana_coman Eh crap, it's not written anywhere c++ must be a pointerball.

mircea_popescu It's not written but they don't read anyway ; they believe that's what it is. You know like if you bring a rural girly to towni and she's so impressed there's rugs everywhere that she takes her shoes off at the door ? Same thing, they came to the castle an' dun wanna break anything with their clumsy workhands.

diana_coman At least if they had that shyness of the country girl, affraid of fucking things up.

mircea_popescu Well, they're alone, is their problem. There's nobody there to relate to.

diana_coman Myeah.

mircea_popescu You know, the Latins were persuaded that onanism and nightmares all proceed from the same source, and took kiddies to see bare cunt statues. The idea being that absence of knowledge bears, compensatorily, monsters.

diana_coman Man, these days an acquaintance kept pestering me to help her chitlins because they've a Computer Science project no less! And I tell you, I laughed at them proper for an hour straight. First time in their lives when such unthinkable happened, in school everyone told them they're "right on target". They kind-of intuited they've made a big pile of doodoo, but... Sad. Very very sad.

mircea_popescu Lol. There you go, doesn't the impulse arise to save them ? Not so easy as a woman, but if you were a man wouldn't you get the impulse to make every room into multiple cells because it's a shame and also a sin to let them in their despair ? Especially should they have nice tits and all.

diana_coman Those, yes, which is why I put the time in, but how shall I put this... the idiocy is well spread.

mircea_popescu Oya. Uuuuniversally.

diana_coman It's not so terrible as a woman, they come to me I don't have to keep 'em ; and the more I laugh the more they come.

mircea_popescu Not bad at all. Cheaper, in any case.

diana_coman Absolutely ; and besides, that they've no tits... what, everyone's going to grow tits now ?

mircea_popescu You know there's nuts like that ? I know over a dozen myself.

diana_coman Like what ?

mircea_popescu Like wanting their boyfriend to grow tits. It's not even properly called a fetish, it's a whole social structure, a complete subculture.

diana_coman I had no idea ; not that I imagine to know even by a long shot what curly notions people can come up with. But what sense does it make, fat dudes have tits after a fashion, so do most women, so if you're after tits pick either a fatty or a woman or a fat woman.

mircea_popescu Ugh, so... in between the margin where girls want to live with another girl, you know, they lay warmly in the bed and giggle together, it's nice and welcoming and nobody pisses up the bathroom and the very normative mainstream where the girl wants the dude to not beat, her or her children, which yielded all sorts of ridiculous nonsense from teetotaller to whatever part of modern politics you wish but otherwise is a rich and fundamental vein there's a large space, like a swamp, inhabited by the girls who "I'll take a man AND EDUCATE HIM!!1". And in a corner of said swamp that education takes the form where the dude gets silicone implants and goes around in womanly stockings and shit.

diana_coman Take a boyfriend to gain a girlfriend, like.

mircea_popescu Yes. And the funny thing is, there's so very much demand! There's SO MANY of these waiting to get in they dance with each other for lack of partners.ii

diana_coman That I knew about, but I always wondered, why bother with all this rather than just pick what suits ? I can't summon any patience for the sort, myself.iii

mircea_popescu Dja remember about transactional analysis ? Because if you do it then signifies you're not a worthless piece of shit, but you did something, and therefore exist.

diana_coman Ah yeah.

mircea_popescu That's the true font of sadness, that as you follow and classify the world you discover that all that fabled "endless diversity of life on Earth" is in fact pure pathology. Has nothing to do with variety, it's diverse like cirrhotic livers are diverse.

diana_coman Hm.

mircea_popescu There is no such thing as "diversity". Healthy minds say the same thing in the same place now and forever. Which is how you even recognize them. How do you recognize sane people ? Through exactly that, because you know what they will say, because in point of fact there's no such thing as diversity.

diana_coman The constraints of reality define very precisely and very narrowly a single viable pathway on the long term, as it were ?

mircea_popescu No, but a vast multitude of "different" paths that are in fact exactly and very strictly equivalent. What is the difference between H's matrices and S's function ? There isn't. When there's variance, in the proper sense, you're looking at a diseased state.

diana_coman Ah, equivalency, yes.

mircea_popescu Yeah, that's the crux, you can't properly speaking say two equivalent items are different. And in this acception of the notion of difference, it doth not exist in praxis. Whence the naive expectation of inept democratic politicians, that all problems can be solved through dialogue. If we admit the premise that nobody's inferior and unqualified for humanity, then from this follows through the above lemma that all socially identified differences are baseless, and well structured dialogue could bring to fore the underlying equivalences.iv

diana_coman Hm.

mircea_popescu So it could never be sensible to go to war ; and even less to surround Washington DC with the army and cut the throat of all the residents after which bulldoze their corpses in a ditch and sprinke lime.

diana_coman I can't tell that such is truly the expectation, to solve problems. I can't even readily see they're capable of identifying any problems.

mircea_popescu I think it is, but in the sense of discovering that the problems didn't in fact exist. This is what it is, fully structured ; but meta-idiots of the ilk that "understands the fridge" in the sense of two ends of a lengthy process with a forgotten middle in between have in fact came to believe that problems perceived can necessarily and always be disembodied and exiled into the ethers with some magic dust. They don't rightly apprehend what it is or how might it work, but they know it exists. And in such a second hand world, a meta-world as it were, all the incredibly boneheaded idiocies they engage into make sense and belong. Of course they borrow without a clue, individually and as a state, and of course they tell some misfortunate children probing ineptly at the world that they're "right on target" indifferent of any notion of right and any conception of a target. It's equivalent, sister, what, let them drink more Luminol, it'll sort itself out. The whole advertising industry can be reduced to this simple scheme, "we know there's a magic dust, it's not very clear how or what, but drink coca cola."

diana_coman Indeed, admitting that they all manage to live in the meta-world (while that lasts and with whatever costs, which in the end are theirs to bear) I can see this.

mircea_popescu Yeah. You know that Seinfeld bit with the ice ?

diana_coman Nope.

mircea_popescu

Some people have a little too much fun on television: the soda commercial people - where do they summon this enthusiasm? Have you seen them? "We have soda, we have soda, we have soda", jumping, laughing, flying through the air - it's a can of soda. Have you ever been standing there and you're watching TV and you're drinking the exact same product that they're advertising right there on TV, and it's like, you know, they're spiking volleyballs, jetskiing, girls in bikinis and I'm standing there - "Maybe I'm putting too much ice in mine."

Ie, "fuck, the magic dust's broken".

———You are not expected to understand this. [↩]Fun fact : of all the dorks who have their penis locked away into some contraption with the key held by another party, the majority find themselves in the situation where the other party's another dork just like them, whose key they themselves hold.

I'm telling you, you're missing out on lulz. [↩]Some do, at least for a while. [↩]Hence the socialist hope in "the future" - the only reason there's "racism" ie strife and "rape" ie disinterest is because sufficient blather hasn't yet been poured by the world's "women" to resolve all these asperities. But "social media" is definitely "doing a lot" in this vein. [↩]

« Powder Blue

Lethargy, part 6 »

Category: Trilterviuri

Sunday, 29 January, Year 9 d.Tr.

Disgrace - Years ago, when he lived

Years ago, when he lived in Italy, he visited the same forest between Ravenna and the Adriatic coastline where a century and a half before Byron and Teresa used to go riding. Somewhere among the trees must be the spot where the Englishman first lifted the skirts of his eighteen-year-old charmer, bride of another man, to find her warmth, willing, wet. He could fly to Venice tomorrow, catch a train to Ravenna, tramp along the old riding-trails, pass by the very place. He is inventing the music (or the music is inventing him) but he is not inventing the history. On those pine-needles Byron had his Teresa - 'timid as a gazelle,' he called her - rumpling her clothes, getting sand into her underwear (the horses standing by all the while, incurious), and from the occasion a passion was born that kept Teresa howling to the moon for the rest of her natural life in a fever that has set one David howling too, after his manner.

Teresa leads; page after page he follows. Then one day there emerges from the dark another voice, one he has not heard before, has not counted on hearing. From the words he knows it belongs to Byron's daughter Allegra; but from where inside him does it come? Why have you left me? Come and fetch me! calls Allegra. So hot, so hot, so hot! she complains in a rhythm of her own that cuts insistently across the voices of the lovers.

To the call of the inconvenient five-year-old there comes no answer. Unlovely, unloved, neglected by her famous father, she has been passed from hand to hand and finally given to the nuns to look after. So hot, so hot! she whines from the bed in the convent where she is dying of la mal'aria. Why have you forgotten me?

Why will her father not answer? Because he has had enough of life; because he would rather be back where he belongs, on death's other shore, sunk in his old sleep. My poor little baby! sings Byron, waveringly, unwillingly, too softly for her to hear. Seated in the shadows to one side, the trio of instrumentalists play the crablike motif, one line going up, the other down, that is Byron's.

Rosalind telephones.

'Lucy says you are back in town. Why haven't you been in touch?'

'I do not wish to talk to you. Do not call here again.' and with that he hangs up. Punishment enough ? Perhaps. Go, live with Lucy, let me be. He is not in the mood to entertain the hollow pretense of the heady, intelligently, ellaborately stupid woman. Let others teach her, if they wish, he's well and truly done. But has he ever tried ? He does not care if he did. Whatever it was that he had done, sufficient or otherwise, is what he's done. If it was not enough -- that's fine. There is not another portion, neither in the offering nor in the making. Rosalind is, practically speaking, dead. At least as far as he's concerned.

