Seriously Pursuing Evil

Angelina Jolie with goat horns

The flamboyant evil fairy Maleficent
From the Disney animation Sleeping Beauty

I think the modern world is seriously pursuing evil. The level of violence in films, for example, is breathtaking. Where before evil was a force to be fought against, now it just stands on its own. That is why I no longer go to movies. Even an innocuous-sounding film suddenly bares its teeth at me. I am sometimes left with the images for days.

I think modern people have no tools, as in religious beliefs, and better yet Christian beliefs, with which to fend off and attack evil. One defense against evil would be not to let it so easily and permissibly into their lives, which is happening more frequently these days. This easy acceptance of evil leads to people openly courting it.

Angelina Jolie is acting in the 2014 movie Maleficent which recounts the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty through the eyes of the evil fairy queen Maleficent. Jolie is starring as Maleficent. In the original Disney fairy tale, Maleficent was overlooked at the christening of a baby princess Aurora. As revenge, she curses the princess and says she will prick her fingers and die at her sixteenth birthday. Merryweather, one of the good fairies, changes this curse to a prolonged sleep, until a prince comes to awaken her.

Maleficent looks foreboding in the 1959 animated Disney version, but she has a colorful and flamboyant presence. Her exaggerated persona is contrasted with the gentle and pretty Aurora, and Aurora's quiet confidence assures us that she will win over this evil fairy. All is well that ends well, as all young children know about fairy tales, which simply means that good overcomes evil.

Not so, in Jolie's postmodern version.

Jolie's costume is a drab, ugly brown sack. She has on long and exaggerated horns. Although the Disney Maleficent also has horns, hers are smaller and look like they are part of her head gear. Jolie's horns look like a darker version of a goat's horn. In Christian iconography:

Satan has most often been portrayed...as a horned creature, red in color, often having the hindquarters or body of hoofed animals, particularly the goat. These depictions are notable in their resemblance to the Canaanite gods Baal and Moloch, the Greek deity Pan, as well as prevalent conceptions of the major male god in Pagan and Neopagan traditions, such as the "Horned God."

I think it is intentional that Jolie look more like Satan's accomplice than the colorful evil fairy from the Disney animation.

Jolie was interviewed by Entertainment Weekly about the film, Here is what she had to say on what she thinks are the redeeming qualities of Maleficent:

EW: So there are some redeeming qualities to Maleficent the witch?
Jolie: It sounds really crazy to say that there will be something that’s good for young girls in this, because it sounds like you’re saying they should be a villain. [Maleficent] is actually a great person. But she’s not perfect. She’s far from perfect.

It is clear that Jolie sympathizes with evil, despite her initial outburst of "It sounds really crazy..." I think she was just taken off guard with the question, which squarely described Maleficent as a witch rather than euphemistically calling her a fairy (good or bad).

Good fairies Flora, Fauna and Merryweather
at the baby Princess Aurora's crib,
from the 1959 Disney animation

Princess Aurora as a young woman
from the Disney animation

Ghost Trains at City Hall

[Photos by John-Paul Palescandolo & Eric Kazmirek]. The link is to the website of the photographers, who write more technical information on how John-Paul Palescandolo took the photos.

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Above are photographs of New York City's City Hall "ghost station" which was shut down in 1945. More photographs, plus some photographs of the opening day of the station, are at the Daily Mail.

From Wikipedia:

City Hall, also known as City Hall Loop, was the original southern terminal station of the first line of the New York City Subway, built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), named the "Manhattan Main Line", and now part of the IRT Lexington Avenue Line. Opened on October 27, 1904, this station underneath the public area in front of City Hall [which] was designed to be the showpiece of the new subway...employing Romanesque Revival architecture. The platform and mezzanine feature Guastavino tile, skylights, colored glass tilework and brass chandeliers. Passenger service was discontinued on December 31, 1945, making it a ghost station, although the station is still used as a turning loop for 6 and [6] trains. [More at Wikipedia]

From Silky Satin to Full-Body Burqa

Just a short distance from a to b

Paul K., over at View From the Right has made a funny spoof of my ladies of the French Cabinet. He has covered them up in the most conservative form of Muslim garb, the burqa. But, as with all good jokes, this is not far behind reality (or what could be reality). As Indian Living in the West writes at VFR:

The French socialists are worse than a sick joke...And these women are worse than ridiculous. Imagine a contrast between these women and Mrs. Thatcher. It is almost as though a few centuries separate them, not a few decades.

This is, in any case, a sideshow. The extent of the problems facing France are no longer a well hidden secret. France is on its way to bankruptcy...France will almost certainly default on its debt if the EU goes. It will be a financial catastrophe for France.

Howard Sutherland, following the burqa theme of Paul K., writes:

These unconstrained-by-convention gals no doubt consider themselves political friends and allies of the ever-growing and ever-hostile Moslem population that is spreading throughout France...Seeing these liberated ladies so confidently setting about running France in a leftist-chic, even fun way, I remembered the description of Islam attributed to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who should know:

Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious. (emphasis added).

The Allure of Heads of Department

Clockwise from top:
- Culture minister Aurelie Filippetti
- Small and Medium Enterprises junior minister Fleur Pellerin
- Minister for Ecology, Delphine Batho
- Minister for Women's Rights Najat Vallaud-Belkacem

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Lawrence Auster, at the View From the Right, has posted a photo of portfolio carrying, casual white jeans wearing, French Culture minister Aurelie Filippetti (via the Daily Mail). He of course, and rightly, is writing a commentary on the unprofessional attire of the minister. But, as he continues, she is very much aware of her "allure":

But see, I’m using the word “allure” in relation to heads of government departments. Which returns us to the realization that Western society has become a joke.

Yes, Filippetti is very much aware of her allure, and is dressed to convey that, however casual she may appear. Her tight white jeans, her silky blouse, and her beige heels were all carefully selected for the ensemble to look alluring.

