Running BANG

In 2002, a flood in Prague caused some streets to collapse into a series of unknown underground tunnels. And just like that, a legit 16th cent. alchemist laboratory was discovered.

10 years of discovery, repair, and restoration later, it’s now open for tours.

On the outside, only a house was visible and it was used as a pharmacy in its time. Alchemists were notoriously secretive, so none but those on the inside knew about the tunnel system below where potions were made.

A room dedicated to herb storage. Many of the herbs in the potions came from China and India. The house was conveniently located by major trade routes.

Notice an alligator (or croc/caiman) above the left side. There were lots of stuffed animals, bottles, and books. Since few people in Europe had ever seen alligators/crocodiles, they were said to be the bodies of dragons, and were thought to guard the alchemists.

The alchemists were so secretive, they did everything themselves, down to making the glassware for their elixirs.

A stone in the wall that covered a hidden vault in the underground tunnels. Historians uncovered that it held a single bottle of ‘The Elixir of Life’ and the recipes for it, and the elixirs of love and memory.

This bookcase is an exact replica of the original, which was too damaged to restore. A statue on the right side (in the dark area on the third shelf from the top) is the door knob/switch to a secret sliding door.

Monks now recreate the elixirs exactly as detailed in the instructions and each of the elixirs (and blends!) are for sale in their shop. The only change is that the Elixir of Life does not contain opium as is instructed, since it’s now illegal.

Siti Nurhaliza is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) pop musicians in Malaysia. When Britney Spears started getting popular, she was being compared to Siti.

This song, Cindai, released in 1998, has esoteric lyrics that I’m still trying to puzzle out. Even the English translation isn’t really helping. It’s written in very poetic Malay, almost Ye Olde Bahasa. There’s a lot of talk about longing and nature and passion hindered.

Some think this is a ghost song: “cindai” can translate to “female ghost” or “banshee”, and Malaysia sure does ~love~ their ghostly ladies (Especially of the spurned lover/death by abortion/rape/childbirth variety). There’s all these ghost stories about someone humming this song only to accidentally summon spirits or something. (paging @keiyoshi this seems like your department)

A friend thinks it’s all one sex song - I guess lyrics like “I took great care of my prized flower” and “I did not, did not, did not request for this prolonged broody feelings” (don’t) help.

But other than that, Cindai (as the cloth) was also used to name the Seni Cindai which is one of the part of the Silat martial art, and this blog described the stuff in more details, but unfortunately are all in Malay.

Menurut Allahyarham Haji Buang Bahar,  Gurulatih lama, Perguruan Silat Seni Gayong, dan digelar Crazy Horse oleh ADMAR, dalam sembang silatnya di Sekolah Melayu Kota Raja pada akhir 1960-an:

Perkataan cindai ini digunakan bagi ijazah tahap tertinggi permainan seni silat yang menggunakan selendang atau bengkung; silat cindai namanya.

‘Tak ramai pesilat yang dapat menguasai atau mahir ke peringkat silat cindai ini.’

and from this part tho, it is the same being said to me when I was in uni joining the silat group. And the art form in itself was also incorporate what you learn initially from the stages, but the Seni Cindai had their own achievements and footwork/movements when it comes to mastering them. Often than not, you hv to get other bengkung before going up to Seni Cindai.

But if you ask me whether it can summon/call upon spirit, I cannot really say for sure. However, if you wish to try, my only advice would be do not do it in a form that you wished to challenge the other side, that would only be of harm. So far, the stories of singing and the nature of usik (of the spirits in Peninsular mostly) is about the spirits/ghost showing themselves or attaching to someone bc they play pranks and/or they like someone. If they come unwelcome, it is easier to banish them than the one that come challenged. And that’s the basic advice I could give if you interested. (and basically it also touch on the boundary etc but don’t want to make this bulky).

it really isn’t that complicated. and firstly, yes we mean prosaically ‘cindai’ the cloth, which as noted, probably the finest piece of silk shawl a Malay woman can hope to have. one is free to extend any other reading onto the song, but the song itself as it’s meant, is a long sorrowful look to her future. The singer is trapped, on the eve of an arranged marriage to a rich man she doesn’t want and doesn’t love. Every line that she sings is a metaphor, because as the good and obedient daughter, she could never dare to outrightly register even a hint of sadness and regret, and each refers in some way to an ideal which she will never achieve again. If it helps, the lines work as a 2-line pantun/couplets, so once you pair the sentences, the subtext becomes clearer.

and that’s why it’s a favourite of mine.

also, it wasn’t that the asli genre (ie the traditional songs you guys are referring to) was being deliberately set for a revival. It’s just that Siti became super-massively transcendentally popular. She was raised in the ghazal tradition, and got signed to a really uber-Melayu label, SRC, and half of her first album is either asli or cheesy Malay ballads (again, a fave of mine, lol). You can tell they had no idea what to do with it because her early pop tracks were a mess and didn’t know how to utilise her voice. And also why she never naturally fit into that genre, though there was a moment of breakthrough once they got Indonesians on board her team.

This episode of love, death and robots was powerful. I didn’t realize the cultural significance of the story until reading up on it afterwards. The story follows a Siren smitten with a soldier who is unaffected by her deathly scream. Jibaro is an alternate version of the Siren’s tale. The original Greek mythology talks about Sirens who have beautiful voices that seduce men at sea to leap to their deaths. If a Siren is unable to woo a man, then she commits suicide by diving into the water.

