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Have you seen the rivers of the blood? First a trickle, then a flood -- First the ocean's pounding roar, Then a tidal wave hits upon the shore. Knives and arrows fell like rain, And the powder burst aflame, And the flames they flew so high -- Dropped their poison down from the sky.
I had intended to write about something lighthearted today. I
even had a topic in mind. That was until I saw the pictures from Qana
on the news. Though the pictures are played over and over
again, they are no less shocking each time they flash across the
television screen. And the images from Western media, shocking though
they are, are edited in the name of "discretion." A few minutes
on the Internet (browsing independent media sites and non-Western media
outlets) brings the whole gruesome reality of war crimes into a
perspective which is admittedly unpleasant but far more true to
life. The pictures are of the bodies of dead women
and children in their nightclothes, all killed — all murdered — in the name of a so-called "right of self-defense". As if anyone — be they man, state, or military-industrial complex —
needs to be "defended" from frightened children and anxious mothers.
The world should remember today as a day of great
tragedy...and great shame.
Maybe tomorrow the world will seem less cruel and less hopeless. But not today. Certainly not today.
"If I've offended you by this rather mild account...I'm not in the least sorry." -- Edward R. Murrow, reporting on-site from the liberation of Buchenwald, April 15, 1945
It
was a sign of the times, for sure. Last Thursday night, Alice Cooper
came to Dayton, Ohio. Back in his heyday, Alice surely would have
played to a packed house at the area’s main venue of the day, Dayton’s
Hara Arena. But the 2006 version of the Alice Cooper Show was performed
at Fraze Pavillion in Kettering. Fraze is an open-air amphitheater in
an almost posh suburban area. In fact, it’s right across the street
from a duck pond and just a wee bit away from the local park and
playground. The lead singer from the opening band even said that he had
been advised to refrain from using profanity during their set because
there was a retirement community nearby. I started to feel old when I
thought about it — Imagine! Going to see the legendary Alice Cooper in the coziness of suburbia
instead of in a smoke-filled club or a giant arena! The last time I
felt old like this was when we saw Judas Priest in 2002 at Newport
Music Hall in Columbus. Someone threatened to beat me up while we were
on the floor and I was not so much worried about getting beaten as I
was concerned about what my boss would say when I showed up at work the
next day with all kinds of bruises and broken bones. Ah, the responsibilities that come with adulthood. But I
digress...
Thomai was kind enough to get tickets to the show as part of my gift for our tenth wedding anniversary. She was also sporting enough to come along to the show! How cool is that? Alice
and his band (wearing creepy white kabuki-like masks) took the stage
just as it was getting dark. They blasted into "Wicked Young Man"
before turning to some vintage Cooper fare. The next half-hour or so
was a mix of old and newer material and it was all terrific stuff. I
have to admit that I didn’t really expect Alice’s band to be that good,
figuring a seasoned rocker like Alice might settle for some lackluster
hired guns who would be more unlikely to steal the show. Man, was I
ever wrong! The current incarnation of Alice Cooper’s touring band is a
solid group of talented metal musicians and they really added a
tremendous drive and edge to classic Cooper songs.
After
plowing through songs like "Lost in America" (one of my favorites!),
"Go to Hell" (another one of my favorites!), "I’m Eighteen" and
"Billion Dollar Babies," the real Alice Cooper Show started. The
theatrical part of the show was staged with all the antics and
creepiness that one might expect from an Alice Cooper Show. Well, come
to think of it, maybe everyone didn’t expect it...Quite a few parents
brought their wee children (I’m talking four or five years old) to the
show and I am sure they were not expecting to see Alice get beheaded by
guillotine near the end of the show. They also might not have expected
that a female dancer would then whirl and twirl around the stage with
Alice’s severed head while the band played "I Love the Dead." Great,
great stuff. Here’s to well-rounded preschoolers...
In
all seriousness, this show was phenomenal! Seeing Alice perform "The
Ballad of Dwight Fry" while wriggling out of a straight jacket was one
of the best rock performances I have ever witnessed. The show was
really captivating and really fun and for a little while I forgot just
how damn old Alice is these days (he’s 58 now!). I also
forgot that I am getting old for a little while as well...But by the
end of the show, I was wondering if the kids were still awake (they
were) and whether or not the ringing in my ears would subside by the
time I got to work in the morning (it did).
Everything
you have heard about an Alice Cooper Show is true. It’s ghoulish,
frightening, and obnoxious...and it’s incredibly fun and entertaining.
I’m glad I got to see it while Alice and I are still feeling young.
