Not With A Bang

It takes time, and sound, for me to take in the horror and the tragedy. What does it take for you?

What’s the deal with their incredibly specialized sexual talents? Is it a harmful fantasy or is it a sign that our culture is broadening its ideas of sexual connection? And what’s so hot about the color blue, anyway? Watch the video to find out and tell us what you think!

Godmother of modern science fiction (that's right, MOTHER) laying it out at the National Book Awards.  This genre is ART. 

The Case For More War in Video Games Violent conflict, its causes and its aftermath, is something that all cultures and civilizations struggle to come to terms with. Throughout the ages we’ve created art, literature, photography, film and even comic books to deal with the wars of our era. With new technologies come new modes of storytelling. Video games are a fast growing medium that also means big business and it should come as no surprise that audiences are hungry for games that mirror the conflicts we see in the world today. But are the games on the market today harming or helping our culture’s understanding of war and our involvement in global conflicts?  I spoke with Dr. Kelli Dunlap, a psychologist who specializes in the impact of video games, and Zaid Jilani, a journalist living in Atlanta, about the appeal and history of war in gaming. We talked about big blockbuster game franchises like Call of Duty and Halo as well as indie games like Valiant Hearts. Some games get it phenomenally wrong while others offer surprisingly complex and heartfelt stories.  Our conclusions? What we need are video games that include more war stories from more diverse voices. Stay tuned to the end to get some good recommendations on what to play next! 

'I have no power to change you  or explain your ways  Never believe a man can change a woman  Those men are pretenders  who think  that they created woman  from one of their ribs  Woman does not emerge from a man's rib's, not ever,  it's he who emerges from her womb  like a fish rising from depths of water  and like streams that branch away from a river  It's he who circles the sun of her eyes  and imagines he is fixed in place  I have no power to tame you  or domesticate you  or mitigate your first instincts  This task is impossible  I've tested my intelligence on you  also my dumbness  Nothing worked with you, neither guidance  nor temptation  Stay primitive as you are  I have no power to break your habits  for thirty years you have been like this  for three hundred years  a storm trapping in a bottle  a body by nature sensing the scent of a man  assaults it by nature  triumphs over it by nature  Never believe what a man says about himself  that he is the one who makes the poems  and makes the children  It is the woman who writes the poems  and the man who signs his name to them  It is the woman who bears the children  and the man who signs at the maternity hospital  that he is the father  I have no power to change your nature  my books are of no use to you  and my convictions do not convince you  nor does my fatherly council do you any good  you are the queen of anarchy, of madness, of belonging  to no one  Stay that way  You are the tree of femininity that grows in the dark  needs no sun or water  you the sea princess who has loved all men  and loved no one  slept with all men… and slept with no one  you are the Bedouin woman who went with all the tribes  and returned a virgin  Stay that way.'

It's National Poetry Day! Enjoy this classic TS Eliot text for which I have named this tumblr after.  The Hollow Men Mistah Kurtz-he dead             A penny for the Old Guy                        I     We are the hollow men     We are the stuffed men     Leaning together     Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!     Our dried voices, when     We whisper together     Are quiet and meaningless     As wind in dry grass     Or rats' feet over broken glass     In our dry cellar          Shape without form, shade without colour,     Paralysed force, gesture without motion;          Those who have crossed     With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom     Remember us-if at all-not as lost     Violent souls, but only     As the hollow men     The stuffed men.                                    II     Eyes I dare not meet in dreams     In death's dream kingdom     These do not appear:     There, the eyes are     Sunlight on a broken column     There, is a tree swinging     And voices are     In the wind's singing     More distant and more solemn     Than a fading star.          Let me be no nearer     In death's dream kingdom     Let me also wear     Such deliberate disguises     Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves     In a field     Behaving as the wind behaves     No nearer-          Not that final meeting     In the twilight kingdom                         III     This is the dead land     This is cactus land     Here the stone images     Are raised, here they receive     The supplication of a dead man's hand     Under the twinkle of a fading star.          Is it like this     In death's other kingdom     Waking alone     At the hour when we are     Trembling with tenderness     Lips that would kiss     Form prayers to broken stone.                           IV     The eyes are not here     There are no eyes here     In this valley of dying stars     In this hollow valley     This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms          In this last of meeting places     We grope together     And avoid speech     Gathered on this beach of the tumid river          Sightless, unless     The eyes reappear     As the perpetual star     Multifoliate rose     Of death's twilight kingdom     The hope only     Of empty men.                                 V     Here we go round the prickly pear     Prickly pear prickly pear     Here we go round the prickly pear     At five o'clock in the morning.          Between the idea     And the reality     Between the motion     And the act     Falls the Shadow                                    For Thine is the Kingdom          Between the conception     And the creation     Between the emotion     And the response     Falls the Shadow                                    Life is very long          Between the desire     And the spasm     Between the potency     And the existence     Between the essence     And the descent     Falls the Shadow                                    For Thine is the Kingdom          For Thine is     Life is     For Thine is the          This is the way the world ends     This is the way the world ends     This is the way the world ends     Not with a bang but a whimper. 

"We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more." - Stanislaw Lem, Solaris

Yet a handful of science-fiction films took a different approach to human/animal relations, exploring what it might be like to fulfill the Dolittle-ian dream of talking to the animals—be it in the here and now, a post-apocalyptic future, or on the cusp of some tremendous planet-wide transformation. Perhaps there were stories to tell other than those in which mutated creatures trampled major cities.

"Shades of Cool", Lana Del Rey Yeah, I don't think I can ever dislike anything she does. 

"Perhaps", Vera Brittain

Should You Bother: Yes, and while you're at it find the 1979 Andrei Tarkovsky filmad aptation Stalker whose screenplay was written by the Strugatsky brothers. 

Please note the historical comparison of women behind the scenes in primetime TV shows is only representative of broadcast network, but not cable. The charts about types of black women on screen include TV and music videos, but not film. 

Should you bother? Unfortunately, no.