And the other women are no different. Pellerin has on especially high heels with large bows at the back, and a short mini skirt. Vallaud-Belkacem has on a tight knit dress with a zipper that goes from top to bottom, without as much as worrying about a wardrobe malfunction (her smile is too broad for any worries). And Batho has on an extra long fuchsia scarf that flaps around her form-fitting navy dress. Each woman has chosen some focal point to accentuate her allure. Pellerin's extra short mini skirt, Vallaud-Belkacem's daring zipper, Batho's bright flapping scarf, and Filippetti's sleeveless silk shirt (although her tight jeans also compete with the shirt) are all carefully chosen to convey this allure.

Yet seriousness is also cherished. Large, colorful portfolios and overstuffed handbags, full of important-looking documents, are carried like badges of honor.

Drama In New York

Empire State Building Struck by Lightening

This is the kind of photo I wish I I had taken, since I do spend quite a bit of time trying to find interesting ways to photograph high rises. The one above was taken on June 22 by the news host bully Keith Olbermann. I'm not sure if the funnel of light on the right is due to camera problems or if it is related to the lightening (although it is probably a combination of both). I know lightening photos are a dime a dozen, but having the Empire State Building appear to emit the thread of light from its tip is both luck and perception. Well done, Keith!

Sumpreme Court Justice as a Feminist Trophy

Supreme Court Justices

Here is a much larger photo, to better view
the facial expressions I write about below.
[Click on the image for an even bigger version]

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Laura Wood, over at the Thinking Housewife, has posted a 2012 photo of the Supreme Court Justices. One outstanding thing, by the standards of our feminist era, is that only three of the six, or 33%, are female. Shouldn't that be 50% female by now, if not more? The other outstanding thing is the wide grins (it doesn't look like smiles to me) of Sotomayer and Kagan compared to the tortured half-smile and body language of the other female justice, Ginsburg, who is leaning away from the group. Perhaps Ginsburg is the most realistic of the three women, realizing that our feminist era still hasn't made men subservient to women, despite the benign-looking smiles of the men. She looks like one of those tough grandmothers, who is realistic about her family's dynamics, and who gets things done. Interestingly, she is also the only one married of the three women, and is a widow after fifty-six years of marriage. She has two children and four grandchildren. Sotomayer divorced her husband in 1983 after seven years of marriage and no children. Kagan never married.

None of the men have the wide grins of the two women. Even Breyer's smile is more jovial (it goes into his eyes), rather than the plastic grin of Kagan, or the exuberance of Sotomayer - she looks like she's mockingly laughing. Scalia is downright sinister. Thomas simply has a scowl, which bookends well with Ginsburg's tortured half (quarter) smile. Supreme Court Justice isn't some (feminist) trophy to hang up. The men realize that more than the women.

Picasso's Fraud

Pablo Picasso
Figures au Bord de la Mer, 1931

On loan to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto
for the exhibit: Picasso: masterpieces from the
Musée National Picasso, Paris

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Tom Wolfe understood the high level farce of Picasso, as he writes in The Painted Word:

...a few fashionable people discovered their own uses of [Modern Art]. It was after the First World War the modern and modernistic came into the language as exciting adjectives...By 1920, in le monde*, to be fashionable was to be modern, and Modern Art the new spirit of the avant-garde were perfectly suited for that vogue.

Picasso was a case in point. Picasso did not begin to become Picasso, in the art world or in the press, until he was pushing forty and painted the scenery for Diaghilev's Russian ballet in London in 1918. Diaghilev & Co. were a tremendous succès de scandale in fashionable London. The wild dervishing of Nijinsky, the lurid costumes - it was all too deliciously modern for words. The Modernistic settings by Picasso, André Derain, and (later on) Matisse, were all part of the excitement, and le monde loved it. "Art," in Osbert Lancaster's phrase, "came once more to roost among the duchesses."

Picasso, who had once lived in the legendary unlit attic and painted at night with a brush in one hand and a candlestick in the other - Picasso now stayed at the Savoy, had lots of clothes made on Bond Street nearby, went to all the best parties (and parties were never better), was set up with highly publicized shows of his paintings, and became a social lion - which he remained, Tales of the Aging Recluse notwithstanding, until he was in his seventies. [pp 27-30]

I'm still trying to find researched articles (or books) on the artists that influenced Picasso (or that Picasso copied from, to use a more accurate activity). My recent tour through the Picasso exhibit at the AGO was of some help, but few of the commentaries by the paintings indicated his actual (artistic) influences. I wrote about it in my blog in 2008 thus:

Anyone who has studied Picasso will realize the fraud that he is, just as Tom Wolfe writes. Every step of Picasso's, which was so radically different from his previous steps (from his blue period, to his "cubism" to name the more famous ones), was a copy of other more serious artists in his milieu. An art critic who doesn't recognize this is being dishonest, to say the least.

I got these ideas from somewhere. I studied art books, paintings and gallery pieces over a number of years to have reached this conclusion. I remember telling my film teacher, Bruce Elder, that I thought Jackson Pollock was a fraud, throwing paint on paper. Granted, he had a good aim, but so do I being a former goal shooter for my netball (English version of girls' basketball) team. And that Picasso was a bigger fraud than Pollock because his fraud was not even his own physical effort, like Pollock's was. Picasso copied the movements and artists around him (some with considerably more talent and innovative abilities like Braque) and made a ton of money by "redefining" his art every now and then to his gullible, rich patrons, who loved this modern idea of "progress" in art. Professor Elder eyed me with suspicion after that, and rightly so. I ended up critiquing his work too [here and here].

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*...the social sphere described so well by Balzac, the milieu of those who find it important to be in fashion, the orbit of those aristocrats, wealthy bourgeois, publishers, writers, journalists, impresarios, performers, who wish to be "where things happen," the glamorous but small world of that creation of the nineteenth-century metropolis, tout le monde, Everybody, as in "Everybody says"...the smart set, in a phrase..."smart," with its overtones of cultivation as well as cynicism [p 16].