In her white nightdress Teresa stands at the bedroom window. Her eyes are closed. It is the darkest hour of the night: she breathes deeply, breathing in the rustle of the wind, the belling of the bullfrogs. 'Che vuol dir,' she sings, her voice barely above a whisper - 'Che vuol dir questa solitudine immensa? Edio,' she sings - 'che Sono?'

Silence. The solitudine immensa offers no reply. Even the trio in the corner are quiet as dormice. 'Come!' she whispers. 'Come to me, I plead, my Byron!' She opens her arms wide, embracing the darkness, embracing what it will bring. She wants him to come on the wind, to wrap himself around her, to bury his face in that sweet hollow between her breasts. Alternatively she wants him to arrive on the dawn, to appear on the horizon as a sun-god casting the glow of his warmth upon her. By any means at all she wants him back. Sitting at the piano he harkens to the sad, swooping curve of Teresa's plea as she confronts the darkness. This is a bad time of the month for Teresa, she is sore, she has not slept a wink, she is haggard with longing. She wants to be rescued --from the pain, from the summer heat, from the Villa Gamba, from her father's bad temper, from everything.

Yet despite occasional good moments, the truth is that Byron in Italy is going nowhere. There is no action, no development, just a long, halting cantilena hurled by Teresa into the empty air, punctuated now and then with groans and sighs from Byron offstage. The husband and the rival mistress are forgotten, might as well not exist. The lyric impulse in him may not be dead, but after decades of starvation it can crawl forth from its cave only pinched, stunted, deformed. He has not the musical resources, the resources of energy, to raise Byron in Italy off the monotonous track on which it has been running since the start. It has become the kind of work a sleepwalker might write.

He sighs. It would have been nice to be returned triumphant to humanity, the author of an eccentric little chamber opera. But that will not be. His hopes must be more temperate. He goes out, finally, for the first time since his return. Out to a dating bar, the sort of place where present-day, living Teresa would go, to find herself... a partner, maybe, for the night. A partner in crime, a Byron on the cheap. He pays for a drink he does not finish, can't force himself to sit through. Out the door he breathes in, hungrily, the free night air. He wanders around town, following unawaredly a large U-shaped pattern around the campus.

Eventually he's tired ; he doesn't want to admit it, but he is. He slumps his body on a bench, seating halfway, and at that moment, just as he's sitting he sees her. Blonde, hair in a tail bobbing to and fro. Well rounded rump, strong thighs. A pretty, a proud and pretty young Dutch girl. She's jogging, she's keeping her body in shape, keeping herself in shape. She goes around in the distance, and then comes close and passes him by.

A strange familiarity, evoked in his memory maybe by her scent ? Maybe the movement, a line in her step, something about this girl reminds him of something, long forgotten, something from his past. As he's wallowing on the pond of reminescence, vaguely, disinterestedly fishing in, feeling around without much eagerness for whatever old, disused, undesired boot might come back hooked on the line, she turns, still jogging. A comedic little run, purposefuly, directly towards him. Once two paces off she stops, and smiles.

"Hello" he offers, neutrally. Has anyone yet been mugged by a jogging adolescent girl ?

"Are you the Professor ? David Lurie ?"

"I'm not a professor now, anymore."

"You don't remember me, do you ?"

"I'm sorry to say..."

"I was in your class. Also I tried to interview you."

"Oh."

"I was there, too, but couldn't make it through to really talk to you."

"There was a little crowd, wasn't there."

"You said you were enriched."

He looks at her, blankly. What a way to go, sparing non-verbally with the 2nd echelon WARchivists. Does she have a baton somewhere ? Spirits and a match, maybe ? Where'd all that be, she's a creature of spandex, her outer skin clings desperately on the skin beneath, where could she possibly hide a baton ? Up her ass, maybe. That'd still look somewhat penile... he checks, there's nothing there, his eyes perceive nothing asked of the elastic besides what a girl's pubis might in fairness demand.

"I didn't understand it, at first. Then I had to look it up."

"Oh."

"I've read all your materials, too, since then. About the poets. And..."

He looks up at her, incredulous. What is this girl gibbering about ? "What is your name ?" he inquires, blandly, trying to somehow make heads or tails, maybe perhaps take back some measure of control over the situation.

"I'm Amanda." she proffers, joyously, almost giggling in excitement. The professor asked her a question, and she knew the answer! The professor gave her a way out of awkwardness, past the ellipsis, something to talk about.

"Nice to meet you, Amanda." he retorts, neutrally.

"I... I..." she attempts, blushing by degrees. "How are you getting along, sir ?" she inquires, her face almost scarlet red, her voice transcribing a meekness of such superlative degree he can't summon to memory its equal, or a contender, even.

"More or less. I was away, visiting family for a few months. Now that I'm back I see life's been carrying on, taking care of itself without me. They've hired some intolerable young snot to go through the motions of sitting at my desk ; they broke into my house, took all the supermarket fare, the worthless stuff, packaged foods, electronics... the rural thieves of East Cape took my books along with the consumabilia at least ; but then again those were already in the car. A pigeon at some point got lost inside, and passed on, by itself, in my sink."

She follows him, fascinated, eyes bulging and opening wider by degrees, as he speaks. She swallows, hard, a big thick knot in her throat. 'I'd like to... Can I come clean it up for you ?'

He walks back to his place with Amanda. He's pretty sure now she was in Melani's class. He somewhat less vaguely remembers her ; more of a woman than "his little upstart", back then, certainly now. About as quiet, about as... Much scarier, truly, which is ultimately, if he dare be honest, a large part of the reason he didn't serve Eros upon her. He could have picked either one, why that one and not this one ? He feared this one ; he still, in some sense, in some corner does. "Take off your clothes. You'll shower when you're done."

His words fall definite, absolute. He speaks without turning, he's headed for the cleanning supplies. Behind he hears the rustle of compliance. As he returns and confronts the nude girl, bolted in place, he can't shake the image of Lucy. Ankle socks, the differentiator between town and country ; his own daughter, naked, much heavier, but the same skin. The same bones. She quietly, with eyes downcast, takes the things from his hands and scurries about. He sits in his favoured armchair, looking through things, past things. Thinking. He's not writing a book, he's not working for his class tomorrow, not trying to summon arias or arguments. No more Gordian knots of cognition, great mysteries framed s'as to be found out. His erstwhile life of the mind, meanwhile absorbed in a minding of life. "Where action ceases, thought's impertinent..."

The water runs, and then it's done. Amanda emerges from the light in the bathroom into the darkness of the livingroom. She's dripping wet, her figure cut out of light into the dark around, glistening. She closes the distance in a panther sprint, and the next moment she's cuddling herself in his arms, liquid. He grabs her by the hairs on the back of her head and kisses her ; soon he's bulging painfully and they have to rearrange, to reconfigure themselves toward his accommodation. She has a place prepared, she has a place ready for just such an occasion, and he takes his room in her, of her, comfortably. With slight movements of her strong hips she caresses him inside of her, slowly, delicately. He loves feeling the muscles underneath tense and do their work, precise, deadly. He rests his arms about her neck, left palm wrapped around to the left. His left, her right, left thumb touching under her chin, where life springs, pulsing on his fingertip. His right palm wrapped around the right that is her left, his right thumb on the pulsing vein that is her life. Her life, still.

He proceeds to squeeze, by degrees. Slowly, delicately, deadly like her hips. She breathes heavy at first, moving stiffer, then she puts her hands on his wrists, not in opposition, more in nude, meek display. "Here are my hands" she doesn't but as well might say, "Resting on yours ; do as you will." He whispers in her ear, toridly, heavily, in resounding sybillants "Shhh... passss out. Tassste the water... let it washhhh over you... The dark water, of your death."

Her movements are now jerky, desperate. Her breath, once bated, is now stopped altogether. He squeezes still. She gives a little, barely audible, barely perceptible whimper. She's resigned. To him it's deeply reminiscent of the dogs. Familiar, now. Familiar, in the family way. He, who for a while was the dog's psychopomp, their undertaker, the harijan. He. Once David the boy, for many, many endless years David the boy. But then, the dog man, and now simply the man. By his experience with the dying dogs slowly chiseled, perfected, completed, David the man. Of the tiny motes of their canine honor, that even as he protected, awkwardly, as best he could, following a barely understood strain of deep need deeply inside, yet wholly and fully, lovingly were protecting him, rounding him. The gift of dogs, boyhood's oldest, truest, and these days only friend. Of their muddy, animal souls, too heavy, unbuoyant, nevertheless lightnening his. Of their negligible, imperceptible honor rounding his. David, a man of honor now, impervious to death, ready to kill.

He spends his rich, royal gifts inside her, generously spreading, coating her womb, coating the still present womb of the recently, momentarily departed. She isn't here, now. He is alone. As he does also he lightens the grip on her throat. He watches the rose rushing to return into her pallid cheek. Her heart beat, more effectual, more far reaching than before. A little nothing, a pretty head again reunited with its pulse from before. She'll open her eyes in a moment, questioning, horrified. He'll coo and comfort her, in a woment. Usher the little girl into womanhood, like it's been done so many times on the endless face of endless earth, like he's so recently learned to do. Another girl dead, another woman born, the great flywheel flies on.

"You're mine, now" he says, looking down at her. A prisoner, released for now, her life still his, to snuff out when he please.

"Yes I am." she whispers, with her heart, as for the rest of her life she yet will.

The End.

« Disgrace - His spell with Lucy

Qntra (S.QNTR) December 2016 Statement »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Sunday, 01 January, Year 9 d.Tr.

Disgrace - The whole day Lucy

The whole day Lucy avoids him. In the afternoon Petrus himself raps at the back door, businesslike as ever, wearing boots and overalls. It is time to lay the pipes, he says. He wants to lay PVC piping from the storage dam to the site of his new house, a distance of two hundred metres. Can he borrow tools, and can David help him fit the regulator?

