THE DODOLOGIST

THE DODOLOGIST'S GEEK FOLK FESTIVAL: THE ILLUMINATI POLKA

2010-09-02T23:24:00.001+02:00

Folk is more than dreary men with guitars singing dreary songs about dreary subjects. It's also more ... danceable tunes, for instance in a ... germanic style, about subjects of the utmost importance to the future of humanity. Yes, really ...

Anyway, it's Tom Smith again. He had to return, after the overwhelming attention his last performance got.

THE DODOLOGIST'S GEEK FOLK FESTIVAL, THE KICK OFF: TOM SMITH PERFORMS "I HAD A SHOGGOTH"

2010-08-28T20:50:00.002+02:00

From the stages of American SF/fantasy/horror-cons, straight to extinction - The Dodologist has the pleasure to kick off The Dodolgist's Geek Folk Festival.

And the obvious man to kick it off is Tom Smith - if for no other reason, then to spread out his contributinons.

I Had A Shoggoth is one of those songs that covers a lot of ground - monsterwise. The real star of the video, though, is the woman (ostensibly?) doing a interpretation for the hard of hearing.

Enjoy!

SCOTT WALKER: COPENHAGEN

2010-08-26T23:04:00.004+02:00

Because it's a great song by a great man. No other reason needed.

LOVECRAFT AND THE HORROR OF THE CITY

2010-08-24T23:29:00.004+02:00

Among H.P. Lovecraft's stories, few are as infamous as The Horror at Red Hook, his nightmarish description - written in August 1925 - of a hideous cult of devil worshipers in New York’s poorest districts. It's not hard to see why. Lovecraft wasn't an epigone of toleration at his best of days. And Red Hooks wasn't written on one of those. The story reflects his hatred of urban life in general and of New York especially, a city he moved to after his marriage to Sonia Greene in 1924.

But even if it's racism is vile and the story in itself is rather badly structured (Lovecraft didn't like it much, but then again he was hard on himself in general), it is deeply fascinating. Not the least for it's attempt to portray the city itself as some kind of a monster. It is a thing of decadence and horror, an atavistic return to a pre-civilized condition.

The best description of this condition, though, isn't to be found in Red Hook. It is instead the opening of another story he wrote the same month: He. He is, as stories go, a true failure, but it's first half (it is short), with it's description of the old New York hidden in the new, is still Lovecraft at his best: A writer of architecture - houses and streets and the moods they convey. The opening pages are urbanity-as-horror at its most fascinating:

My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares and waterfronts to courts and squares and waterfronts equally forgotten, and in the Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyse, and annihilate me.

The disillusion had been gradual. Coming for the first time upon the town, I had seen it in the sunset from a bridge, majestic above its waters, its incredible peaks and pyramids rising flower-like and delicate from pools of violet mist to play with the flaming golden clouds and the first stars of evening. Then it had lighted up window by window above the shimmering tides where lanterns nodded and glided and deep horns bayed weird harmonies, and itself become a starry firmament of dream, redolent of faery music, and one with the marvels of Carcassonne and Samarcand and El Dorado and all glorious and half-fabulous cities. Shortly afterward I was taken through those antique ways so dear to my fancy—narrow, curving alleys and passages where rows of red Georgian brick blinked with small-paned dormers above pillared doorways that had looked on gilded sedans and panelled coaches—and in the first flush of realisation of these long-wished things I thought I had indeed achieved such treasures as would make me in time a poet.

But success and happiness were not to be. Garish daylight shewed only squalor and alienage and the noxious elephantiasis of climbing, spreading stone where the moon had hinted of loveliness and elder magic; and the throngs of people that seethed through the flume-like streets were squat, swarthy strangers with hardened faces and narrow eyes, shrewd strangers without dreams and without kinship to the scenes about them, who could never mean aught to a blue-eyed man of the old folk, with the love of fair green lanes and white New England village steeples in his heart.

So instead of the poems I had hoped for, there came only a shuddering blankness and ineffable loneliness; and I saw at last a fearful truth which no one had ever dared to breathe before—the unwhisperable secret of secrets—the fact that this city of stone and stridor is not a sentient perpetuation of Old New York as London is of Old London and Paris of Old Paris, but that it is in fact quite dead, its sprawling body imperfectly embalmed and infested with queer animate things which have nothing to do with it as it was in life.