While
I am slightly acquainted with some very basic material regarding the
modern history and political environment in India, I have quite a bit
to learn regarding Indian culture and I am certainly interested in
knowing more. A couple of weeks ago, we visited a new Indian
marketplace in the Dayton area and I checked out their selection of
DVDs. I had never seen any Bollywood movies before, and I was
very intrigued by their selection of films. I quickly settled on Mughal-E-Azam, which boasted a rather lofty claim on its front cover: "The Biggest Indian Film Ever."
The film is set in feudal India during the reign of Mughal Emperor
Akbar. The tale chronicles the tragic romance of Akbar’s son,
Prince Salim (played by Dilip Kumar), with the palace maid Anarkali
(played by Madhubala) . It is a love story for sure, but it is
filled with drama, intrigue and action. There is obviously much
more to the story (there must be, because it runs close to 3 hours),
but I certainly wouldn’t want to give away the ending to anyone who
might be interested watching the film. I will say that the ending
is bittersweet and when I shared my feelings on this with a friend from
South Asia, he made this rather appropriate point: “There could not be
a happy ending because how could a feudal despot accept a female slave
as his son's wife?”
When the film was originally released in 1960, only 15% of the movie
was in color. At one point, Director K. Asif had opted to shoot some
reels in color after having filmed a good deal on black and white
stock. He even went so far as to re-shoot certain black-and-white
segments in color with the intent of ultimately filming the entire
picture on color stock. But financial constraints and related pressures
forced him to release the final product as a combination of
black-and-white and color scenes. The 2005 re-release of
Mughal-E-Azam has been digitally restored and colorized and although it
is easy to discern the differences between the colorized scenes and the
scenes that were originally filmed on color stock, this certainly does
not diminish the viewing experience.
The film is a musical and I found most of the music to be quite
enjoyable. My two favorite songs from the movie are Teri Mehfil
Mein Kismat Aajmakar and Zindabad Zindabad. Although I don’t
speak Urdu ( I have also read a description of the dialogue as "Persianized Urdu") the English subtitles and some subsequent
correspondence with friends has given me a good understanding of the
meaning of these songs. I am told that Teri Mehfil Mein Kismat
Aajmakar is a song in a style called "Qawwali" and that the
style is such that the words and poetry of the song are emphasized more
than its rhythm and music.
The cinematography and effects for the film are very well done.
In recent decades, special effects have improved exponentially from
year to year, but the big battle scene in Mughal-E-Azam deserves credit
as an early cinematic achievement on a grand scale. And of
course, the scene in the Sheesh Mahal (Palace of Mirrors) is a scene
that is beautifully shot and stands out as one of the most significant
achievements of K. Asif in this particular work.
In discussing Mughal-E-Azam with some friends from South Asia, I have
come to understand that they do not share my enthusiasm for this
film. Of course, they have lived most of their lives with some
degree of awareness of the film, as it is widely hailed as a "classic"
throughout the region. For me, however, this film was an entirely
new and exciting experience. When discussing aspects of poplar
Greek culture with Greeks and Greek-Americans, I often find that
certain things which are fascinating to me seem rather ordinary and
substandard to them. I can certainly understand this. If
someone from outside the US wrote to me singing the praises of American "classics" like Gone With the Wind and Titanic, I would probably be
less than enthusiastic in my own assessments of these films.
Nevertheless, Mughal-E-Azam was an experience which was both exotic and
enchanting for me. I am happy to have seen it and I gladly
recommend the movie to others who are interested in Indian
films. Further Reading Mughal-E-Azam official site "Mughal e asam" film review from chowk.com
This
is the question that I was left with after reading D. Landon’s
June 28 Forum column (“Kim Jong-Il Tries Hand at Texas Hold’em”).
Landon has again proven his ignorance by reducing his analysis of an
impending global crisis to a black-and-white oversimplification steeped
in blustery and nonsensical partisan polemics.
According
to Landon, North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is the fault of the
Clinton administration, part and parcel. Is it that simple? Common
sense and an eighth-grade history textbook might suggest otherwise.
So
how can it be that over a decade after the United States “won” the Cold
War that we are again headed toward a new global nuclear crisis?
Perhaps it is because the people of the world learned some lessons
during the Cold War that aren’t easily forgotten. In 1945, over 200,000
people were killed by the American bombs that landed on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. For decades, the people of the world lived day by day and
minute by minute with the awareness — and sometimes even the
expectation — that we would die in a nuclear holocaust. In the 61 years
since the nuclear age began, the American nuclear arsenal has
multiplied to such a degree that our country could kill each and every
person on the planet — with or without a good reason — many, many times
over. And during the course of these several decades, the United States
has invaded and occupied countries around the world with virtual
impunity while acting on an agenda aimed at perpetuating the supremacy
of the American military-industrial complex to the collective detriment
and expense of the world’s poor and working-class citizens.