'I know nothing about regulators. I know nothing about plumbing.' He is in no mood to be helpful. It does not occur to him just how strikingly similar his behaviour is to a young girl's that's recently been added to a brothel.

'It is not plumbing,' says Petrus. 'It is pipefitting. It is just laying pipes.'

On the way to the dam Petrus talks about regulators of different kinds, about pressure-valves, about junctions; he brings out the words with a flourish, showing off his mastery. He is well and truly proud of his ability in the white man's field. The new pipe will have to cross Lucy's land, he says; it is good that she has given her permission. She is 'forward-looking'. 'She is a forward-looking lady, not backward-looking.' About the party, about the boy with the flickering eyes, Petrus says nothing. It is as though none of that had happened.

His own role at the dam soon becomes clear. Petrus needs him not for advice on pipefitting or plumbing but to hold things, to pass him tools - to be his handlanger, in fact. The role is not one he objects to. Petrus is a good workman, it is an education to watch him. It is Petrus himself he has begun to dislike. As Petrus drones on about his plans, he grows more and more frosty toward him. He would not wish to be marooned with Petrus on a desert isle. He would certainly not wish to be married to him. A dominating personality. The young wife seems happy, but he wonders what stories the old wife has to tell. At last, when he has had enough, he cuts across the flow. Petrus,' he says, 'that young man who was at your house this morning, when the chief was speaking -- what is his name and where is he now?'

Petrus takes off his cap, wipes his forehead. Today he is wearing a peaked cap with a silver South African Railways and Harbours badge. He seems to have a collection of headgear.

'You see,' says Petrus, frowning, 'David, it is a hard thing you are saying.'

'He was the third, when they robbed the place. You know this. And you know him.'

'It is a hard thing. And I, I am the one who must be keeping the peace. So it is hard for me, too.'

'I have no intention of involving you in the case, Petrus. Tell me the boy's name and whereabouts and I will pass on the information to the police. Then we can leave it to the police to investigate and bring him and his accomplices to justice. You will not be involved, I will not be involved. It will be a matter for the law.'

Petrus stretches, bathing his face in the sun's glow. 'But the insurance will give you a new car.'

Is it a question? A declaration? Does this short, ugly, obnoxious man actually imagine insurance companies are a sort of car farms, where they pick one fresh right off the vine and hand it to you? What game is Petrus playing?

'The insurance company will not give me a new car,' he explains, trying to be patient. 'Assuming it isn't bankrupt by now because of all the car-theft going on in this sad excuse for a country, the insurance company will give me a percentage of its own idea of what the old car was worth at the time it was stolen. That won't be enough to buy a new car, or an old one. Perhaps it may be enough to buy a bicycle. Nor will it cover all the books I had in the trunk, or anything else. Anyhow, there is a principle involved. We can't leave it to insurance companies to deliver justice. That is not their business.'

'But you will not get your car back from this boy. He cannot give you your car. He does not know where your car is. Your car is gone. The best is, you buy another car with the insurance, then you have a car again.'

How has he landed in this dead-end? He tries a new tack. 'Petrus, let me ask you, is this boy related to you?'

'And why', Petrus continues, ignoring the question, 'do you want to take this boy to the police? He is too young, you cannot put him in jail.'

'If he is eighteen he can be tried. If he is sixteen he can be tried.'

'No, no, he is not eighteen.'

'How do you know? He looks plenty above eighteen to me.'

'I know, I know! He is just a youth, he cannot go to jail, that is the law, you cannot put a youth in jail, you must let him go!'

This strange legal notion seems to clinch the argument, as far as Petrus is concerned. Heavily he settles on one knee and begins to work the coupling over the outlet pipe.

'Petrus, my daughter wants to be a good neighbour - a good citizen and a good neighbour. She loves the Eastern Cape. She wants to make her life here, she wants to get along with everyone. But how can she do so when she is liable to be attacked at any moment by thugs who then escape scot-free? Surely you see!'

Petrus is struggling to get the coupling to fit. The skin of his hands shows deep, rough cracks; he gives little grunts as he works; there is no sign he has even heard.

'Lucy is safe here,' he announces suddenly. 'It is all right now. You can leave her, she is safe.'

'But she is not safe, Petrus! Clearly she is not safe! You know what happened here on the twenty-first.'

'Yes, I know what happened. But now it is all right.'

'Who says it is all right?'

'I say.'

'You say? You will protect her?'

Petrus raises his head and looks at him for a moment, no more than a brief glance. 'I will protect her.'

'You didn't protect her last time.'

Petrus smears more grease over the pipe.

'You say you know what happened, but you didn't protect her last time,' he repeats. 'You went away, and then those three thugs turned up, and now it seems you are friends with one of them. What am I supposed to conclude?'

It is the closest he has come to accusing Petrus. But why not? 'The boy is not guilty,' says Petrus. 'He is not a criminal. He is not a thief. He is just a boy.'

'It is not just thieving I am speaking of.'

'He is not guilty. He is too young. It is just a big mistake.'

'You know?'

'I know.' The pipe is in. Petrus folds the clamp, tightens it, stands up, straightens his back. 'I know. I am telling you. I know.'

'You know. You know the future. What can I say to that? You have spoken. Do you need me here any longer?'

'No, now it is easy, now I must just dig the pipe in.'

Despite Petrus's confidence in the insurance industry, there is no movement on his claim. Without a car he feels trapped on the farm. On one of his afternoons at the clinic, he unburdens himself to Bev Shaw. 'Lucy and I are not getting on,' he says. 'Nothing remarkable in that, I suppose. Parents and children aren't made to live together. Under normal circumstances I would have moved out by now, gone back to Cape Town. But I can't leave Lucy alone on the farm. She isn't safe. I am trying to persuade her to hand over the operation to Petrus and take a break. But she won't listen to me.'

'You have to let go of your children, David. You can't watch over Lucy for ever.'

'I let go of Lucy long ago. I have been the least protective of fathers. But the present situation is different. Lucy is objectively in danger. We have had that demonstrated to us.'

'It will be all right. Petrus will take her under his wing.'

'Petrus?'

'You underestimate Petrus. Petrus slaved to get the market garden going for Lucy. Without Petrus Lucy wouldn't be where she is now. I am not saying she owes him everything, but she owes him a lot.'

'That may be so. The question is, what does Petrus owe her?'

'Petrus is a good old chap. You can depend on him.'

'Depend on Petrus? Why should I depend on Petrus? He lives on our land by her indulgence.' he feels the rage raising in him, but wills it to cool down. 'Because Petrus has a beard and smokes a pipe and carries a stick, you think Petrus is an old-style kaffir. But it is not like that at all. Petrus is not an old-style kaffir, and very much less a good old chap.'

'He may not meet your criteria, Professor. But that's neither here nor there. You will have to make do with the Petrus you've got because there isn't any replacement in sight. He's here, it's what it is.' Then after a little pause she continues 'poor Lucy.' She whispers: 'she has been through such a lot!'

'I know what Lucy has been through. I was there.'

Wide-eyed she gazes back at him. 'But you weren't there, David. She told me. You weren't.'

You weren't there. You don't know what happened. He is baffled. Where, according to Bev Shaw, according to Lucy, was he not? In the room where the intruders were satisfying their impulses, barking their demands, committing their outrages? On the same planet, perhaps ? Was he contained in a separate, orthogonal plane of existence, in an alternative, private geometry entirely irreducible to theirs ? Is he in a different phase, of a different spin, is his aroma mismatched to the rest of them, is that what she is hinting at ? Do they suppose a man and a woman can never live the same life even if they live their lives in the same place or do they just think he does not know what rape is? Do they think he has not suffered with his daughter? What more could he have witnessed than he is capable of imagining? Or do they think that, where rape is concerned, no man can be where the woman is? Whatever the answer, he is outraged, outraged at being treated like an outsider. He wants to scream at Bev that he is anything but an outsider! He is intimately familiar with the whole process, and through direct participation! He wants to scream it at all of them, he wants to wear a sign of it and go out in the streets. But of course, he does not. How could he do such a thing ? DORi, David Of Rape, the polar opposite of WAR. What symbol could signify experience ? He does not ask "what symbol could signify experience outside the possiblity of misinterpretation". What symbol could signify experience at all ?

On to the next chapter, "He buys a small television..."

———In Romanian in original. [↩]

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Disgrace - He buys a small television »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Sunday, 01 January, Year 9 d.Tr.

Disgrace - The dogs are brought

The dogs are brought to the clinic because they are unwanted, to be done because we are too menny. That is where Little Father Time dressed as David Lurie enters their lives. He may not be their saviour, but he is prepared to take care of them once they are unable to take care of themselves. The first time they are unable to take care of themselves. Once even Bev Shaw has washed her hands of them. A dog-man, Petrus once called himself. Well, now he has become a dogman: a dog undertaker; a dog psychopomp; a harijan.

Curious that a man as troubled as he should be the one called for this unknown task. You'd think the carrier has a steadier hand, a calmer composition. Curious that he'd accept such a call. There must be other, more productive ways of giving oneself to the world, or even to an idea of the world. One could for instance work longer hours at the clinic. One could try to persuade the children at the dump not to fill their bodies with poisons. Even sitting down more purposefully with the Byron libretto might, at a pinch, be construed as a service to mankind. But there are other people to do these things, other people who do these things. The animal welfare thing, the social rehabilitation thing, even the Byron thing. He saves that trembling, evanescent spec, the honour of nameless, mute corpses, because... because there is no one else stupid enough to do it. That is what he is becoming: the fallthrough case of the stupid tree.