Read the entire story here. It ends like this: "I have gone home to the pure New England lanes up which fragrant sea-winds sweep at evening." As was, of course, H.P. himself to do not that much later.

DAMN, H.P., I ALMOST FORGOT : HAPPY 120!

2010-08-20T12:08:00.002+02:00

Sorry, I really did. Thank the tentacled one that he himself called to remind me.

His tentacle came through eons of mindless insanity to slap me on the shoulder. And sort of remind me that there are fates worse than trawling the World Weird Web to search for a fitting cake for one like you. Though it really should be ice cream of course ...

Anyway: Happy 120, H.P. Try not to go to nefariously insane out of sheer joy. Cthulhu promised to bring my present, as I sadly can't join the party on Leng tonight.
_____

EXPOSING THAT WHICH SHOULD REMAIN HIDDEN

2010-08-20T11:35:00.001+02:00

As the subject of men exposing themselves was touched upon a few posts ago, the time had come to reveal what really should have remained hidden ...
_____

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIFTY MOONS TIME?

2010-08-19T14:23:00.001+02:00

I knew life in those days was hard, but not that hard ...

HORRIBLE, BLASPHEMOUS AND UNSPEAKABLE! AND SHORT

2010-08-18T10:15:00.002+02:00

It's like ... horrible and ... blasphemous and ... unspeakable and ... stuff. But it is at least short:

Yep, horrible, blasphemous and unspeakable. And short.

Horrified and unspeakable thanks to The Worlds Cooles Librarian who showed me the way into this particular spot of The Dark Side.

SAD SONGS, WEIRD VIDEOS, GREAT LYRICS

2010-08-17T13:57:00.002+02:00

Some things ... Some things are just plain weird. Like the lyrics of Glenn Tilbrook's song The Genitalia of a Fool. Or like somebody creating a YouTube video to the song, only using footage of Johnny Depp - which, as far as I can gather from the World Weird Web, likes the music of Tilbrook and Squeeze.

Anyway, try not to watch the video, while you listen to this great example of Very Sad Country Music. You may keep your eyes on the lyrics instead. They are below.

The Genitalia of a Fool

Everybody's got a hobby
Everybody's got a schtick
Please consider me eccentric
Don't think of me as sick

Didn't mean to spoil your party
I didn't mean to be uncool
But I'm standing here holding
The genitalia of a fool

'Cause I thought if I exposed myself
You'd fall in love with me
But when I burst in
To my chagrin
You had company

I'm afraid I've shown your family
the wrong kind of family jewels
'Cause I'm standing here holding
the genitalia of a fool

Well I guess the show is over
so I'll just go on home
I'll pack my prize possession
it's the nicest thing I own

Didn't mean to scare the children
or make your grandma drool
but I'm standing here holding
the genitalia of a fool

And I pray that you'll forgive me
and try to understand
But I'm afraid you'll always picture me
with my whole world in my hands

And I'll go through life just wondering
how fate could be so cruel
Left me standing here holding
the genitalia of a fool

Now I wish that you were holding,
the genitalia of this fool

OH GOD, THEY ARE COMING!

2010-04-25T19:54:00.000+02:00

In A house at Furuset, the Panda Army waits, sleeping, dreaming of the Holocaust to come, when they awake from their slumber to create PANDAMONIUM!
_____

THE OTHERS

2010-04-15T23:09:00.000+02:00

Shot in the middle of the day. Most of the effect created in the camera, a little extra kick added in Photoshop.
_____

THE BONES

2010-04-15T11:39:00.001+02:00

Heavily photoshopped, but nothing removed or added. The bones of something ancient. Or something entirely else.
_____

IN HIS HOUSE IN RUSSIA, DEAD CTHULHU WAITS ...

2010-04-14T15:07:00.001+02:00

In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. As everyone knows. And in dark and dreadful places on this earth his followers gather to hail His Dreadfulness. And await their horrible destiny.

But what happens to those places when their destiny (*munch, munch ... burp*) is fulfilled?

They remain. Abandoned. Awaiting discovery.

And now one has been discovered -- deep in the wilderness that is rural Russia. See more pictures of it -- if you dare venture into the realms of insanity from which no man returns untouched.
_____

THEY WATCH!

2010-04-12T15:10:00.001+02:00

_____

ON A DAY LIKE THIS ...