The Existential Terror of Non-Christians

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who forgave
his Russian Communist torturers

Two Indian commentators at the View From the Right, Indian Living in the West (ILW) and Aditya B., wrote scathing, even vicious, posts on Indians and India.

ILW writes:

I don’t know if Aditya B. has ever mentioned this to you, but Indians are very vain and think they are smart.

He later writes:

Indians, even when very bright, cannot seem to think outside set formulas.

Aditya B. writes:

I don’t know enough about Freudianism to analyze this, but a few group traits of these miserable people [Indians] could be illuminating...

He then proceeds to write quite a list.

Later on, Gintas, another commentator at VFR writes:

Solzhenitsyn told the truth, it was clear he loved his people and his land even as they wallowed in the depths of Soviet depravity. Also, he always pointed the way back to good health. Perhaps I make Solzhenitsyn out to be a saint; but he was a Christian, and he knew Russia had once been Christian and could become that again. Aditya’s comments about India are rancorous, whatever their truth.

Aditya B.'s torrent caused me to reflect on why, and how, people turn on their own people. I came to the same conclusion as Gintas. I can never turn against the people I originate from, the Amhara people, although I have no direct physical or psychological link with them anymore. I admire their history and, most specifically, the fact that they embraced Christianity when it was hard and dangerous (the Amharas were a northern African Island of Christians surrounded by Islam or pagan Africans), with very little support to convince them of the rightness of their ways other than their unquestioning belief in God - true Christians, in short.

So perhaps it is this Christian element (mine and the Amharas) that allows me to see them in this light, as does Solzhenitsyn his Russian people, despite the suffering he went through under these same Russians. But, his breed of torturers had thrown out Christianity, which made them the monsters they were. And Solzhenitsyn remembers the originals, and believes that his Russia will return to what it once was.

Aditya B. and ILW do not have this historic and religious ideal to turn to. Theirs is a civilization with no Christianity, with no forgiveness (as we know it), and with no hope of salvation, unless they accept the ever-embracing, and forgiving Christian God. No wonder they are so vicious. They react through existential terror.

Conservative Babies

Daughter number three, to sexagenarian
(close to septuagenarian) father Brimelow

I make a once-in-a-blue-moon click on the VDare website. I'm often greeted with unpleasant information. I stopped following the website soon after Peter Brimelow, the site's founder, married a woman forty years his junior, and soon after that he became sexagenarian father.

Well, when I checked the site a couple of days ago, after probably a year of forgetting about it, he has another baby to announce. Brimelow is close to seventy, which will make him an nonagenarian at his new daughter's college graduation, if he makes it that long. What kind of life has he subjected her to, with a senior citizen father, with his death imminent?

Such is the way of selfish, narcissistic men that "lead" the world these days. Of course, Brimelow is not a conservative, although that is what he uses to increase his website's readership. He is a libertarian.


The above photo is Brimelow with his family taken soon after his third daughter's birth. The young woman next to him is his now twenty-nine-year-old wife (about twenty five in the photo), who is thirty seven years his junior (all this information is available at Wikipedia).

His daughter from his first wife is in front, holding his daughter by the second wife. Strangely, Wikipedia has no information on the age of his older children. But here is an In Memoriam to his first wife at Vdare. It has a photo with their two children in 1996, which would make the daughter about seventeen now, and the son about nineteen. And a stepmother who is only ten years older than them. Some family.

Fund Raising Auction and Edith Hamilton's Mythology

Edith Hamilton's portrait
in the Bryn Mawr lilbrary
By Lydia Field Emmet

I cannot find the date of the painting,
but Emmet painted mostly 1900 and 1920,
so I would place this portrait in that period

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I've been doing some moving recently, and somehow misplaced my Edith Hamilton's Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. I went and bought another copy, before I found the original at the bottom of a suitcase.

I've been doing some fundraising drives, mainly to help me with my book project.

I will send this copy of Hamilton's concise, useful and interesting book on Greek and Roman mythology (with a final section on Norse mythology) to the highest donor in my second fundraising drive.

Hamilton's book was the small guide I used when I recently maneuvered through the Royal Ontario Museum's Greek and Roman sections.

Book Project

Camera Lucida: Views on Art
Culture and Society

By Kidist Paulos Asrat

Things are more urgent than they seem. While looking for a portrait of Hamilton, I came across the image below of "students studying" in the library named after her, and which has her portrait on the wall.

Hamilton would have been deeply saddened that young girls, in sloppy clothing, "read" books lounging on the seats with their shoddily shod feet sullying the library tables. A closer inspection of the photo shows that they are using the library as a lounge to rummage through their class notes rather than a place to read books. I suspect there is a lot of "notes sharing" going on, with full blown discussions. That is why I no longer use libraries, public or university. They have become gossipy social hubs rather than study centers.

Free Fall

Nico, Los Angeles, CA 1966
Photo by Lisa Law

I wrote about Nico, the odd, deep-voiced chanteuse of the Velvet Underground here. The photo I posted is actually a cropped version of an original by "rock" photographer Lisa Law. Nico has her feet (precariously) on the ground, as though she fell from the sky (or a tree). So even in my original interpretation of the cropped version, I was right that her movements showed the instability of someone wavering between free fall and stability.

Here is what Lisa Law, the photographer who took the black and white photo of Nico writes about her experience with mind altering paraphernalia. She was in good compaly with Nico.

Psychedelics assisted me in seeing that we are all one, not just us humans but everything on the planet, the animals, the trees, the water, the air, the earth, the plants. God is always present. It is a very humbling, unifying, heeling feeling that affected the way I looked at the rest of my life.

The first time I took LSD, Owsly's purple liquid, I knew life would never be the same.

Below is a much better photo of Nico. The freedom one associates with floating, swimming or being in water with all our senses in tact (which is how I like being near or in water) is not there. She is overwhelmed, and has a defiant, but frightened look, goading the water to come get her, as she probably does the heroin she used to smoke (shoot), and yet is petrified at the same time. Her behavior is not one of bravery, but of recklessness, as she well knows. Even Lou Reed writes in his heroin song: "Heroin, be the death of me."