Their work at the clinic is over for the day. The kombi is loaded with its dead weight, no lighter than it was alive. The animal soul, muddled inside the animal body, fails to separate in time, does not lift away. Dies with the dog. As a last chore he is mopping the floor of the surgery.

'I'll do that,' says Bev Shaw, coming in from the yard. 'You'll be wanting to get back.'

'I'm in no hurry.'

'Still, you must be used to a different kind of life.'

'A different kind of life? I very much fear life might not come in kinds.'

'I mean, you must find life very dull here. You must miss your own circle. You must miss having women friends.'

'Women friends, you say. Surely Lucy told you why I left Cape Town. The friendship of women didn't work very well for me.'

'You shouldn't be hard on her.'

'Hard on Lucy? I don't have it in me to be hard on Lucy.'

'Not Lucy - the young woman in Cape Town. Lucy said there was a young woman who caused you a lot of trouble.'

'Yes, there was a young woman. But she caused me no trouble. No trouble at all. On the contrary, she was most instructive.'

'Lucy said you had to give up your position at the university. That must have been difficult. Do you regret it?'

What nosiness! Curious how the whiff of scandal excites women. Does this plain little creature think him incapable of shocking her? Or is being shocked another of the duties she takes on -- like a nun who lies down to be violated so that the quota of violation alloted the rest of the world may be reduced? An ugly old toad aspiring to the virginal charms of santa Girolama through the trite venue of inciting disinterested Longobards to rape her shrivelled old twat ? He finds her repugnant, thoroughly repugnant in a stricly moral sense ; but this determination is of no further significance to him.

'I did not have to give up my position. On the contrary, they begged me not to do anything of the kind, a whole chorus of them. The young woman's... the introduction to the facts of life I visited upon that girl made them want me more, not less. My position there never was as strong as then ; their demand for my words never that stringent, that desperately acute.'

Bev looks at him with the eyes of an owl. At last she manages to crank again the mechanism that makes her speak, and asks 'How come you left, then?' in such a tone as to barely betray a question's being asked at all.

'A man came from behind and asked me something.'

'You said so before.'

He looks at her, standing before him. Yes, he had said so before. How to make sense of the world for the benefit of curious Bev Shaw, nosy Bev Shaw, stolid, old Bev Shaw ? 'You have your notions on the subject, of course. They aren't so much yours per se, they're what others have imparted on you. But let me tell you, I, who was there, or rather, let me tell you, around whom that place was built and of whom that place in any sense exists that you do infinitely more for the mongrels here than anyone ever did for any one of all those children crowding in Cape Town University each and every god damned year. Except, perhaps, for one.'

She blushes. A long time since he last saw a woman of middle age blush so thoroughly. To the roots of her hair.

'Still, you must find Grahamstown very quiet,' she murmurs. 'By comparison.'

'I don't mind Grahamstown. At least I am out of the way of temptation. Besides, I don't live in Grahamstown. I live on a farm with my daughter.'

Out of the way of temptation: a callous thing to say to a woman, even a plain one. Yet not plain in everyone's eyes. There must have been a time when Bill Shaw saw something in young Bev. Other men too, perhaps. He tries to imagine her twenty years younger, when the upturned face on its stout stipe must have seemed pert and the freckled skin homely, healthy. Suddenly, shockingly, she drops to her knees in front of him.

'Will you... will you...' she burbles, haltingly, at loss for air, like a cauldron going on an intense fire. 'Will you show me.' she manages at least. 'Please.' Her beseeching has something of the dogs' desperation in it.

He reaches down and undoes his belt, extracts a disinterested appendage from its linenny folds. She attacks it eagerly, ineptly. It might be her first time, he thinks. He reaches behind her, grabs the straps, affixes her wrists to the table behind. The straps are not tight, but Bev's wrists go completely limp. They have been conceptually tied, and can not be moved any further. They're paralyzed, completely, like chess pieces that have been captured off the table. The straps captured Bev Shaw's wrists, and thus she has not her wrists with her anymore. He sways gently, to give her frantic activity some kind of a rhythm. A rhythm, a rime, a reason.

It takes him a long time to spend ; it takes her a long time to earn his expenditure. But it eventually does happen. It does eventually happen. She's unprepared, she chokes on it, she coughs it back up, the stuff of life coming out in a blob through her left nostril. That is all that happens. That is as far as they go. He unties her left arm and without another word he leaves the clinic.

He sits in front of the wheel, shaken. You were not there, she had said. His daughter said so to her, somehow. Lucy said something, and from what Lucy said Bev understood he wasn't there. Did Lucy say anything ? The outer shell of the great secret, the carapace holding within mystery afore ununderstood is starting to crack before him. That shared, universal if unspoken bond of womanhood. A violation ? What is that ? An outrage, is it, and a crime. How ? 'She asked for it, your honor.' he could say. She did. Who ever didn't ? How could one not ? All life is asking, and what does life ask for ?

The next afternoon there is a call from her. 'Can we meet at the clinic, at four,' she says. Not a question but an announcement, made in a high, strained voice. Almost he asks, 'Why?', but then has the good sense not to. Nonetheless he is surprised. He would bet she has not been down this road before. This must be how, in her innocence, she assumes adulteries are carried out: with the woman telephoning her pursuer, declaring herself ready. 'Come now, I'm ovulating!' Like those ridiculous couples trying to fool mother Nature, trying to conceive in spite of it, intensely crafty, focused on their thermometres and who knows what complex flanges. Special mice thinking themselves clever for eating their own way into the mousetrap, eschewing the common entrance to end in the same way as all the others, but on their own, supposedly chosen path. Cattle are wiser than humans, in that no cow has yet jumped the fence into the slaughter yard just for the hollow satisfaction of having ended up inside in its own way.

He does not bother to go. He is in no mood for it, and besides he does not like Bev Shaw. It had been a long while since he was inside a woman, longer than any time he can readily recall, in fact. Yet he does not miss it, apparently, and isn't the slightest interested in an encore. He always thought sex a problem to be resolved, but apparently it will take care of itself just as well.

The next time they see each other she is dejected, but quiet. During the day he happens across some blankets in a cabinet, two of them. One pink, one grey, smuggled from her home by a woman who no doubt bathed and powdered and anointed herself in readiness; who has, for all he knows, been powdering and anointing herself every Sunday, and storing blankets in the cabinet, just in case, and who knows what else. A waistless, squat little tub of a woman by the name Bev apparently thinks that because he comes from the big city, or because there is scandal attached to his name, that he makes love to every woman and expects to be made love to by every woman who crosses his path. He'd wager Bev was blest with even less of a bosom than Melani, yet Bev thinks herself a woman, and readily usable for the purpose. How little do kids learn these days at University. A casanova's days are never over -- and it has nothing to do with him.

Petrus has borrowed a tractor, where from he has no idea, and in what manner he prefers not to inquire, to which he has coupled the old rotary plough that has lain rusting behind the stable since before Lucy's time. In a matter of hours he has ploughed the whole of his land, that now resembles a couple of hectares more than anything. All very swift and businesslike; all very unlike Africa. In olden times, that is to say ten years ago, it would have taken him days with a hand-plough and oxen.

Against this new Petrus what chance does Lucy stand? Petrus arrived as the dig-man, the carry-man, the water-man. Apparently now she owes him a lot, somehow, and he is too busy for that kind of thing anyway. Where is Lucy going to find someone to dig, to carry, to water? Were this a game, he would say that Lucy has been outplayed on all fronts. If she had any sense she would quit: approach the Land Bank, work out a deal, like so many others. Consign the farm to Petrus, return to civilization. She could open boarding kennels in the suburbs; she could branch out into cats. She could even go back to what she and her friends did in their hippie days: ethnic cloth-weaving, ethnic pot-decoration, ethnic basket-weaving. Selling beads and whatnot to tourists. The traditional fare of the gypsy woman, up to and perhaps including the rental of the space inside her cunt.

Defeated. It is not hard to imagine Lucy in ten years' time: a heavy woman with lines of sadness on her face, wearing clothes long out of fashion, talking to her pets, eating alone. Not much of a life, especially considering the haughty oral flatulence the new age conmen and conwomen employ to recruit impressionable youth for their abattoir. A university in its own right. Still, better than passing her days in fear of the next attack, waiting to be savaged, nightly, by the local dogs, waiting for the flies to lay their eggs and for no one to answer the telephone.

He approaches Petrus on the site he has chosen for his new residence, on a slight rise overlooking the farmhouse. The surveyor has already paid his visit, the pegs are in place. 'You are not going to do the building yourself, are you?' he asks.

Petrus chuckles. 'No, it is a skill job, building,' he says. 'Bricklaying, plastering, all that, you need to be skill. No, I am going to dig the trenches. That I can do by myself. That is not such a skill job, that is just a job for a boy. For digging you just have to be a boy.'

Petrus speaks the word with real amusement. Once he was a boy, now he is no longer. Now he can play at being one, as Marie Antoinette could play at being a milkmaid. He comes to the point. 'If Lucy and I went back to Cape Town, would you be prepared to keep her part of the farm running? We would pay you a salary, or you could do it on a percentage basis. A percentage of the profits.'

'I must keep the farm running,' says Petrus. 'I must be the farm manager.' He pronounces the words as if he has never heard them before, as if they have popped up before him like a rabbit out of a hat.

'Yes, we could call you the farm manager, if you like.'

'And Lucy will come back.'

'I am sure she will come back one day. She is very attached to this farm. She has no intention of giving it up. But she has been having a hard time recently. She needs a break. A holiday.'

'By the sea,' says Petrus, and smiles, showing teeth yellow from the pipe.