2010-04-10T18:25:00.001+02:00

This bird will rise again!
_____

IN DREAMS

2010-04-09T12:03:00.001+02:00

_____

PAN'S DANCE

2010-03-28T00:05:00.000+01:00

_____

THE SILVER KEY - THE MOVIE

2010-03-26T13:43:00.002+01:00

Based on H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Silver Key". Directed and produce by Conor Timmis og Gary Fierro. Timmis as Randolph Carter.

Thanks to Libraryman, the worlds coolest librarian. Please stop saying "oook".
_____

The Shadydologist

2010-03-18T15:22:00.002+01:00

Some web-services are more ... useful than others. There are, for instance, URL shorteners galore. And they are handy enough. But what the world really needed was ShadyURL, the service that changes your innocent URL to something more ... shady looking. You may revisit me at http://5z8.info/orgy.avi_l7s1e_worm.exe.
_____

THE LOST BOY

2010-03-11T13:56:00.001+01:00

Once upon a time - in 1987 - The Dodologist saw The Lost Boys. Three times. In a week. I'm not saying it made me the vampirologist that I am, but it is no less true because of that.

So the news of Corey Haim's death yesterday was ... well, not a shock, but a reason to be a bit sentimental:

And of course there is Sam's (Haim's that is) most memorable quote:

Look at your reflection in the mirror. You're a creature of the night Michael, just like out of a comic book! You're a vampire Michael! My own brother, a goddamn, shit-sucking vampire. You wait 'till mom finds out, buddy!

Lost boy, indeed.

_____

THE HERO ACCORDING TO AYN RAND

2010-03-10T12:04:00.000+01:00

It seems like it will be a good day for one of The Dodologist's favourite sports: Ayn Rand bashing. First themostvenerable Lord Bassington-Bassington shared this little gem (it has been traced back til the Kung Fu Monkey):

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Then Libraryman - the worlds second coolest librarian (he doesn't say "oook" quite often enough to top the list) - shared this article by the novelist Michael Prescott on Rand's hero, the not at all venerable William Edward Hickman. Read it. But not while you're eating.

_____

IF YOU HAVE NEVER FELT EXISTENTIAL PAIN, TRY THIS

2010-03-07T00:07:00.001+01:00

Some Norwegian musician won a price today. It's a fitting time to remind the world of his greatest moment:

If you can watch it all the way through without your brain going to jelly, you probably live in a nice, padded room already ...

_____

THE COOLEST CHARITY SONG. EVER

2010-03-02T16:41:00.000+01:00

_____

THE NEST IS ROCKING

2010-02-25T14:10:00.002+01:00

The pictures may be gothic, but musically it's still soul & funk revival time here at The Dodo's Nest. Right now The Dodologist and The Itsy Bitsy Dodolinga In Pink is rocking to Laura Vane & The Vipertones. It's highly recommended:

_____

VINES

2010-02-23T23:22:00.000+01:00

A new attempt at an old favourite; trying to get to the essence of those vines. Lotsa photoshopping obviously.

_____

GIRL AND BULL

2010-02-22T21:54:00.000+01:00

An old picture I always knew could work, but that I've never been satisfied with, though I've tried many times. So I decided to give it real hell i Photoshop. And finally I'm satisfied.

_____

WINTER NIGHT

2010-02-22T13:08:00.000+01:00

Sometime in December. Only minor curve adjustments in Photoshop.
_____

EARS

2010-02-21T17:39:00.001+01:00

After a couple of months of little or no photographic experimentation, The Dodologist is slowly picking up camera and Photoshop again. Examples will be posted here, and first out is the picture Ears. Actually, it's not photshopped at all, except from being cropped.

_____

“THE LEVELLED CHURCHYARD", BY THOMAS HARDY

2010-02-19T13:32:00.001+01:00

“O passenger, pray list and catch
Our sighs and piteous groans,
Half stifled in this jumbled patch
Of wrenched memorial stones!

“We late-lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,
And each to each exclaims in fear,
‘I know not which I am!’

“The wicked people have annexed
The verses on the good;
A roaring drunkard sports the text
Teetotal Tommy should!

“Where we are huddled none can trace,
And if our names remain,
They pave some path or p-ing place
Where we have never lain!

“There’s not a modest maiden elf
But dreads the final Trumpet,
Lest half of her should rise herself,
And half some local strumpet!

“From restorations of Thy fane,
From smoothings of Thy sward,
From zealous Churchmen’s pick and plane
Deliver us O Lord! Amen!”