Nico, 1967
Photo by Michael Ochs

All people want stability and beauty, amongst many other human (humane) necessities. Hippies are no exception. Law lived in a hippie commune called the Castle in San Fransisco, which she describes as a mansion. Below is a short transcript from her interview with journalist Tom Lyttle. I cannot find the date of the interview, but it looks like it is in the 1990s. The online version is a pdf article and is clearly a copy of an original. It is also available as an html online. This excerpt is from page eighteen if the article:

If the Factory [Warhol's New York studio] was a place that the beautiful people hung at...then the Castle was the West Coast version of that. Word traveled fast and in the two brief years that we were there, everybody came by to visit and hang out, partake, party, sing, make love, eat, write songs and dance their hearts out. Tom Law and John Phillip bought it with Jack Simons for mere $100,000 and had to sell it at a loss. John Getty owns it now.

Vultures like Law and Warhol collected their beautiful people only to desecrate and destroy them later. This is what Wikipedia says about Nico, after her initial glamor and beauty wore off:

Nico was a heroin addict for over 15 years. In the book Songs They Never Play on the Radio, James Young, a member of her band in the 1980s, recalls many examples of her troubling behaviour due to her "overwhelming" addiction...Shortly before her death, Nico stopped taking heroin and began methadone replacement therapy while also embarking upon a regimen of bicycle exercise and healthy eating.

Despite her career in music, she was deaf in one ear, which made it difficult for her to understand what others were saying.

On 18 July 1988, while on holiday with her son on the Spanish island of Ibiza, Nico had a minor heart attack while riding a bicycle and hit her head as she fell...[She] died at eight o'clock that evening. X-rays later revealed a severe cerebral hemorrhage as the cause of death.

Nico was buried in her mother's plot in Grunewald Forest Cemetery in Berlin. A few friends played a tape of "Mütterlein," a song from [her album] Desertshore , at her funeral.

Mütterlein
By Nico

Dear little Mütterlein
Now I may finally be with you
The longing and the loneliness
Redeem themselves in blessedness

The cradle is your homeland-dress
A gracefulness your glory
In ecstasy your heartbreak transforms
And reaches inside of the victorious tide

Beauty alone is not enough.

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Bob Dylan's Desk, the Castle, 1965
Photo by Lisa Law

Bob Dylan also stayed at the Castle. Above is a photo of a corner of his room by Lisa Law, beautiful and ordered, with a Tiffany style lamp, a patterned cloth on the table, and some small carved animals. He has a view.

The Castle, Los Angeles, 1965
Photo by Lisa Law

Above is the Castle where the hippies hung out. Beauty is clearly not wanting, including a sports car, meant for the rich and famous but why not for hippy squatters as well?

Drudge has an article about drug use (abuse) in contemporary teens from in the suburbs, and links to this Daily Mail article. Not crack or marijuana for these pampered adolescents, but heroin. These are the children of the sixties.

Heroin, Simply

Nico, there she goes again

I wrote in my previous blog post There He Bows Again, about President Obama's various bends from around the waist area down, that the title for the post (which I got from a Drudge headline) reminded me of a Velvet Underground song "There She Goes Again." The song is supposedly about the song writer's (Lou Reed's) heroin addiction (according to the lyric translating experts). I begged to differ and thought it was more straight forward than that, and was actually about the woman (she) protagonist asking her lover for a second chance.

Well, the Velvet Underground has no qualms about writing directly about sordid subjects, and actually has a song titled..."Heroin" (without the "e"). Below are the lyrics. I don't mean to be deliberately antagonistic by quoting all the lyrics, I just mean to show that people really do write about ugly things like drug addiction, as though it were some romantic experience:


Heroin
Velvet Underground

I don't know just where I'm going
But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can
'Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man
When I put a spike into my vein
And I'll tell ya, things aren't quite the same
When I'm rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus' son
And I guess that I just don't know
And I guess that I just don't know

I have made the big decision
I'm gonna try to nullify my life
'Cause when the blood begins to flow
When it shoots up the dropper's neck
When I'm closing in on death
And you can't help me not, you guys
And all you sweet girls with all your sweet talk
You can all go take a walk
And I guess that I just don't know
And I guess that I just don't know

I wish that I was born a thousand years ago
I wish that I'd sail the darkened seas
On a great big clipper ship
Going from this land here to that
In a sailor's suit and cap
Away from the big city
Where a man can not be free
Of all of the evils of this town
And of himself, and those around
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know

Heroin, be the death of me
Heroin, it's my wife and it's my life
Because a mainer to my vein
Leads to a center in my head
And then I'm better off than dead
Because when the smack begins to flow
I really don't care anymore
About all the Jim-Jim's in this town
And all the politicians makin' busy sounds
And everybody puttin' everybody else down
And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds

'Cause when the smack begins to flow
Then I really don't care anymore
Ah, when the heroin is in my blood
And that blood is in my head
Then thank God that I'm as good as dead
Then thank your God that I'm not aware
And thank God that I just don't care
And I guess I just don't know
And I guess I just don't know

"There He Bows Again"

Drudge is putting his usual humor on our political world. He has a photo of Obama inclining his head and body toward Mexicos's President Calderon as he greets him at the G20 Summit, and Drudge headlines it: "There he bows again." (The post is now off his front page, but here is the link to the original article with the bow).

Of course, Drudge is referring to the pop tune "There She Goes Again," a pleasant, catchy, trippy, tune by the Velvet Underground. The song has been given many kinds of attributes, from a lewd song to a song on heroin (not a heroine :-), but I think it is more innocent than that, and is about a woman begging for another chance with a guy, and she's also being coy saying she won't beg again.

I personally don't think Obama is bowing (begging). He's inclining his head in a friendly, almost conspiratory, manner toward Calderon as he greets him at the G20. And he vacillates between affection (for Merkel) and cautious friendliness (with Putin), to strict Alpha Male posture (with Meles Zenawi). He's being like the coy, aggressive girl in the song. One is never sure what one's going to get.