'Yes, by the sea, if she wants.' He is irritated by Petrus's habit of letting words hang in the air. There was a time when he thought he might become friends with Petrus. Now he detests him. Talking to Petrus is like punching a bag filled with sand. 'I don't see that either of us is entitled to question Lucy if she decides to take a break,' he says. 'Neither you nor I.'

'How long I must be farm manager?'

'I don't know yet, Petrus. I haven't discussed it with Lucy, I am just exploring the possibility, seeing if you are agreeable.'

'And I must do all the things - I must feed the dogs, I must plant the vegetables, I must go to the market - '

'There is no need to make a list. There won't be dogs. I am just asking in a general way, if Lucy took a holiday, would you be prepared to look after the farm?'

'If I go to market I must have kombi. If Lucy go to sea she must have kombi. There is only one kombi.'

'That is a detail. We can discuss details later. I just want a general answer, yes or no.'

On to the next chapter, "Petrus shakes his head..."

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Disgrace - Petrus shakes his head »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Sunday, 01 January, Year 9 d.Tr.

Disgrace - His spell with Lucy

His spell with Lucy has not turned him into a country person. Nonetheless, there are things he misses - the duck family, for instance: Mother Duck tacking about on the surface of the dam, her chest puffed out with pride, while Eenie, Meenie, Minie and Mo paddle busily behind, confident that as long as she is there they are safe from all harm. As for the dogs, he does not want to think about them. From Monday onward the dogs released from life within the walls of the clinic will be tossed into the fire unmarked, unmourned. For that betrayal, will he ever be forgiven? For the few saved, will he be praised ? Was anyone ever saved ?

He visits the bank, takes a load of washing to the laundry. In the little shop where for years he has bought his coffee the assistant pretends not to recognize him. His neighbour, watering her garden, studiously keeps her back turned. He thinks of William Wordsworth on his first stay in London, visiting the pantomime, seeing Jack the Giant Killer blithely striding the stage, flourishing his sword, protected by the word Invisible written on his chest.

In the evening he calls Lucy from a public telephone. 'I thought I'd phone in case you were worried about me,' he says. 'I'm fine. I'll take a while to settle down, I suspect. I rattle about in the house like a pea in a bottle. I miss the ducks.'

He does not mention the raid on the house, because he believes he doesn't have to. She knows. She doesn't mention things he knows either.

Shopping at the supermarket, he finds himself in a queue behind Elaine Winter, chair of his onetime department. Wrapped up in her nonsensical pretense of a life as always, she pushes around a whole trolleyful of purchases. Bread and butter items, all kinds, but also all those little treats that a woman living alone awards herself, to maybe, sometimes, dull the blade. Full cream ice cream (real almonds, real raisins), imported Italian cookies, chocolate bars, and loads and loads of sanitary napkins. Have to be sanitary, sanitary above all else, God forbid! In a certain sense her ample praeda puts his mere handbasket to shame. She is getting so very much out of this life, isn't she ? Yet unexplicably, she's the nervous one, barely able to return his greeting.

'And how is the department getting on without me?' he asks cheerily.

'Oh, struggling along as usual,' she replies vaguely.

He does not say: It wasn't much of a department anyway, even at the best of times. He doesn't mention things she can not know. Instead he says: 'Have you been able to do any hiring?'

'We have taken on one new person, on a contract basis. A young man.'

'I have met him,' he might respond. 'A worthless little shit,' he might add. But he does not see the point. 'What is his specialisation?' he inquires instead.

'Applied language studies. He is in language learning.'

He is in blowing air in his fist and wondering at the sounds he makes, she should say. She doesn't know the world enough to say that. She actually doesn't know anything enough to say anything worth the listen. So much for the poets, so much for the dead masters. Who have not, he must say, guided him well. Aliter, to whom he has not listened well.

The woman ahead of them in the queue is taking her time to pay. There is still room for Elaine to ask the next question, which should be, And how are you getting on, David?, and for him to respond, Very well, Elaine, very well.

'Wouldn't you like to go ahead of me?' she suggests instead, gesturing toward his basket. 'You have so little.'

'Thank you, I think I will.' he responds. He doesn't say: Perhaps there is some hope for you, you stupid old hag. Perhaps there is somehow, somewhere, some hope for you. For all of you, all the Bevs in this world might, maybe, who knows, wake up one day. Go join Lucy one day. It's not made out of soap, after all, is it ? Is it made of soap ?

As first conceived, the opera had had at its centre Lord Byron and his mistress the Contessa Guiccioli. Trapped in the Villa Guiccioli in the stifling summer heat of Ravenna, spied on by Teresa's jealous husband, the two would roam through the gloomy drawing-rooms singing of their baulked passion. Teresa feels herself to be a prisoner; she smoulders with resentment and nags Byron to bear her away to another life. As for Byron, he is full of doubts, though too prudent to voice them. Their early ecstasies will, he suspects, never be repeated. His life is becalmed; obscurely he has begun to long for a quiet retirement; failing that, for apotheosis, for death. Teresa's soaring arias ignite no spark in him; his own vocal line, dark, convoluted, goes past, through, over her.

That is how he had conceived it: as a chamber-play about love and death, to take place between a passionate young woman and a once passionate but now less than passionate older man; as an action with a complex, restless music behind it, sung in an English that tugs continually toward an imagined Italian. Formally speaking, the conception is not a bad one. The characters balance one another well: the trapped couple, the discarded mistress hammering at the windows, the jealous husband. The villa too, with Byron's pet monkeys hanging languidly from the chandeliers and peacocks fussing back and forth among the ornate Neapolitan furniture, has the right mix of timelessness and decay.

Yet, first on Lucy's farm and now again here, the project has failed to engage the core of him. There is something misconceived about it, something that does not come from the heart. A woman complaining to the stars that the spying of the servants forces her and her lover to relieve their desires in a broom-closet... who cares? He can find words for Byron, but the Teresa that history has bequeathed him -- young, greedy, wilful, petulant -- does not match up to the music he has dreamed of, music whose harmonies, lushly autumnal yet edged with irony, he hears shadowed in his inner ear.

He tries another track. Abandoning the pages of notes he has written, abandoning the pert, precocious newlywed with her captive English Milord, he tries to pick Teresa up in middle age. The new Teresa is a dumpy little widow installed in the Villa Gamba with her aged father, running the household, holding the purse-strings tight, keeping an eye out that the servants do not steal the sugar, indulging in the occasional real almond. Byron, in this new view, is long dead; Teresa's sole remaining claim to immortality, and the solace of her lonely nights, is the chestful of letters and memorabilia she keeps under her bed, what she calls her reliquary, which her grandnieces are meant to open after her death and peruse with awe. Is this the heroine he has been seeking all the time? Will an older Teresa engage his heart as his heart is now?

The passage of time has not treated Teresa kindly. With her heavy bust, her stocky trunk, her abbreviated legs, she looks more like a peasant, a contadina, than an aristocrat. The complexion that Byron once so admired has turned hectic; in summer she is overtaken with attacks of asthma that leave her heaving for breath.

In the letters he wrote to her Byron calls her My friend, then My love, then My love for ever. But there are rival letters in existence, letters she cannot reach and set fire to. In these letters, addressed to his English friends, Byron lists her flippantly among his Italian conquests, makes jokes about her husband, alludes to women from her circle with whom he has slept. In the years since Byron's death, his friends have written one memoir after another, drawing upon his letters. After conquering the young Teresa from her husband, runs the story they tell, Byron soon grew bored with her; he found her empty-headed; he stayed with her only out of laziness; it was in order to escape her, and all she stood for, that he sailed off to Greece and to his death.

Their libels hurt her to the quick. Her years with Byron constitute the apex of her life, even if by no means of his. Byron's love is all that sets her apart, even if her love -- complete, devoted, and undying -- is nevertheless not remarkable enough to mention. Without him she is nothing: a woman past her prime, without prospects, living out her days in a dull provincial town, exchanging visits with women-friends, massaging her father's legs when they give him pain, sleeping alone.

Can he find it in his heart to speak of this plain, ordinary woman? Can he summon the interest to write a music for her? If he cannot, what is left for him? Rosalind, too little, Lucy, too much. What, then ?

He comes back to what must now be the opening scene. The tail end of yet another sultry day. Teresa stands at a second-floor window in her father's house, looking out over the marshes and pine-scrub of the Romagna toward the sun glinting on the Adriatic. The end of the prelude; a hush; she takes a breath. Mio Byron, she sings, her voice throbbing with sadness. A lone clarinet answers, tails off, falls silent. Mio Byron, she calls again, more strongly.

Where is he, her Byron? Byron is lost, that is the answer. Byron wanders along the abode of the shades. And she is lost too, the Teresa he loved, the girl of nineteen with the blonde ringlets who gave herself up with such joy to the imperious Englishman, and afterwards stroked his brow as he lay on her naked breast, breathing deeply, slumbering after his great passion. She loved him so! So easily, so readily, when she was young the flow of life came to her so naturally, so directly, like life itself, altogether, all, resided in her chest. Or perhaps not exactly her chest.

Mio Byron, she sings a third time; and from somewhere, from the caverns of the underworld, a voice sings back, wavering and disembodied, the voice of a ghost, the voice of Byron. Where are you? he sings; and then a word she does not want to hear: secca, dry. It has dried up, the source of everything. So faint, so faltering is the voice of Byron that Teresa has to sing his words back to him, helping him along breath by breath, drawing him back to life: her child, her boy. I am here, she sings, supporting him, saving him from going down. I am your source. Do you remember how together we visited the spring of Arqua? Together, you and I. I was your Laura. Do you remember?