_____

ARTHUR HUGHES' OPHELIA

2010-02-18T13:56:00.006+01:00

It’s not as well known as Millais’ Ophelia, but personally I'm of the opinion that Arthur Hughes' depiction of the tragic girl is the best Ophelia to come from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and its followers. It was first shown in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1852, the same year at Millais’ Ophelia and the year Hughes turned twenty.

It hangs in the Manchester City Art Galley, where I saw it the first time. I believe I spent half an hour just staring at it.

Years later Hughes painted another Ophelia, but it is not as good by far.
_____

BILLIE DAVIS BONANZA

2010-02-15T13:34:00.004+01:00

The Dodologist has a weakness for British female pop singers of the 60s. None more so than Billie Davis. Thus, ladies and gentlemen, a Billie Davis Bonanza:

_____

"AH, ARE YOU DIGGING ON MY GRAVE?", BY THOMAS HARDY

2010-02-10T14:35:00.002+01:00

"Ah, are you digging on my grave,
My loved one? - planting rue?"
- "No: yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,
'That I should not be true.'"

"Then who is digging on my grave,
My nearest dearest kin?"
- "Ah, no: they sit and think, 'What use!
What good will planting flowers produce?
No tendance of her mound can loose
Her spirit from Death's gin.'"

"But someone digs upon my grave?
My enemy? - prodding sly?"
- "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate
That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
She thought you no more worth her hate,
And cares not where you lie.

"Then, who is digging on my grave?
Say - since I have not guessed!"
- "O it is I, my mistress dear,
Your little dog , who still lives near,
And much I hope my movements here
Have not disturbed your rest?"

"Ah yes! You dig upon my grave...
Why flashed it not to me
That one true heart was left behind!
What feeling do we ever find
To equal among human kind
A dog's fidelity!"

"Mistress, I dug upon your grave
To bury a bone, in case
I should be hungry near this spot
When passing on my daily trot.
I am sorry, but I quite forgot
It was your resting place."

_____

THE MEN WHO STARE

2010-02-08T21:45:00.002+01:00

The Dodologist and The Wife saw The Men Who Stare At Goats the other day. I rather enjoyed the book, as I mostly do with Jon Ronson’s writings, but the movie isn’t that much to brag about. The fiction plot is never more than OK and great acting by Jeff Bridges and George Clooney seems rather wasted. (The goats are cute though.)

But it does have one really, really great moment – and a very, very meta one at that: When George Clooney explains to Ewan McGregor what it means to be a Jedi …
_____

GHOSTS OF AUTUMN PAST

2010-02-08T14:51:00.009+01:00

Early last autumn I was forced to spend a couple of days at a hotel outside of Oslo (it’s called “work”, I believe). It was, as is to be expected of this work thingy, rather dreadful. But I did get to spend a morning at the beautiful Tyrifjorden, taking lots of pictures (with a tri pod, which was a first).

The soundtrack to that morning was the record Ghosts, by The Triple Tree. Ghosts is a homage to M.R. James, perhaps the greatest writer of horror stories ever.

The Triple Tree is Andrew King and a certain Tony Wakeford, and skadoodling around on YouTube, I came across this fascinating and beautiful video to the song The Ghosts of England:

Here are some of the pictures, by the way (click'em for larger versions):

_____

"THE SECOND COMING", BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

2010-02-05T12:39:00.001+01:00

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

_____

CAN'T REALLY ARGUE WITH THAT

2010-02-02T22:26:00.003+01:00

Totally Looks Like, specialists in finding the doppelgangers of the celebrities, has revealed that super celebrity Falkor, the luckdragon from The Neverending Story, has a lookalike in a faded pop singer these days mostly known for her marriage to a guy who plays football.

Can't really argue with that.
_____

BACK TO BLACK

2010-02-02T14:54:00.003+01:00

The Dodologist has been listening to neofolk (with small excursions into neoprog and classical) for more than a month. It’s a great way to make January even bleaker. Nothing like a bit of jolly misanthropy to light up the post yule Norwegian winter.

But it was time for Change, so it's Detroit revival-time here at The Dodo's Nest: Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. Great fun:

And yes, the recording and video is from 2007. And if the backing band sounds familiar, it might be because they backed a certain heavily tattooed, Jewish dopehead a few years back (to black). You might have heard about her. Beerhouse or something.
_____

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE MYSTERY OF THE SCHIZOPHRENIC DETECTIVE

2010-02-01T13:50:00.003+01:00

It is not often that I would call His Lordship, the most excellent Lord Bassington-Bassington silly (he does, after all, have a nasty bite), but here I will make an exception: His recent post on Sherlock Holmes is just plain silly, insisting as it does on Jeremy Brett’s interpretation of Holmes to be the canonical one.