In Love, Death and Robots’ Jibaro, we see a Siren, like Sindel from Mortal Kombat, whose scream drives people insane. The story begins with an army that appears to be colonialists. The lead is a deaf soldier. Considering all the gold that adorned their horses, it appears this group has been colonizing and looting as they expanded. The Siren senses threat and attacks. While the rest of the troops are vanquished by the screaming and dancing Siren, the deaf soldier, is unharmed and makes a run for it.

The Siren is intrigued by this soldier. Clearly, she’s come across a deaf person for the first time. Later, she sneaks up next to him and spends the night. The soldier wakes up and can’t take his eyes off the bejewelled beauty. He follows her, and they eventually embrace and share a passionate kiss. Her lips and teeth are so sharp that it cuts the soldier, and he bleeds.

We see a turn of events when the soldier knocks the Siren unconscious, savagely rips through her chest (symbolic of sexual assault) tears all her jewels and adornment away from her body, and tosses her into the river. Her blood is magical and floods the river in a Shining-esque manner. The soldier washes his face in the water, and this causes his hearing to be healed, making him vulnerable to the Siren.

At first it appears she is dead. Her body floating limply in a river of blood—is horrifying to witness. When suddenly she moves. When she rises out of the water… she realizes what happened and is devastated. The shame, humiliation, and overwhelming sense of violation is so apparent. The Siren exacts revenge for his betrayal by performing a fatality on the undeaf soldier with her scream. The man suffers a choreographed death as he moves into the river and sinks to the bottom of the river.

The ending of Jibaro places emphasis on the metaphor of toxic relationships. Both of them were attracted to each other for their own selfish desires, and as we all know, that can never end well.

The deaf soldier fancies the Siren only for the ornaments on her body. And the Siren is intrigued by this man only because her otherwise fatal scream had no effect on him. They are drawn to each other for incredibly wrong reasons. Soon, the man strikes first to claim what he really wants. This backfires horribly, with the return of his hearing. After such brutality and violation, the Siren has lost her grace and can no longer dance. What is witnessed is pure unadulterated pain and rage. She screams in agony and takes the man down, and even though she ultimately wins (with his death, and her survival), it is a hollow victory. He has taken something so precious from her, and she is now forever changed.

And also some of Calboy's children!

I was about to say he would technically be an intersex king (not because I dislike the concept of trans cats, just bc intersex rep is sorely needed too) but I did some more reading on this icon and actually found the article OP referenced.

He's not your usual male calico kitty as it turns out. That's already cool and rare, but he's even cooler and rarer than that!

the trifecta of hyper-competent women and the himbos who are devoted to them in korean zombie content on netflix

I have had a bit of time to mull over Don't Look Up. Given the demographic of this site, this may not be the most useful place to post this, but honestly I just want to talk about it. This will contain spoilers. I also want to be clear that when I talk about the older generation here, I am talking about specific people, the older members of my family, not those generations as a whole.

This is a movie that will garner fundamentally different reactions from myself and the other younger members of my family (early 20s) and the older ones (mid 50s). It's not that the older ones don't get it - a lot of older people do. My older family members certainly think they do, and and be fair to them, they do what they can to help. They recycle. They buy ethically-sourced fruit.

But their emotional connection to this issue is just not there, compared to myself and my siblings and cousins. They don't understand that the comet is hitting right this minute, that it's been hitting for decades. Or rather, they understand this - but only academically.

The problem is that, for them, this is only ever going to be an academic issue. This will sound harsh, but, given where we are, most of my older family will live out the rest of their lives unaffected by this. They will see the impacts of climate change on the news and the TV screen, but even if they make it to the extreme upper limits of the human life span, the odds are this will never really touch them. It doesn't necessarily feel real for them, and that's not necessarily their fault.

We, the younger ones, don't have the luxury of that emotional distance. By the time our kids are in their 50s, it's likely that massive sections of this country will be underwater. And that's the least of it.

This has consequences for the way I think about this, compared to our older family members. At the moment, I think I probably will not have kids, and the environment is a large factor in that decision. I mentioned this to one of the older folk last year, and she was shocked.

"This doesn't have to factor into everything you do," she said. "You're allowed to make some choices for yourself."

This has stuck with me because, on the one hand, there's very little that I, individually, can do or not do to make a palpable difference to this situation. I am small, and the corporate and national responsibility for this problem is very, very large.

On the other hand, this does factor into everything I do, and everything I will do for the rest of my life. I don't have a choice in that. I wish I did.

To be clear, this is a post about my own family and my own emotional reaction to a film that hit pretty damn close to home. For my older family, this is just another film, with a nifty little metaphor. For me it's a suckerpunch, a deeply satirical and accurate reminder of exactly how the end of the world is going to go down. We knew this anyway, but it still hurts to see it so plainly depicted. I would love it, I really would, if Don't Look Up makes the difference it's so very clearly aiming to, but I'm not hopeful.

In this moment, we are at the section of the movie where the comet is already well and truly embedded in the seabed of the Pacific, and we're just waiting for the tidal waves to reach us.