That is how it must be from here on: Teresa giving voice to her lover, and he, the man in the ransacked house, giving voice to Teresa. The halt helping the lame, for want of better. Working as swiftly as he can, holding tight to Teresa, he tries to sketch out the opening pages of a libretto. Get the words down on paper, he tells himself. Once that is done it will all be easier. Then there will be time to search through the masters -- through Gluck, for instance -- lifting melodies, perhaps -- who knows? -- lifting ideas too.

But by steps, as he begins to live his days more fully with his imagined Teresa and the dead Byron, it becomes clear that purloined songs will not be good enough, that the two will demand a music of their own. And, astonishingly, in dribs and drabs, the music comes. Sometimes the contour of a phrase occurs to him before he has a hint of what the words themselves will be; sometimes the words call forth the cadence; sometimes the shade of a melody, having hovered for days on the edge of hearing, unfolds and blessedly reveals itself. As the action begins to unwind, furthermore, it calls up of its own accord modulations and transitions that he feels in his blood even when he has not the musical resources to realize them.

At the piano he sets to work piecing together and writing down the beginnings of a score. But there is something about the sound of the piano that hinders him: too rounded, too physical, too rich. From the attic, from a crate full of old books and toys of Lucy's, he recovers the ancient saxophone that he bought on an impulse when she was a small child. With the aid of the ancient, beat up instrument he begins to notate the music that Teresa, now mournful, now angry, will sing to her dead lover, and that pale-voiced Byron will sing back to her from the land of the shades. The deeper he follows the Contessa into her underworld, singing her words for her or humming her vocal line, the more inseparable from her, to his surprise, becomes the reverberation of the brass. The overlush arias he had dreamed of giving her he quietly abandons; from there it is but a short step to putting the instrument into her hands.

Instead of stalking the stage, Teresa now sits staring out over the marshes toward the gates of hell, cradling the mandolin on which she accompanies herself in her lyric flights; while to one side a discreet trio in knee-breeches (cello, flute, bassoon) fill in the entr'actes or comment sparingly between stanzas.

Seated at his own desk looking out on the overgrown garden, he marvels at what unfolds before him. Six months ago he had thought his own ghostly place in Byron in Italy would be somewhere between Teresa's and Byron's: between a yearning to prolong the summer of the passionate body and a reluctant recall from the long sleep of oblivion. But he was wrong. It is not the erotic that is calling to him after all, nor the elegiac, but the comic. He is in the opera neither as Teresa nor as Byron nor even as some blending of the two: he is held in the music itself, in the flat, tinny whine, the voice that strains to soar away from the ludicrous instrument but is continually reined back, like a fish on a line.

So this is art, he thinks, and this is how it does its work! How strange! How fascinating! He spends whole days in the grip of Byron and Teresa, living on black coffee and breakfast cereal. The refrigerator is empty, his bed is unmade; leaves chase across the floor from the broken window. No matter, he thinks: let the dead bury their dead.

Out of the poets I learned to love, chants Byron in his cracked monotone, nine syllables on C natural; but life, I found (descending chromatically to F), is another story. Why, O why do you speak like that? sings Teresa in a long reproachful arc. She wants to be loved, Teresa, to be loved immortally; she wants to be raised to the company of the Lauras and Floras of yore. She wants, in truth, to be locked in a room and pushed down on a bed, again and again. She wants to be, by the fire, on the reedmat, tasted by all the party. But not with hatred, and not with any other artifice. She wants a spring of men to naturally flow, from which a will for her, a want of her to spring as naturally and as strong and as enduring as the one welling inside of her. And Byron? Byron will be faithful unto death, but that is all he promises. Let both be tied till one shall have expired.

My love, sings Teresa, swelling out the fat English monosyllable she learned in the poet's bed. A woman in love, wallowing in love; a cat on a roof, howling; complex proteins swirling in the blood, distending the sexual organs, making the palms sweat and voice thicken as the soul hurls its longings to the skies. That is what Soraya and the others were for: to suck the complex proteins out of his blood like snake-venom, leaving him clear-headed and dry. Dry, so very dry. Teresa in her father's house in Ravenna, to her misfortune, has no one to suck the venom from. Come to me, mio Byron, she cries: come to me, love me! And Byron, exiled from life, pale as a ghost, echoes her derisively: Leave me, leave me, leave me be! There is nothing here for thee.

On to the next chapter, "Years ago, when he lived..."

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Disgrace - Years ago, when he lived »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Sunday, 01 January, Year 9 d.Tr.

Disgrace - He glances across at Lucy

He glances across at Lucy. The young man is dancing mere inches from her now, lifting his legs high and thumping them down, pumping his arms, enjoying himself. The plate he is holding contains two mutton chops, a baked potato, a ladle of rice swimming in gravy, a slice of pumpkin. He finds a chair to perch on, sharing it with a skinny old man with rheumy eyes. I am going to eat this, he says to himself. I am going to eat it and ask forgiveness afterwards. Then Lucy is at his side, breathing fast, her face tense.

'I will have to go in the back now. Will you be ok on your own ?'

'I think so...'

'If it gets too late for you, don't wait for me. I'll be back on my own.'

'Lucy' he starts, but she gives him a look that every mother knows, that every child knows, that says one thing but says it loud and clear: Do not make a fuss ; do not cause a scene. He follows her with his eyes, young men gaggle around her as she goes out the back door. He thinks he sees... but no, he is imagining things. For a moment he thought he saw the young, handsome, athletic fellow, his head towering above the crowd, outside, through the opening of the door. A fleeting moment, but he does not get up, he does not follow after her.

Instead, a drink finds his way into his hands, he knows not from where. He drains the cup, it is a murky liquid, modertately alcoholic, somewhat bitter, vaguely floral. Is this what passes for sherry in these parts, he wonders. Then he feels his eyelids heavy, the room ready to spin around him, moving in a dizzying circular motion at the edge of vision even as it is stationary in front of his eyes. He thinks to himself, could I have become so unaccustomed to alcohol, that all it takes is one drink ? No, he thinks, before the whole world turning to water, alcohol does not hit that fast.

When he comes to, it is early morning, early Sunday morning in the bush. The birds sing, loudly, decisively. He is groggy, he stands uneasily, looks about. Most of the guests already left, the older folk as the night fell or soon thereafter, taking the smaller children with them, leaving the younger set behind. This he remembers. Most of the young men also left, but this he never saw. He sees a man crumpled here and there, sleeping, uneasily. Some snore, each in his own tongue. No sign of Lucy whatsoever. She probably left, but how did she leave leaving him behind ?!

He makes his way to the back door, stepping over legs and arms, trying to contain the swirling nauseous mass inside his head, nearly falling over twice in the process. Beyond the door there's a sort of bivouac, the smoldering remains of a large pit fire, and by the fire, on a worn, fraying reed mat, a naked body. A woman, a white woman on her side, with her back to him. Lucy!

He tries to run but straggles over, he grabs her shoulder as he nearly collapses next to her. She turns on her back, mumbling, then slowly awakens. It is her, she is completely naked, her parted legs displaying a pubis shaved smooth, hairless, like a child's. The realisation thunders through his mind, Lucy hasn't been getting heavier. Lucy is simply pregnant.

'Lucy!' he tries to scream at the top of his lungs, but the word comes out low and hoarse.

'Shh!' she replies, sleepily. 'You'll wake them up.' She gets up, tiredly. Her hair is caked. The mat left straight narrow furrows on her rump running all the side of the ribcage and her breast. He looks at her with wide eyes, awestruck.

'Come, come.' she says, pulling his hand. 'Let's go.'

'What happened to your dress ?' he manages, more a mumble than anything.

'I do not know. One of them probably has it.'

The immensity of the situation is too much for him to process. He follows his daughter, sheepishly. She steps barefoot, completely nude. Did they take her bra, her underwear also ? Did she not have any underneath her dress to begin with ? Her body is stained, like with wax. They go through the door, traverse the barn with the snorning, sleeping drunks, and they are out the door. Out of the party, into the morning air, Ms Lucy Lurie, bare as the day she was born, and her eldery father, confused as the day he was born, climbing hand in hand up the trail towards their home. Somehow he has her tiny flashlight, and he blinks it on, then off, then on again.

'Will you stop clicking that thing.' comes the reprimand, and he turns it off and puts it in his pocket.

They are seated in the livingroom of the once great house, the spacious, empty, sad remnant of another time. She, in her robe, dripping water from the shower. He, in yesterday's clothes, a whispy, corpse-like beard around his jaws.

'Lucy' he manages at long last.

'Yes, David.' she responds, plainly.

'The baby - when are you expecting the baby?' he asks his own daughter, no-one's wife.

'January, perhaps. February, at the latest.'

'Why didn't you tell me anything ?'

'Tell you what ?'

'For instance, you could have told me you knew those three men.'

'I could have told you that I know them, and it wouldn't have been true, I don't know them, not really. Or I could have told you that I don't know them, and it wouldn't have been true either. But I told you nothing of the kind.'

'Lucy, what are you saying ?'

'Do you know the two sheep that they ate tonight ?' and after a pause 'That you ate tonight.'

'I don't understand.'

'There's a lot you don't understand, David. You came to tell me we were invited to Petrus' party, but we weren't, not as such. My presence was required -- I was part of the entertainment. The white woman and two blackface sheep, that was Petrus' offering to his guests.'

'This is a disgrace.'

'I thought you preferred to call it "Being a servant of Eros" or something to that effect. Not all servant roles are equally appealing, I take it ? You're not the first elderly father of a public woman, David. I am sure you won't be the last.'

'We must call the police!'

'Don't be ridiculous. Call the police!' she puffs in disdain, 'Call the police to say what, to complain that while you were passed out drunk your daughter whored herself out at a party ?'

'Lucy! What have they done to you!'