I am myself a fan of Jeremy Brett. Though after seeing quite a few episodes again recently, I must admit that they are not as good as I remember them. Brett’s portrayal of Holmes is of course grounded in the books, but he tends to exaggerate wildly parts of Holmes’ personality, while overlooking others.

Conan Doyle’s Holmes is a far more complicated figure than Brett’s. If he wasn’t, he would not be as good at gaining people’s confidence as he is.

If anyone were to choose only one portrayal of Mr. Holmes as canonical, the obvious one would be the canonical one: Sherlock as he comes across in the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Every other portrayal of him must be seen in the light of them.

I’m still a fan of Brett, though. It’s mainly the production that is dated, not Brett. He is as cool as ever. But his is still an interpretation.

To deny oneself the pleasure of other interpretations, as Bassy does in refusing to see the new Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr as the great detective, seems to me a silly thing.

The fact is that Robert Downey Jr’s interpretation of Holmes is quite a good one, partly even rather obviously moulded on Brent’s. And he is coupled with a surprisingly good Jude Law as Watson. They are in themselves reasons enough to see the movie. As is Mark Strong as a rather wonderfully villainous villain.

But the real stars of the movie are London and CGI. The entire movie has the feeling of watching a real life cartoon. I rather expected it to turn into steam punk at any moment. It simply looks so damn good – way too good to be real.

Downey Jr’s Holmes is more of an action figure, as was to be expected, but he is still one of the better Holmes-actors I have seen. The inclusion of Irene Adler opens up for a little romance – she is after all The Woman – but fortunately not too much.

The plot is far fetched in the extreme, seemingly supernatural, though rationalist at heart. But it is great fun, in the same way as Pirates of the Caribbean was fun: Silly, absurd and over the top, but loveable and good hearted.

But the most important difference between the Brett series and the new movie, is that this is not based on a Conan Doyle story. As far as I remember all the Brett episodes are.

This is a pastiche on Holmes, standing in the long and proud, if often incredibly silly, tradition of Holmes pastiches.

As pastiches go, it is one of the more extravagant. The mixture of secret societies, peculiar science and strong indications of supernatural influence, makes it something entirely different from Conan Doyle’s stories. Though I am not at all sure the old Conan Doyle wouldn’t believe most of it.

Another rather obvious difference is that the Brent series has high and rather serious artistic ambitions – ambitions it to a large extent lives up to – whereas the new movie is a piece of cartoonish popcorn entertainment. It is a good cartoon, in a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen kind of way, but it’s still rather camp. It is fun though, something the Brent series seldom is. The two are, in other words, two entirely different species. And they are both prime specimen.

My simple point is this: There is no reason why a fan of the great detective should not be able to enjoy different Sherlocks. Homes is an ingrained part of our popular culture, someone who can and should be played around with. There is no true Sherlock Holmes outside of the Conan Doyle's stories.

Which interpretation we prefer is of course a matter of taste, but there is no reason to fear that Holmes will be contaminated by a silly romp like the new movie.The stories are strong enough in themselves to survive any kind of tomfoolery.

But of course the real mystery of the movie is this one: Guy Ritchie made a couple of decent movies. Then he married Madonna and became The Worst Director On Earth. No sooner has he parted company with the lady, than he makes his best (or possibly second best) movie so far.

Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Cursed Madonna. Now that is a movie someone ought to make – the sooner the better. I wouldn’t mind Robert Downey Jr playing Holmes.
_____

RECOMMENDED: FAUN

2010-01-31T21:35:00.003+01:00

The Dodologist is listening to German goth/folk/neofolk/dark wave/neopagan folk/whatever band Faun. And he happens to be of the opinion that more people should do just that. Thus, one of his favourite Faun songs:

_____

NEOFOLK AND THE PALINGENESIS OF PARANOIA

2010-01-29T14:05:00.007+01:00

My friend Lord Bassington-Bassington has published a post on neofolk and politics. As we both love neofolk and hate the fascist scum that is sadly attracted by this glorious music, I agree with both his intentions and analysis.