It must be confusing to be near, and to work with, Obama (and liberals), but I think that is their modus operandi: destablize the opponent with an unexpected behavior, but resume the strict liberal/fascist mandates once the way is cleared. It seems, though, he is more upfront with nonwhites and women: he will show his superiority through an aggressive stance (for the male leaders) and condescending affection (for the female leaders), showing that he is the boss all the way.

Here is commentary (with photos) of Obama's bowing style, and to whom he reserves the deep bow, by Larry Auster from the View From the Right. One deep bow was for the Muslim King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, as I wrote here.

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Below are the lyrics to "There She Goes Again" with a video of the Velvet Underground's performance.

There She Goes Again
Velvet Underground

There she goes again
She's out on the streets again
She's down on her knees, my friend
But you know she'll never ask you please again

Now take a look, there's no tears in her eyes
She won't take it from just any guy, what can you do
You see her walkin' on down the street
Look at all your friends she's gonna meet
You better hit her

There she goes again
She's knocked out on her feet again
She's down on her knees, my friend
But you know she'll never ask you please again

Now take a look, there's no tears in her eyes
Like a bird, you know she would fly, what can you do
You see her walkin' on down the street
Look at all your friends that she's gonna meet
You better hit her

Now take a look, there's no tears in her eyes
Like a bird, you know she will fly, fly, fly away
See her walking on down the street
Look at all your friends that she's gonna meet

She's gonna bawl and shout
She's gonna work it
She's gonna work it out, bye bye
Bye bye baby
All right

The Wrath of the White Woman

Jeanne Darst

Elisha Lim, clearly an Asian writer at a website called Racialicious, writes:

The Valentine’s Day show [of NPR's This American Life], however, pushed me to new levels of downright rage. It's a series of stories all about the mishaps of love, and in the last, 12-minute segment, writer Jeanne Darst describes her outrage when she discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her.

Lim quotes Darst's angst with a derisive "How does a white woman claim to be the victim of yellow fever?"

Here is what Darst writes about the man she started dating (taken from the transcript of her NPR show This American Life which aired on February 10, 2012), and whose journal she found and started to read:

A[n]d his journal was right there. Right there...

I'd like to tell you that I had some hesitation about whether to open this thing up and read it. That I thought for even one single second about right and wrong. But I didn't...

And then I read that he did not have an attraction to-- page turn-- white women. White women like me.

I knew he had dated some Asian women and his ex-wife was Asian. He had Asian assistants, but I didn't think too much about it. I guess that's why I got Sunday.

Maybe it was my fault. I probably should have said right at the start of the relationship, I'm not Asian-- before anyone got hurt. Me. Before I got hurt...

I then read in the journal, "There are some real red flags with Jeanne."...

I got hurt. Redd Flaggs got hurt.

I don't think I'll ever read anyone's journal again. I never want to know what someone thinks of me in that kind of way ever again. It's too intense. I know I'm not Asian. I know I had reservations about Jake, instincts, which is why I read the journal.

Lam, an ethnocentric and antiwhite Asian woman, continues with her derision:

What about all the Asian women that date Darst’s boyfriend, without knowing that he’s more into their race than their selves? What about Asian women as a whole, who have to deal with yellow fever–with age-old stereotypes about their sexuality that reduce them to objects of someone else’s (white) desire? She somehow manages to depict herself as the main victim of Asian fetishization, and stews in self pity.

How does a white woman claim to be the victim of yellow fever? I know, it’s so absurd it’s funny. But she manages it, by denying the impact of racism, and replacing it with a spiteful sense of competition.

Lam describes herself as "blatantly promot[ing] the dignity and sex appeal of queer and trans people of colour " which means that she is one of those herself.

Still, "queer and trans" are minutely "sensitive" to "discrimination" so she is trying to help out her straight Asian sisters here.

But "a spiteful sense of competition" has the perfect ring of the convoluted excesses that minorities will go to express their entitlements. Rather than competition, they are getting a free ride.

And no-one will be on the side of the white woman: Not the white boyfriend who betrays them; the Asian female who has had her eye on him from early childhood; the Asian immigrant parents who are more than happy to have a white son-on-law and future half-Asian grand kids, who will be more Asian than white; and not the multi-culti climate that dominates Western countries these days.

She's on her own with this one. As I wrote in my recent blog Racial Multi-Culti Chic:

I am waiting for the wrath of white women who will some day have their multi-culti glaze removed from their eyes, as they realize that their men have been stolen away from them, and by the Asian "friend" who was around all the time.

She can feel rage at the Asian interlopers. But what about at her white men?

Beauty Au Naturel

Constance Jabloski, September 2011

Joan Small, July 2011

Liu Wen, July 2011

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Here are the three Estée Lauder models I blogged about in my last post Radical Multi-Culti Chic, where I was comparing the beauty (outer, no inner beauty here) of the three models.

Even without make-up, (or elaborate make-up), the white model still looks to most beautiful, followed by the black girl. I still don't see any beauty in the Asian model.

Radical Multi-Culti Chic

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I found Tom Wolfe's The Painted Wall at a second hand bookstore for $4.95 (compared to the $12 advertized in the websites of most retail book stores). None of the books salesmen, whether at Chapters, Coles or the second hand store, knew about the book. And I couldn't find (or the salesmen couldn't find) the lone copy that was listed in the big store databases.

"No-one reads Tom Wolfe anymore," I said disdainfully.

"He wrote a couple of fiction books," said one book expert, not to be outwitted.

"He's best known as a scathing critic of culture. Forget his fiction," I said.

I usually take my books to a favorite reading spot, somewhere where I can have a cup of coffee. This time, I went to a restaurant, which although it has loud music, is muffled by the very high ceilings. The nice waitress gave me a large seat, and took my order.