'Whatever they want. They have done to me whatever they wanted to do.'

'Lucy, listen to me...'

'No!' she cut him off, sharply. 'I will not listen to you! I will listen to them! Whatever they say.'

He is astonished, astonished enough to be bereft of words. At last, 'But... why ?'

'Why what ?'

'Why won't you listen to me ?'

'You're unpersuasive. They aren't.'

He is astonished, beyond the use words, merely keeping his jaw from slacking takes most of his mental energy.

'How much do you pay, in Cape Town', she coos at him. He stares at her, a blank stare on the doorstep of insanity. 'Before the girl you raped, there were whores, weren't there ? There probably was one, what was her name ?'

He opens and closes his mouth. 'Soraya', he offers at an end, mouth dry, barely audible.

'How much did you pay Soraya ?'

'Three Bitcents for ninety minutes, of which half went to Discreet Escorts. They owned the premises. And her, I suppose.'

'Here it is a quarter Bitcent, and all of it goes to Petrus. He looks after me.'

Suddenly, decision strikes. Anger wells up inside him, too, he can feel it, but merely as a result. Chiefly he is decided, firm : 'I will kill him.'

'Who will you kill, David ?'

'This black man, Petrus.'

'You will kill Petrus ? How ?'

'I... I...'

'Have you ever killed a man before ?'

He glares at her, all the fury that he can summon, all the indignant rage of a pubescent boy humiliated by a whore, coming out through his recent eyelashes.

'Why start with Petrus ?'

'He did this to you!'

She laughs, a crystalline, happy laughter he hasn't heard from her since she was a little child, since he was working on his first book. One day he ran into a complication, a Gordian knot of cognition. He took a break, an unexpected change of pace in the dour progress of the afternoons in the house of the life of the mind, and spent the time playing with her. She was so happy then, that day, that brief evening, as he hadn't seen her before. Or since.

'I told you, he looks after me.'

'Why does he do that ?'

'He bought me, David. He bought me like he bought those sheep, exactly, and for not much more money, either. It just happens they don't slaughter women for meat in these parts. It'd put a certain downdraft on the open market price.'

'Who did he buy you from ?'

'From another, who had me before.'

'What do you mean, who had you before.'

'Would you stop and think for a moment. There isn't anywhere on Earth land that doesn't belong to someone, is there ? And if there were, a man would come, and make it his. There isn't an ewe, or a goat, or a cow or an elephant that doesn't have an owner, and if there were, an owner would come forth in any case.'

'But you are a woman.'

'Exactly. I am a white woman in South Africa. A little more than a sheep, a little less than a cow.'

'This is a disgrace.'

'It's not that bad. It could be worse.'

'How could it be worse, Lucy ?'

'Take you, for example. Do you think you pay the price of a goat, David ?'

The question hits him like a gravestone. Ample, final. Does he, David, think he, David, pays the price of a goat ? He could try and kill Petrus. So could a goat. Who has the better chance ? He'd have thought he, before trying to hold down the goat at Bev's, but now he thinks the goat, actually. A servant of Eros ? The image of Petrus, somehow with a monstrously overgrown, hooked nose comes to his mind, rubbing his fingers, cocked head... women cost money, serving Eros in the capacity he contemplates doesn't pay anything, on the contrary, it costs. Centeris futuit Matho, milibus -- non tu propterea sed Matho pauper erit. How will he, David, prevail in the constest with the goat called David ? He is a professor, he will teach -- where will he teach ? Who has he taught, and what ? Who'd pay for that ?

'How about the other women there ?'

'What about them ?'

'Do they also...'

'No, David. Just me.'

'How come ?'

'They had older brothers, to teach them how to behave. They had parents. All I had were friends. It's not quite the same thing.'

'Lucy, Lucy, I plead with you! You want to make up for the wrongs of the past, but this is not the way to do it. As for the police, if you are too delicate to call them in now, then we should never have involved them in the first place. We should just have kept quiet.'

'We called them for the sake of the insurance. We filed a report because if we did not, the insurance would not pay out.'

'And the insurance will pay out...'

'... to Petrus, yes. Petrus knows best.'

'It's my car!'

'Yes David, it is your car, and you are my father, and I am his white woman. And so it goes to him.'

'Lucy, you amaze me. You have a duty to yourself, to the future, to your own self-respect. Let me call the police. Or call them yourself.'

'No.'

No: that is Lucy's last word to him. She retires to her room, closes the door on him, closes him out. He can not begin to believe how much like her mother Lucy turned out to be. Their very quarrels, his and her mothers', have survived the years and re-embodied themselves, re-formed themselves. Refashioned out of new circumstance, entirely the same in substance. He is now rueing the day he came to live with her, like he rued the day he brought her mother to live with him. He has to leave.

Yet she too will have to leave, in the long run. As a woman alone on a farm she has no future, that is clear. Even the days of Ettinger, with his guns and barbed wire and alarm systems, are numbered. If Lucy has any sense she will quit, throw in the towel, move on. But of course she will not. She is stubborn, and immersed, too, in the life she has chosen, or that has chosen her. He slips out of the house. Treading tiredly under the strengthening sun, he approaches the stable from behind. The big fire has long died down, the embers cold, the music stopped. There is a cluster of people at the back door, a door built wide enough to admit a tractor. He peers over their heads.

In the centre of the floor stands a man of middle age. He has a shaven head and a bull neck; he wears a dark suit and, around his neck, a gold chain from which hangs a medal the size of a fist, of the kind that chieftains used to have bestowed on them as a symbol of office. Symbols struck by the boxful in a foundry in Coventry or Birmingham; stamped on the one side with the head of sour Victoria, regina et imperatrix, on the other with gnus or ibises rampant. Medals, Chieftains, for the use of. Shipped all over the old Empire: to Nagpur, Fiji, the Gold Coast, Kaffraria.

The man is speaking, orating in rounded periods that rise and fall, a strange sort of Sunday service. He has no idea what the man is saying, but every now and then there is a pause and a murmur of agreement from his audience, among whom, young and old, a mood of quiet satisfaction seems to reign. He looks around. The boy, the junior of the three is standing nearby, just inside the door. The boy's eyes flit nervously across him. Other eyes turn toward him too: toward the stranger, the odd one out. The man with the medal frowns, falters for a moment, raises his voice. As for him, he does not mind the attention. Let them know I am still here, he thinks, let them know I am not skulking in the big house. And if that spoils their get-together, so be it. He lifts a hand to his white skullcap. For the first time he is glad to have it, to wear it as his own.

On to the next chapter, "The whole day Lucy..."

« Disgrace - Petrus has invited us

Disgrace - The whole day Lucy »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Sunday, 01 January, Year 9 d.Tr.

Did you ever claim to have butterflies in your stomach ?

Turns out you might've been unaware of what you actually meant :

As the expression goes,

I've been going by my gut my whole life, and you know what I've recently discovered ? My gut is actually full of shit!

And now, let's jointly admire my insane macro skillz :

Yep, that's its trunk. Yep, exactly.

Problems ?

« Se Vende Joyeria Fina

A New Leaf »

Category: Zsilnic

Friday, 11 August, Year 9 d.Tr.

Dialogue on economy and other things.

diana_coman mircea_popescu, can trade now?

mircea_popescu can.

diana_coman: 18 * 9999 * .16 * 60 * 1.85 = 3196480.3200000003i

mircea_popescu thanks.

diana_coman thanks

mircea_popescu finishing up this batch of ibs, then will put it in prod. still gotta make bct, cc, qf, but getting there. ppb too, obviously. how's the sb ?

diana_coman the sb can still wait I guess, seeing how demand for woa is high so probably best to make more of it in one go. funny how this works: demand for woa is high, but supply for sb is..non-existent. it's ongoing basically, aka still gathering it, I didn't get around to mix it - should be another couple of stacks I'd say by now, at least when mixed.

mircea_popescu hm.

diana_coman heh, the flagons want wpl meaning the wpl I sold you some time ago, isn't it? lel

mircea_popescu afaik ~all the wpl i have i either mined or bought from you. 2015-2017, rancho foxy.

diana_coman ahahaha, quite. I actually have more grass too, just didn't yet get around to mix it; at those quantities even that can take a while

mircea_popescu heh.

diana_coman so it was 18 stacks now + 16 last time + 11 before,that's 45, not bad

mircea_popescu yeah. certainly didn't leave me much time to craft other stuff. anyway, the market is getting pretty stupid. demand for woa is nominally high, but i doubt it exists ; demand for cft appeared immense, then it didn't exist. the whole system of quota allocationsii is fundamentally broken in that the reason market even exists in the first place is to help people optimize resource allocation rather than having to engage in the "oh, but i put up the sb, or but i put up the that, i should get this i should get that". yet nobody wants to use it, because obviously once it's on the market suddenly everyone's "cautious" or w/e the fuck it's called. i dunno what to do about it, quite frankly.

diana_coman well, I'm not sure the market actually...exists in game as such; it isn't really about "but I put up x or y" - it's simply that they feed into one another to such degree that one is then better off NOT selling it if not able to get back the resulting product. efficiency re costs is nice and fine but gets punched in the nose by scarcity I guess.iii

mircea_popescu i suspect the problem is a lot deeper. you don't powerwash a century of socialism + the benefits of socialization in a year. this whole thing of "i expect to solve my problems through the use of money" thing is just not there. and that's pretty much the substance of capitalism, as opposed to "through talking them out" or "through prayer" or whatever alternative responses seen in history.iv scarcity is entirely manufactured, here, what's so scarce naturally about basics ?v

diana_coman not about basics; about cft needed to get basics! if I sell you all grass and get no cft then I'm fucked. no more grass. simple. moreover: if I sell you all grass and then have to buy cft at a price that is too high then I'm better off making cft myself and selling it.