As Bassy points out, in addition to these creepy crawlers, a second problem is those (mostly on the left) who see fascists everywhere. As the long eared one, I too have spent some time discussing with the Ukranian scholar Anton Shekhovtsov. A frustrating experience, I’m sad to say.

I started writing a comment on the subject, but it morphed into something much longer and finally became a blog post of its own. This blog post. To fully understand what is going on here, you probably should read Lord Bassington-Bassingtons's post first.

I believe the most serious problem with Shekhovtsov’s approach, is his use of Roger Griffin's definition of fascism:

"Fascism is a political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism."

Palingenesis in general means rebirth (Christ uses it to describe what will happen on judgment day), though in Griffin’s definition it is restricted to national rebirth.

So according to this definition, fascism is a form of populist ultra-nationalism, which strives for a rebirth of the nation, that is to say a return to a postulated former glory.

I agree with his lordship that the definition has its good sides, as when used to underline the continuity between old fascists and those pathetic developments the go through when renaming what they do silly things like national anarchism.

But it simply isn’t good enough in the long run. For two reasons: Because it is too wide and because it is too narrow.

It is too wide because it includes a lot of people who are not fascists. The longing for national rebirth is hardly original to fascism. It was common to many romantic, nationalist groups in 19th century. It is an idea traceable back at least almost three centuries. It was the core of the neo-druidic groups that grew up around the dream of re-creating the Welsh nation. As it has been the core of every nationalist movement among minorities in Europe since then.

And all of these people were not fascists. Not by far.

That does not mean that I deny that this is an important element of fascism, only that it is not enough to establish a definition of fascism. Which brings me to my second point: The definition is to narrow, because it does not include other criteria that can separate actual fascists from those imagined to be so by Shekhovtsov and his ilk.

Personally I like Michael Mann’s definition: “Fascism is the pursuit of a transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism.”

It is in agreement with Griffin’s on the importance of a transcendental form of nationalism, but adds two fundamental elements: An opinion about the role of the state (totalitarian, militaristic, anti-democratic, führer-led) and about the importance of paramilitary groups.

According to this definition you are not a fascist if you simply dream of national paligenesis. You must also have certain opinions on how this palingenesis is to happen and the role of the state in this rebirth. It is possible that it is this Griffins means by “populist ultra-nationalism”, but that is by no means clear.

So the problem with Shekhovtsov’s approach is not simply that he is way to free with the fascist label, the problem is that he judges people to be fascists based on a definition that at its best is able to tell you that they might be fascists.

My own take on who are fascists and not is rather simper. To quote one of my comments on Shekhovtsov’s blog:

“In my naive view of the world, a fascist is someone who sympathises with fascist politics. They may retreat into metapolitics, but they do so because they see that this is not the best of times for their political opinions. So they keep the flame burning, waiting for the times to change.”

Another problem with Shekhovtsov’s approach is that he tends to call people fascists even without documenting any palingenetic tendencies, not to say any indication of populist ultra-nationalism. Symbols that he imagines to be fascist, combined with a certain nietzschean and/or spenglerian leaning in the lyrics, is more than enough for him.

But the biggest problem with Shekhovtsov’s approach is that he seems more or less unable to view his own position critically. Like His Lordship I have tried arguing with him, and his ability not to answer to concrete critiscisms of his analysis is rather astonishing.

Shekhovtsov is oh so willing to label people fascists, but rather less willing to turn a critical eye on his own analysis. Rather a typical scholar in other words.
_____

AT THE END OF AN ERA

2010-01-26T22:44:00.005+01:00

Today the sad news ticked in that Norwegian actor and comedian Dag Frøland is dead, a mere 64 years old. Frøland retreated from the theatre more than two decades ago and lived more or less as a recluse, but his genius is still very much remembered.

His parodies are among the funniest in Norwegian comedy, but The Dodologist happens to think that one of his greatest moments is this, a lamentation of the fall of European culture:

RIP
_____

MEL GIBSON, DOGGY STYLE

2010-01-26T12:53:00.005+01:00

Mel Gibson is soon to return to the big screen, which means a time beckons for him to comment on those ... unfortunate comments. If the comments in this clip is anything to go by, he is not entirely ready for the job:

Via Harry's Place. I have, by the way, added Harry's Place contributer Edmund Standing to the blog list.
_____

SCARY CONSPIRACY REVEALED

2010-01-21T12:19:00.007+01:00

As I said a few posts ago: Some things are just too damn scary.