Well, I was right across from a couple which looked like it was in its early twenties. I should have read the signs. The girl was an attractive, well-groomed Chinese/Korean/Asian, and the guy was an unattractive white guy, who was overweight, badly groomed, and dressed sloppily in dirty sweats and baggy jeans. Yet another from my survey: "White unattractive guys with cute Asian girls." The girl was facing me while the guy had his back to me (and he never turned around once in my direction, even through the "interaction" that followed).

I should add that the Asian cuteness is over-rated, and I think white girls are by far the more beautiful, if we are to make a hierarchy of looks, with blacks coming second.


I have this theory that it is the Asian girls who run after the white guys, using their wiles in many ways, from their long permed hair (no Asian girl has naturally curly or wavy hair, and every Asian girl has long hair), their short-shorts that is the style-du-jour for the summer months (as I count short-short wearers, Asian girls far outnumber anyone else, at least here in Toronto), their ready smiles, and all-round more feminine ways. But, as I have noted, this "femininity" takes a back seat to a more belligerent temperament as the white male/Asian female relationship solidifies, i.e. the man is trapped.

Since Asians females aggressively shove in my face their alien, inter-racial couplings, i.e., muscling aside the traditional same-race relationships (Asian females are now more commonly with black males as well), I have no qualms about staring at such couples from where I am in the subway, at a cafe, or just standing at the sidewalk.

And I did so at this couple, although I was staring at the girl directly, and glancing at the back of the guy. The effect was interesting. The girl put on a terrified, trapped look on her face, and kept aggressively and cloyingly demanding the man's attention, from linking her arms with his, to rubbing his hands, to shaking her permed wavy hair back and forth. I didn't stop staring. I decided that they have a few choices in order to "deal" with my behavior. The guy can come and confront me, like a true "man," then we can have a real mano a mano; he can call the wait staff, then I can call the manager and tell them I've done absolutely nothing wrong; they can continue as they are; they can stop; or they can leave.

They chose mid-way between stopping and continuing, egged on by the Asian girl. She smiled, she scowled, she frowned, and finally, when the the dry seriousness of it hit her, she put on a terrified look.

Then, I just smiled, picked up my book and read my few chapters. All the waiters/waitresses were nice to me. One took so long to take my order (it was a busy afternoon) that I caught him rushing by and he served me with his profuse apologies. Another forgot my bill, so I asked him to bring it, for which he profusely apologized. Another sent me to the wrong exit, for which he profusely apologized, and set me to the right directions. I wasn't some loony, and the wait staff was on my side (I made sure of that). I left with a chorus of their goodbyes, and my demure smile from behind my shoulder.

The hand-clinging couple, with the petrified Asian girl, continued with its pathetic public display of I-don't-know-what, knowing (at least the girl) that someone doesn't find it cute.

I should add that I don't really find anything wrong with public displays of affection between couples. I think, though, they should be discreet and as private as possible. Or, lovers should be on the romantic bridges of Paris, with a beautiful sunset as the backdrop to a silhouette of the many lovely buildings around the Seine, which would make them romantic and demonstrative and not not lewd and clingy.

But there is something creepy about seeing public demonstrations of terrified affection between a white guy and an Asian female.

Still, a bar/restaurant in a mall doesn't capture any romance for anyone, and in fact it is simply a place to have a decent meal, to have some conversation (if the music allows), and to leave.

I read some funny sections from my small book, had my quick snack, paid my bill and tip, and left. The "couple" stayed with its footsies and carb-filled dinner.

I am waiting for the wrath of white women who will some day have their multi-culti glaze removed from their eyes, as they realize that their men have been stolen away from them, and by the Asian "friend" who was around all the time.

"Le Tout New York on a Cubist Horse"

After my run through of the Picasso exhibition at the AGO, which I wrote briefly about here, and which I will expand upon soon, I remember reading a scathing article/book/review of his work, namely that his talent as a painter was negligible, and that he didn't have much of a training. I thought it was Roger Scruton (whose book Beauty I recently bought and will review in full soon) who wrote it, or possibly Kenneth Clark in his book Civilization, which I also have.

Looking online, I found this interview of Tom Wolfe by National Endowment for the Humanities chairman Bruce Cole, where Wolfe states that Picasso didn't have the training nor the skills of an artist. Below is part of the interview:

Cole: Since Picasso, the hallmark of great art has been originality, which was certainly not the case in the preceding periods. Since everyone is original now, how do you know who is original? There are no boundaries anymore.

Wolfe: Well, the art world decides for you. That's, that's really what happens. Tom Stoppard in his play, Artist Descending a Staircase, has one of his characters say that imagination without skill gives us modern art.

Cole: I do think you're seeing a return to the object and the figure. But my question is can you ever put it back together again after artists have really seen things in different ways?

Wolfe: Often the artists simply have not been taught. They don't know enough about draftsmanship to do it. They don't know enough about color. They don't know enough about light and shadow. You can see a lot of it in Picasso.

Picasso left art school at the age of fifteen, on the grounds there was nothing more they could teach him. This is extolled in biographies of Picasso. Unfortunately, he never learned perspective. In his realistic period, early in his life, there's never a room with perspective. He puts a figure or two and a stick of furniture in the foreground, and everything beyond them is fog. He never really learned anatomy. In many of his realistic pictures, fingers and thumbs are like a bunch of asparagus that you buy in the grocery store. He was never very good on things like foreshortening. If I were as ill-prepared as Picasso or Braque I would have thought up a name like Cubism, too, as a way of legitimizing one's lack of skill.

I think that the book I'm looking for is Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word, with the sections on Picasso. Below are the chapters of the book:

Chapter I: The Apache Dance
Chapter II: The Public is Not Invited (and Never has Been)
Chapter III: Le Tout New York on a Cubist Horse
Chapter IV: Greenberg, Rosenberg & Flat
Chapter V: Hello, Steinberg…
Chapter VI: Up the Fundamental Aperture

I will get a hold of The Painted Word (which I thought I had in my book collection) to re-read and to review.

Post-Modernism Can Be Defeated!