mircea_popescu ah, but i'm selling it back anyway. not like i want to use it.

diana_coman yes, but to someone else so see above. and with woa look here: I don't mind AT ALL selling tons of sb to make woa for everbody who wants it, sure, what's the problem: I sell MORE sb, good; BUT if I don't get ANY woa then I can't start the numina market which is actually even more profitable; moreover I'm prolly better off getting something other than sb which is a pain.

mircea_popescu not how it worked, in practice. which is i suppose a fine restatement of the problem in alt terms : the expectation ~never meets the reality. this gap is then definitionally braindamage, or ideology, or however you call the difference between what people think is and what actually is.

diana_coman well, in practice there was no demand for cft so that was not an issue, but initially it seemed to be precisely that, aha.

mircea_popescu but this is not the first time. even not counting the "buy package for x, sell components for x/2" faux market problem, pretty much every item to date of any note was "omg huge demand -- wait, what ?" lbn, you name it. the cgd-cft binome we got going is by far the largest such trade in history, 45 stacks wut.

diana_coman myeah; and we got it going basically when I finally got some noobs going, be they bots if people was such a tall order. tbh I'm no expert and all that but essentially I don't think there is a market, simply because there aren't...merchants basically or industrialists or how you want to call them around.vi

mircea_popescu well yeah. once there was reliable production (of grass, via bots, of cft, cuz i did it) then suddenly prices dropped to ~half what "they seemed to be" and nobody had anything substantial to say about it, showing that, again, the say wasn't worth much in the first place.

diana_coman precisely; and yes, it all reminds me very pointedly of the village "shop": does anyone in the village actually have a say on the prices or even produce there? theoretically yes, in practice they will talk, sure, all of it nonsense and they might even be the first ones to be surprised if anyone pays attention to that talk.

mircea_popescu i suppose what we got basically are rural economies, and if franz joseph hadn't done transylvania the honor of banishing the vlasinivii and forcing peasants to pay money, the peasant society would have happily traded wood and wool for grain and so forth until the termic death of the universe. basically eulora economy is suffering from combat not being implemented.

diana_coman ahahaha, pretty much it would seem, yeah

mircea_popescu and then dorks and "our democracy" whine about the un-necessity of war. and so forth. schmucks, if it weren't for the evil "warmongers" they'd still be rubbing sticks together, as happy as the nude iroquis.

diana_coman well, they WOULD be happy

mircea_popescu yeah, the happiness of the pregnant if barefot female. "but the mud between toes feels so good!"

diana_coman thing is: it really feels good for some people, what.viii

mircea_popescu the problem comes back to headcount, because the fundamental way in which war works is by killing people, which is the statal equuvalent of breaking fingers. whereas the blobs of existence present in eulora aren't yet differentialed enough to have recognizable fingers.

diana_coman aha

mircea_popescu i suppose you're leading the way there, with your children. logically you'd be the zerg queen of eulora.

diana_coman ahahaha, indeed

mircea_popescu thinking more about it, it seems to me evident that there's two components of demand : commodity and strategic. commodity demand works like buying electricity works, i don't pre-buy and store a pile of electricity wtfix. strategic demand works like meat in socialism, buy today for it's better to have it rot in your fridge than to not have bought all you could. these are very strictly separate -- a habit of interacting with highly specialized, muchly refined commodity markets make people regard even 1% slack as excessive ; meanwhile the sheer panic induced by the obvious doom of the socialist system makes strategic buying fundamentally cataclysmic, quite like the rotting meat thing. because the phase transition between these two modes is so abrupt, the gap so wide, things appear to be in demand strictly when not available. "yes i want x, but now that i can buy it i only want an hour's worth.x had it not been available i'd have wanted a lifetime's worth". seems to explain the "ghost demand" problem entirely -- i can't live without shoes, but i am not buying more shoes than a pair if i can buy them. i do want 50 i mean 500 i mean just give me the whole truck if i can't buy them, however.

diana_coman basically it's more: I want x to BE AVAILABLE rather than I want x

mircea_popescu just about. essentially, "i am not a person, i do not wish to exist, therefore i have nothing to say about myself. as far as the world is concerned, however, here's a list of oughts". goes straight into "just the facts"-ism, and all that. i suddenly understand what they're trying to say by "not being egotistical"/"being empathetic" or whatever the fuck they call the contemporary anglovirtues. it's basically -- nonexistence.xi

diana_coman tbh some years ago I think I blurted the "just the facts dammit" thing myself: MY meaning at that point was "you idiots have nothing to say so stop saying it and just let the facts speak for themselves". might not be the same meaning for everyone, granted.

mircea_popescu except idiots can't access facts much like ghosts can't move furniture. as that spooky kid aptly put it (in the sixth sense), "they only see what they want to see."

diana_coman myeah, I hadn't realised I was asking the impossible anyway.

———~3 mn ECu, 0.0319 etc BTC's worth. [↩]I do this thing whereby I always sell back certain quantities of finished product to the people who provided the raw materials. This is fundamentally necessary to avoid choking the production lines -- if the guy mining grass can't buy thread he won't be able to mine further grass, making further thread impossible. The problem is evidently improductive use of finished product, ie fundamentally resource misallocation, and I suppose under a socialist regime would be repressed as hoarding or whatever. "Ban shorts!!1".

The amusing parallel with the situation in dying Soviet economies, where workers were forced to take on some random chunks of random items in lieu of pay does not escape me. How the wheel turns. [↩]Obviously the converse statement of this is purely financial -- consider all the discussions of relative inflation and so forth.

The simplest statement of the situation would be to say that there's no capital controls in Eulora which makes economic activity problematic! Take that, proponents of free markets in the sense of free capital flows. What is your answer ?

And in subsidiary, I can't help myself but reiterate that I've never seen, nor ever imagined, nor ever could have conceived of an economic laboratory quite as useful, effectual or productive as this little gem called Eulora. I confess I've learned more about economy by participating for a few years than otherwise in my entire life, decades participating in all sorts of markets, schools and whatnot. In any case I've learned more than the entire profession of economics ever figured out, in its coupla centuries of history. This isn't an idle boast, but an understatement if anything. [↩]Take for instance the "patriotism" of the dressed whores, as fine example as any of the reflex attempt to "protect" oneself from capitalism -- entirely reminiscent of the animal's attempt to "protect" itself from the vet, or the street urchin's insistence on protecting itself from washing. [↩]Just about anyone can mine basic resources, their first day in game. But they still have to actually do it, experimentally much too high a bar for white people, paralytics of the can as they find themselves. [↩]Capitalists. Yes. [↩]Reference to dumbass Romanian Socialst Republic propaganda piece, casting some shepherds as the victims in the interaction with their sovereign because he made them pay money and get involved economically, which they didn't wish to do, "these lands were ours forever, we won't make contracts" etc. Somehow the fact that the commies themselves did exactly that on a larger scale escaped the view of the propagandist, as per usual. [↩]I do not believe there's aught more obscene or more immoral than to tolerate this kind of "happiness". And I do suspect that's exactly what drove the Mongols : they saw all these herds of bipedal sheep befouling god's green earth and simply could not tolerate the insult, so they did something about it.

I can't help but regret they did not do more. [↩]Technically I do, because UPSen etc, but let's say most people don't. [↩]Remember Elaine Benes buying the Today Sponge ? Quite like that. [↩]The word for existence, as far as these zombies are concered, is probably "sociopathy". Harvard certifies. [↩]

« Minte-ma frumos

Things That Happened To Sam. Chapter 5 - True to his word »

Category: Actiuni si Optiuni

Tuesday, 16 May, Year 9 d.Tr.

Der Schlussakkord, o sopirla.

Der Schlussakkord (ie, the last accord, in the musical sense, like seen in accordion) is a 1936 piece made by Douglas Sirk (back then Detlef Sierck) for Universum Film AG. It stars Maria von Tasnady, who was a Hungarian girl named for a Romanian town that lost a miss Europe contest and made a coupla films before finally scoring her marriage and disappearing forever into the biofilm. The story is very much biofilm-interest, woman left a kid in an orphanage to follow some guy who killed himself (biofilm-Aesop & teachable moment here : if you wanna biofilm properly dun follow the guy, follow the child instead!) and then came back but the kid was now maintained by some anodyne cuck or other, so there's a biofilm wrangle when the two cunts fight it over and one dies and the other nearly gets sent to jale!!forever!!! except a cunt-in-training intervenes by pointing out that it's really silly to the degree of inconceivable in biofilm-logic to put any cunt out of circulation, as it'll reduce biofilm production!i So they all live happily ever after or something instead. I don't really read amoeba and so my understanding is fuzzy at this juncture.

O sopirla, ie a lizard, is the Romanian name for a fundamentally disobedient item that is deliberately constructed to pass formal examinations by a totalitarian state. It's part and parcel of the larger "resistence through culture" manifestation of the fundamental idiocy and utter irrelevancy of the anal child. If the part where they arranged An die Freude against a montage of happy old farts supposedly united in the melo-metaphysical au-dela with "Hanna", an "American" married to some dude named Muller doesn't make it plain enough for you, I suppose you're stuck waiting for Shtierlitz. Bettler weden Furstenbruder, dontchakno!

Keep some lime handy for when you're done, if you actually intend to trudge through this muck.

———Here's a simple bit of mental judo : if you wish to reduce the stray population, it is infinitely more effective to castrate some female strays than some male strays. [↩]

« The mother of all unexpected visits

Costa Rica, de noche y de dia »

Category: Trilematograf

Friday, 15 September, Year 9 d.Tr.