But why should North Korea feel that it is necessary to pursue nuclear technology?
Perhaps
it is because Pyongyang is only several hundred miles away from both
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps it is because they recall how Douglas
MacArthur pressed for the use of the atomic bomb against North Korea at
the height of the Korean War. Perhaps it is because the President of
the United States has declared North Korea to be a charter member of
the so-called “Axis of Evil.” Perhaps it is because America acts with a
complete disregard for the interests and welfare of others with virtual
impunity and righteous indignation. Perhaps it is because North Korea
can read the handwriting on the wall — handwriting that is written in
the fresh blood of tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians. Perhaps
it is all of these things.
I
am certainly not an apologist for the Clinton administration. The
implementation of NAFTA and the failure to develop and implement a
universal health care program proved that the Clinton administration
was no champion of the interests of working people in America. And the
continued embargoes of Iraq and Cuba during the Clinton years proved
that the Clinton administration viewed the suffering of civilians and
children as a simple matter of politics as usual.
But
did Bill Clinton’s failures drive North Korea to seek the bomb? Not
exactly. There’s plenty of credit to be shared by the Democrats and the
Republicans on this one. It’s the drumbeat of American imperialism
heralded by narrow-minded partisan hacks like Mr. Landon that will
distract us from knowing the truth of the matter if we continue to
succumb to their jingoism and partisan rhetoric.
Is
Mr. Landon an idiot or a fool? Does he even know for sure? Well, an
idiot doesn’t know the difference between partisanship and the truth,
and a fool wouldn’t bother to figure it out. So maybe Landon is a
little bit of both.
After my last fish fatality,
I decided to impose a moratorium on my fish-related blogging until I
could get a fish to live a full 30 days. So here's the good news...
Mr. Tawny and Captain
Marvel II
On July 15, Black Adam
officially made it past the 30-day mark. Captain Marvel II is now
just shy of the 30-day mark as well. I have also added a third
goldfish, named Mr. Tawny
to the mix. They are all living happily in a 10-gallon tank with
an air stone and extra filtration. After I purchased Mr. Tawny, I
was kind of surprised to read that a 10-gallon tank is really too small
for 3 goldfish on account of all of the waste that they produce and how
big they get. Maybe down the road I will have to change my setup
a bit, but this arrangement seems to be doing the trick right now.
It's
kind of hard to believe, but it took me over 25 years of reading comic
books to discover this ad. A couple of months ago, I was reading
a newly acquired copy of Headline Comics #71 (May-June 1955) and on the very last page, I found an ad for Cloverine Salve entitled "Jim and Judy Defy Savage Gorilla."
What makes this ad so terribly funny is that it is full of absolute
nonsense at several different levels. I almost decided against posting
the ad on our site when I found that it is already featured in
seanbaby.com's "The Best of the Worst in Comic Book Advertising" section. But this piece really deserves some more exposure, so I've posted our full scan of the ad here.
Some of the text is awfully difficult to read, but this is not so much
an issue with our scanner as it is an indication of the poor printing
quality of comics back in the 1950's.
Have a look at the ad for yourself and you'll see just how ridiculous
it is. Lucky for the frightened zoo patrons that the parents of
Jim and Judy had the foresight to allow their kids to bring their
weapons to the zoo. I guess it was perfectly legal for underage
kids to carry concealed weapons back in the 1950's. Nowadays,
that's only legal in Texas, I think.
And how much Cloverine salve do you have to sell to get that pony,
anyway? Good luck on getting your dad to work a night job at the
foundry to pay all those vet bills and lodging expenses for your "free"
horsey. I bet the glue factories loved Cloverine salve.
A
few weekends ago, I was going through an old footlocker full of various
magazines I have collected over the years. I had quite a bit of stuff in
there, including a lot of sci-fi & horror magazines, many issues of
Mad, Cracked and Crazy, music-related magazines and the like. Included
in the mix were about three issues of an old magazine called Future:
The Magazine of Science Adventure. All of the issues were from the
late 1970's and I figure I must have bought these magazines about 10
years ago at a Half Price Books or some other secondhand shop. As I
inspected the issues for the first time in several years, the one issue
that especially caught my eye was the May 1978 issue that had a small
white and red wraparound ad that screamed: TOP SECRET: The Truth About
ORBITING SOVIET BOMBS! See page 16." It certainly looked like good
reading, so I set the magazine aside and once I had thumbed through and
organized the other magazines, I had a look at the "Top Secret" report.