A couple of days ago, I posted a photo of some highrise buildings from near the lakeshore. I identified one building as the Lombard Place. I went back again to have a closer look. I took shots of the interior of the building, which has an Art Deco feel. The building was actually completed in 1962, and functions as an office. Its architects, Bergman and Hamann, have a prolific portfolio around Toronto, including the Toronto Dominion Centre, which was a collaboration with Mies Van der Rohe, and the Eaton Centre, which was recently in the news.

I can't find anything on the interior ground floor ceiling, but it seems to be part of the original design.

Tall, lifeless glass buildings do not have to be part of a city's highrise cityscape. Ingenious designers can produce interesting buildings, as part of a city's cluster of buildings, and with interesting interiors. Post-modernism can be defeated!



[Photos by KPA]

The Pomposity of the Centre Pompidou

Here's more from the charming "picture" book Paris Versus New York by cartoonist/designer Vahram Muratyan (I posted one of his juxtaposed images here). He is comparing the Centre Pompidou with the Guggenheim. I would beg to differ here again. The sprawling Centre Pompidou is an unattractive mesh of tubes. It sits in its own huge "place," separated it from the rest of the Parisian architecture, both in style and in its self-containment. The Guggenheim is nestled between New York City's buildings, not claiming some pompous space but fitting in (albeit in its own unique way) with the city's architecture.

This is what I meant by the decadent beauty of Paris (what a sacrilegious thing to say!). The city's beauty, rather than inspire more grand architecture, seems to have produced such monstrosities as the Centre Pompidou (named after one of France's president, no less).

The "experience" of walking in the Guggenheim is charming, spiraling up the "shell" to reach the various galleries. All one does as one maneuvers the various floors of the Centre Pompidou is stare out onto an ugly concrete "Place" with hippy "artists" using it as their playground. The beautiful Paris buildings are in the distant background.

On My Way to the Waterfront

I didn't know how to put these unrelated photos (below) in one posting, but they are really connected through the thread of my walk down York Street, all the way to the lake shore.

I planned to do two things during this walk. One was to walk down to the waterfront and take early summer photos of the lake. The water is not the usual hazy pale blue, which is the color it gets later in the summer when the lake has warmed up, but a colder, darker blue with plenty of waves.

The second plan was to keep walking back up to the Art Gallery of Ontario, which is a little further north (and west) to see the Picasso exhibition, for which I had bought a half price ticket (at $12.50, it is a bargain), and also to visit the gallery's permanent collections during the Wednesday nights free entry (from 6pm-8:30pm). I reckoned I would rush through Picasso in half an hour and go to the various permanent collection galleries until the gallery closed. Which is exactly what I did. I will write about both of these visits soon (but Picasso's will be brief, as you can see I am NO fan, but I had to see this "event" in Toronto considering I have an art blog).

In the meantime, below are some photos I took on my way down (with a couple of detours here and there).

York Street at Adelaide, a few short blocks north of the lake shore

A woman stopped to ask me what I saw. I said I liked the layers of highrises, with the interesting ogee point of the Trump Tower, the red facade of the Scotia Bank building and the triangular indentation in a darker color, and the exotic top of the Lombard Place building (in front of the Trump Tower and the Scotia building).

Union Station at Front Street

I've blogged about Union Station here, including posting photos of its interior. This sprawling building, built when rail travel was a grand affair and train stations were grand buildings, is right by an unattractive highway exit.

Lake Ontario Buoy Ring

[Photos by KPA]

Falsely Beautifying Lesbians and Lesbianism

Happy, attractive lesbian couple with their "child"
[Image from Daily Mail]

The real look of lesbians:
Cynthia Nixon (left) from the sitcom Sex and the City with
her lesbian "partner" at their "wedding" photo

The Daily Mail has an "article" titled Children of same-sex couples 'at higher risk of depression and social issues as adults' - but experts say new study is flawed.

The lesbophilic media, although it appears to denounce lesbianism and homosexuality (the Daily Mail title does add 'at higher risk of depression and social issues as adults' in quotation marks, of course quoting the study it cites, but also washing its hands off any direct commentary on the subject), ultimately sides with this deviant sexual behavior, and even promotes it in many small (and large) ways.

Part of the media's problem is that the ordinary people it caters to don't believe in mainstreaming homosexuality, but will be entertained by charming characters on TV and movies (and attractive couples in magazines).

Take the characters in Will and Grace, that sitcom which ran successfully for years, with several awards under its belt. The main character is a smart gay lawyer, whose "best friend" is a ditzy straight female, whom he protects and advices through her financial, career and love lives. Enter his real side-kick, the bumbling gay man who always screws everything up (no pun intended). There is also a glamorous, highly sexualized female "friend" of the stupid gay character (who will sleep with any male), who is full of charming superstitions, loves her gay friend dearly, and will save him from his forays into self-destruction. She even tries to help the straight Grace to dress and act more feminine, in order to attract real men (not GBFs).

Both straight women have mini-affairs with other women despite their strong insistence that they are straight. The gay men never have any sexual relations with women.

A show with gay men who have straight women friends (who occasionally sleep with other women) of course attracts the main demography that would watch shows like this: straight women who see nothing wrong with befriending gay men (and occasionally sleeping with other women?). Will and Grace simply glamorizes it.

So, TV shows, magazine spreads, famous homosexual couples appearing in all kinds of public venues, do influence ordinary women (it seems more women are influenced than men by this) to "experiment" with this kind of sexual behavior. Some even commit to life, once they've crossed that line.

The majority of ordinary (i.e. non-Hollywood) "out" lesbians I see, and even those I suspect are lesbians, never look glamorous and attractive, like "occasional" lesbians Karen and Grace, or those depicted on most movies. Once ordinary women decide to enter (with a slim chance of exit) this kind of "life style," the odds are that they will be living their lives in the peripheries, forever warding off the disapproval, and often rejection, of their friends, family and society. There is nothing glamorous about a real-life lesbian.

