A man wishes to save the souls of all the men he has been: of the dirty little schoolboy; of the doubtful and morbid youth; of the lover; of the husband.
riker: captain, i think we should follow strict bofa protocol on this mission
picard: you know full well that we already follow the Barred Or Forbidden Armaments protocols and policies with any and all of our missions, riker. a man of your stature should know that.
picard: i'd die before i'd take weapons like those banned in the BOFA protocols into a battle, for the sheer damage they can do. horrendous
riker: i
riker:
riker: yes captain
picard: if you need a refresher, i suggest you spend some freetime at the holodeck, using the updog course
riker: what's updog
Breathtaking Wire Sculptures Capture the Fluidity of the Human Body
English artist Richard Stainthorp captures the beautiful energy and fluidity of the human body using wire. The life-sized sculptures feature both figures in motion and at rest, expressed in the form of large-gauged strands that are densely wrapped around and through one another. By doing this, he gives the work an undeniable presence. Stainthorp also allows the bent wires to shine by keeping their metallic appearance free from any obvious painting or additions.
Raised nominally Catholic so I got the Princess Bride version of the Bible - an elder figure reading us the Good Parts Version.
Did actually read it myself once before, in like 3rd grade, book by book to earn Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizzas. Gave up somewhere before the New Testament.
So rereading it’s been a blast, really. It’s better and weirder than I remember and I’m picking up on all sorts of stuff.
Like the creation of Eve and the temptation reads as a mythologizing not of gender but of language and metacognizance - man’s said to name the animals in Gen 2:20 but doesn’t clearly speak until 2:23 now that he has someone to talk to (and be heard by).
And then Genesis 3, that the snake’s temptation is the first actual conversation in the bible, speech up to now being proclamative - the forbidden fruit is eaten because people can talk.
And the first-order reading is “language introduces corruption and deceit”, but more interesting is language introduces the self. It’s because of language that they recognize their nudity - which is to say, they’re able to model how they’re seen by others. And the episode dramatizes how language, and thus persuasion, require the cultivation of a sense of self with enough “mass” to resist argumentation - this whole conflict coming from the way man and woman had simply done the will of whoever spoke to them last.
The snake totally isn’t the rebel Lucifer or the adversary Satan, he seems more like an abortive trickster figure. He’s useful to add a third party to the temptation (language also means your kin are vectors for invasive memes), and also my headcanon is he’s the same figure who tempts Jesus during his 40 days in the desert, and possibly the reason for the 40 years in the desert when he steps in after God exhausted himself with the plagues and Red Sea and stuff.
Genesis 3:22-24, woah I missed this. God’s like “now man’s aware like us(!), nothing stopping him from eating the immortality fruit, better gate it with a boss fight”. How has that plot thread not paid off somewhere? You’ve got grail romances and the fountain of youth and the philosopher’s stone, how have I not read an immortality quest that uses the hook in the opening of our culture’s foundational text?
Is Genesis 4:1 implying that Cain’s conception was an act of God (but in 4:2 Abel’s just happens)? That’s one of those Old Testament precedents I don’t remember hearing.
Genesis 6 is ridiculous. After a page of begats it’s all “And there were all these hot chicks, and these superhumans, and the superhumans banged the hot chicks, and their kids were all badass warrior heroes”, and then God’s like “UGH, this is too grimdark, I regret making it.”
THE FLOOD WAS GOD REBOOTING HIS EMBARRASSING T&A HACK & SLASH WEBCOMIC TO MAKE A SRS BZNS FANTASY EPIC
You’d think the whole “create women” thing backfired on God, but by Noah’s ark when he goes for a do-over he doubles down on the sexual complimentary thing, sons and wives and even the animals paired.
But that’s God for you, eventually he comes around. That’s what I’m picking up, his character doesn’t really read as an essence of perfection or really as a tyrant - he’s distant, a little pompous, a little out of touch but ultimately seems to want good things and eventually comes around in the end.
And my mind’s like “you mean, like some sort of… patriarch?”
And I’m like “yes, exactly like an… oh. Huh.”
Saying “the Bible is a love letter to patriarchy” sounds so banal but it really is, it really really is. The Old Testament is in a lot of ways a narrative about the triumphs and frustrations of a first-time father, one of those photomosaics composed of lots of little explorations of fathers and fatherhood.
I’m looking forward to reading the Book of Job imagining Calvin’s Dad as God.
♫ if you’re lonely and you know it, clap your hands
(clap your hands)
if you’re lonely and you know it, clap your hands
(clap your hands)
if you’re lonely and you know it’s
cause you keep on fucking blowing it
if you’re lonely and you know it, clap your hands ♫
Universal admission to the class of “creative” people would best meet Reich’s ideal of a democratic society, but since this goal is clearly unattainable, the next best thing, presumably, is a society composed of “symbolic analysts” and their hangers-on. The latter are themselves consumed with dreams of stardom but are content, in the meantime, to live in the shadow of the stars waiting to be discovered and are symbolically united with their betters in a continuous search for marketable talent that can be compared… only with the rites of courtship.
Christopher Lasch predicting thinkpiece culture (via danup)
The more I read by or about Nabokov, the stronger my suspicion that he was an actual utility monster.
Explain.
Just in the sense that he was so finely attuned to the state of the world and the pleasures of thought. The delight he took in examining a butterfly would probably balance out my getting thrown into a volcano.
My father (born 193…8? He was 50 when I was 05) had his early boyhood in Ithaca NY, home to Cornell, he has. stories about seeing Nabokov a block or too on heading out with his butterfly net.
He also has stories of going over to the neighborhood house whose wife made cookies for local kids only he was away and she was nervous and suited men were watching things, payoff being he was a physics professor called off to the Manhattan Project
He also has stories about Nabokov going out to the car every day in the winter, no matter how obviously snowed in it was, trying to drive off, honking, and waiting for Vera to come bustling out of the house to clear out the snow
That sounds soooo Nabokov right, absentminded professor. I told that one for years then someone pointed out he’d long been proud of never learning to drive