The article was
a very short story entitled "Cosmos-954: A Glimpse of Space Disaster"
which chronicled the January 24, 1978 crash of a nuclear-powered Soviet
satellite in Northwest Territories, Canada. The article is a
classic mixture of science fiction and Cold War hype:
The
newspaper headlines were straight out of a fifties science-fiction
film: KILLER SATELLITE CRASHES IN CANADA! Only this time the story was
real. The crash-landing of the Soviet nuclear- powered satellite,
Cosmos-954, north of the American border was a nightmare come true. The
effects of the event were felt immediately. Politicians started talking
in scientific jargon while many scientists issued distinctly political
statements. An interest in space law was (belatedly) revitalized.
People began looking to the heavens with increased anxiety. The spectre
of a Russian- spawned war in space hovered over the globe. "Perhaps
Chicken Little was right," some joked in reference to the unexpected
appearance of the stray spacecraft. But Cosmos-954's appearance was no
joke.
[...]
The
killer satellite seems best suited for a sneak attack on U.S. command
and control, and early-warning satellites in 24-hour orbits. The FOBS
(Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) orbital H-bombs seem to be a
useful way to approach the U.S. in low orbits, eluding radar detection
until the last minute. The nuclear-power naval watchers would mainly be
useful in plotting at- tacks on aircraft carriers and nuclear missile
subs prior to the start of a war from space.
The real story
of Cosmos-954 — the post Cold War version, anyway, — is much less
fantastic. It is now known that Cosmos-954 was a Soviet Radar
Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite (RORSAT) that was powered by a nuclear
reactor. The web site UFO Phenomenon in the North provides a bit more
information on the ultimate demise of the mission:
Previous
Soviet missions using such technology would split the reactor from the
parent body of the spacecraft and boost the radioactive material into a
higher orbit where the reactor would remain for 300-1000 years once the
short lifetime of the satellite was over (which was well beyond the
life of the radioactive material). Cosmos 954 had a special problem
however - it went out of control and the technicians were unable to
separate the reactor from the spacecraft's parent body.
The Future
article implicitly condemns the USSR for failing to notify anyone prior
to the crash of Cosmos-954, but more recent accounts of the tale offer
information that the USSR did send out a warning regarding the
impending calamity, thus allowing NORAD to track the satellite until
the crash. Moreover, some accounts note that the orbit of Cosmos-954
had become unstable as far back as September 18, 1977 and that its
movements were monitored on a regular basis up until its demise.
A report from CBC Radio (dated Jan. 28, 1978 ) indicates that U.S.
President Jimmy Carter contacted the Canadian Prime Minister by phone
to advise him of the issue shortly before the satellite’s crash.
(click here for audio of the original CBC radio broadcast — It's actually a pretty interesting report!).
According to the CBC report, in the wake of the crash Canadian
officials expressed disdain over the American delay in sharing information
regarding the impending crash of Cosmos-954.
When Cosmos-954
finally did crash, it fell in the Great Slave Lake area of the
Northwest Territories in Canada (near Yellowknife), spreading
radioactive material across an area as large as 124,000 km² (some
sources suggest the area was around 80,000 km²). The total
amount of radioactive material that reached the ground was around 25%
of the estimated 68 pounds of Uranium 235 that was originally aboard
Cosmos-954. The remaining 75% of the U 235 burned up during re-entry. No
human deaths were reports as a result of the crash and it seems that
information regarding the long-term environmental effects of
contamination is rather few and far between.
Interestingly
enough, the USSR eventually agreed to pay Canada a total of $15 million
(US) for cleanup efforts, but they ultimately paid somewhere around
half of the total bill (click here to view the terms of the 1981 settlment). By March 1978, most debris from the
satellite had been collected through joint U.S.-Canadian recovery
efforts.
In terms of
nuclear accidents, Cosmos-954 was certainly an intriguing story back in
1978. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s a drop in the bucket
compared to some of the other nuclear accidents which have come to
light in the past few decades. If you really want to read
something that will curl your hair, check out the Greenpeace roster of
nuclear weapons accidents from 1950-1993.
While
I am slightly acquainted with some very basic material regarding the
modern history and political environment in India, I have quite a bit
to learn regarding Indian culture and I am certainly interested in
knowing more. A couple of weeks ago, we visited a new Indian
marketplace in the Dayton area and I checked out their selection of
DVDs. I had never seen any Bollywood movies before, and I was
very intrigued by their selection of films. I quickly settled on 
Have a look at the ad for yourself and you'll see just how ridiculous
it is. Lucky for the frightened zoo patrons that the parents of
Jim and Judy had the foresight to allow their kids to bring their
weapons to the zoo. I guess it was perfectly legal for underage
kids to carry concealed weapons back in the 1950's. Nowadays,
that's only legal in Texas, I think.