The media may have brought homosexuality into the "mainstream," but people still find (and I think will always find) this behavior abhorrent, however they may try to cover up their repulsion with superficial "tolerance" (i.e, in order not to get fired from their jobs, or have the various Human Rights Commissions make life hell for them, etc.).

Of course, with adoption and IVF birthing methods, "children" of these pairings are the most vulnerable in many ways. They have no developed intellect with which to discredit or reject the behavior, and they have direct emotional entanglements in the guise of "mothers" and "fathers."

Firstly, they are forced, against all nature, to accept these unions. Second, they miss out on mothers or fathers, whichever the union they have been stuck with has deprived them of. Third, they will grow up to be psychologically confused, forever in search of the mother or father of which they have been deprived. Fourth, they will blame these "parents" who forced them into these unnatural family roles. Fifth, the consequence of all this psychological trauma cannot really be predicted, except that we now have citizens of our countries who don't have a "straight" grasp of life, its meanings and its worth, and they have to make it up as they go along.

Do we want people like this around?

"Public Life"

Jim Kalb's The Tyranny of Liberalism has a section titled Local Action, which is in the penultimate chapter Bringing It All Back Home. This chapter outlines how to remove liberalism from our societies and politics. Local Action deals with how individuals can participate, through seemingly small actions, which when multiplied contribute to the bigger battle.

Here are parts of Public Life (pp 269-70):

Complementary efforts must extend beyond local communities into politics and public life generally...

...In the public sphere, the single most necessary change is the disestablishment of liberalism. Constitutional adjudication, human-rights guarantees, and the conventions of public discussions must no longer impose the liberal position as the compulsory answer to all basic questions regarding social life. Concerns regarding goods other than equal freedom must be allowed to develop and take effect in accordance with their merits...

...Once the possibility of a more complex public good is accepted in principle, that good can be filled out be whatever social agreements grow up and establish themselves. Politics can become once again a matter of mutual persuasion regarding the good life and the measures that foster it. Traditionalist politics are mostly a matter of shared ultimate commitments and nonideological common sense. The goods that have always been thought relevant to public life include inherited loyalties and a right relationship among social order, inherited tradition, natural law, and the highest human goals. Traditionalists should insist that such concerns once again become part of public life.

The Chrysler Still Stands

The image above is titled at this site as "Shadows on the Avenue, c. 1930"
meaning Fifth Avenue. A commentator on the site writes:

I know you say circa 1930 but I can date the image almost exactly;

The double decker bus (right side of frame traveling away) is a 1936 Yellow Coach Model 735 operating for the Fifth Avenue Coach Company, and judging by the latest cars I would say the image is about 1937 vintage.

The two Fifth Avenue Coach buses to the left of the frame heading at us are from the mid twenties.

Notice how well-dressed all the pedestrians are, both men and women with hats, long coats and some with fur trims.
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If I were to be re-born (reincarnated?) at any period, it would be during the late 1920s and 1930s. The Art Deco period is really my period.

Recently, I saw this photo (posted above) of the Art Deco Chrysler Building (which was completed in 1931) in New York City with some modern pedestrians below it. What a blemish! What would the original architects and builders of New York have thought at such ugliness! Well, at least they're spared that.

Above are some gowns from the 1930 (admittedly they are ball gowns, and no one would have worn them in the streets in daylight) but they capture the style, confidence and sense of aesthetics that people still had only half a century ago. We have lost a lot in such a short period.

The photo below that is of a 1930s street scene with pedestrians.

I was in New York during a brief, busy visit last December. I rushed downtown to have a quick peek at the Chrysler as I ran to my commitments. There was a lot of high rise construction going on in the city, with a few new glass towers I hadn't seen before. At least the Chrysler still stands, and outshines any of the new additions.

Asians Not Quite Up To Par, Again

Wang's Spring 2011 charcoal lilac wedding dress
from the New York Post's June 9th fashion page

The same dress, a darker charcoal lilac
on a different model

A close-up of the bodice

Marchesa Fall 2011 gown

I've started a fascinating quest to understand the Asian fetish that is going on in our modern, Western culture these days, and I seem to be finding examples at regular frequencies.

Just after I wrote the previous post, The Fetish of White Men: Asian Women, I found at the New York Post's online fashion page a wedding gown designed by Vera Wang as part of the "Bright Brides" slide show. The first image of the "purple" Vera Wang wedding dress shows a cropped version of the dress, to show off the elaborate bodice. The next page has a full-length shot of the dress, and color is muddier and greyer, and the chiffon that floats flimsily around the inner lining of the dress doesn't match with the more formal bodice.

I wondered if this was an original by Wang, or if she found "inspiration" for it elsewhere? Looking online, the dress is described as "charcoal-lilac" even in the NYP description, and is indeed much greyer than the very first bright lilac version on the NYP. The bright lilac is not produced anywhere else.

I started an image search for "lilac gown" and found that the designers at Marchesa had indeed a very similar dress in their evening gown collection. Their chiffon is more structured than Wang's, and the bodice, although not as pretty as the floral motif on Wang's, adds an interesting metallic effect.

But, on closer look at Wang's "pretty" floral motif, it is as disorganized as her chiffon, with no discernible pattern to the flowers. And the velvet ribbon around the upper waist is an odd addition.

Now, the question is: who designed it first? Who took inspiration from whom, if at all?

Wang's dress (wrongly dated as Spring 2010 in the NYP display) is from her Spring 2011 bridal collection. The Marchesa dress is from their Fall 2011 collection. Designer often work up to a year before they showcase their works, and there is no reason why the savvy Wang wouldn't have known about the Marchesa dress before it came out for public view. Of course, Fall comes after Spring,but there isn't that long of a time period between Fall and Spring for either party to influence one another.

I give Marchesa credit because this is the kind of work they are known for. Vera Wang's Spring 2011 bridal collection has only two dresses with elaborate, macarme style designs on the bodice. The Fall 2011 Marchesa Ready To Wear collection has at least ten.