As we all know, Illuminati has been ruling the world for the last 200 years or so, creating History As We Know It to conceal their cruel, evil and satanic intentions. But now an even scarier group has entered The Stage Of History. They call themselves Itanimulli – which obviously is a lot more evil than Illuminati, because it is Illuminati spelled backwards.

As I said, this is just Too Damn Scary. Not the least when you go to their web-page, www.itanimulli.com. (Cut and paste to see The Scary Truth for yourselves.)

Thanksalot to an observant friend for informing me of this Damn Scary force in our midst. I recommend that he escapes into the woods for a while ...
_____

BE THE FOOD YOU FEED THE CROCS

2010-01-20T11:26:00.003+01:00

Photo: The Dodologist

A sign at the Skansen outdoor museum in Stockholm. It says: "Our crocodiles eat a lot! We need more visitors."
_____

MORE EUROBEAT, THE SOUND OF PARA PARA

2010-01-19T13:16:00.003+01:00

As I said a post ago, it's really only one version of Ike Ike that counts, the one by Tri-Star. And lo and behold, here it is:

As a bonus, here is a Para Para video with parts of Ganguro, by Franz "Mad Cow" Tornado and the Yamanba-Gals:

Franz Tornado (real name Federico Rimonti) is a personal Eurobeat favourite that shows up in a endles row of different "groups", of which Franz Tornado and the Royal Eurobeat Orchestra of Bazookistan is one of the best (names, that is). The endles changes of band names is a joke, as most of it is really made by a rather small group of people.

Another favourite - and part of the Tornado clan - is Bazooka Girl (real name Cristiana Cucchi). Here is a video with parts of her Velfarre 2000:

And finally, I linked to it yesterday, but the deep and subtle poetry of Bazooka Girl's Cantare Ballare (Happy Eurobeat) simply must be shared again:

Cantare Ballare (Happy Eurobeat)

Suck a Bazooka
No One Sleep In Tokyo
Din Don Dan
Money Go
Night of Fire
Bandolero Comanchero
Boom Boom Girl
Virtual Love

Go Go Dance
Technotronic Flight
Shadow In The Night
Telephone
Try Me
Ike Ike
Dancing In The Jungle
Dancing In The Maharaja Night

Mad Cow
Bazooka Man
Boom Boom Japan
Hot Girl
Deja Vu
O Sole Mio
My Only Star
Don’t Stop The Music
Love Generation

Mad Cow
Bazooka Man
Boom Boom Japan
Hot Girl
Deja Vu
O Sole Mio
My Only Star
Don’t Stop The Music
Love Generation
(Cantare Ballare)
(Cantare Ballare)

My Sweet Banana
Dancing At Twin Star
Milan Milan Milan
Get My Love
Round ‘n’ Round
Hot Love & Emotion
Deltadance.com
Be My Lover

______

PARA PARA - AS IT SHOULD SOUND

2010-01-18T23:06:00.007+01:00

My friend, the Mad Mullah, has put up an instruction video for Para Para dancing - that subtle and lovely Japanese addition to teen culture. But ... it's without music. That's really utterly pointless. Now this is what Para Para should look - and sound - like:

It's silly. It's embarrassing. It's annoying. And the music is the perfect drug for pointless tasks in the office - when mixed with at least six shots of espresso.

And the best thing, The Very Best Thing, this being music directed at japanese 14 year olds and mostly written by Italians, is of course the lyrics. As some of you may not be fluent in Japanese, here are the English lyrics for Ike Ike (which really should be heard in the Tri-Star version):

Ike Ike

Living night
I need to feel imagination
Yes, all right
I need a rhythm invasion
Sing together "na-na-na-na"
I wanna dance all the night
Oh - oh - oh Oh - oh - oh

Ehy, DJ John Robinson
Make me feel the rhythm and hot desire
In Roppongi Tokyo
Keep me into your heaven
Baby, take me higher

Ikeike
Lucky night, pretty girl
Mini-skirt Ikeike
Hi-heel shoes and then you feel the power
Ikeike, magic nights
And the blue, my baby, will go bye
Uoh-ho

Lovely night
You take me up imagination
In my heart
You bring me up your confusion
When you dance I'm gonna head out
I like to dance eurobeat
Oh - oh - oh Oh - oh - oh

It's great poetry, though not quite as good as the lyrics to Cantare Ballare (Happy Eurobeat). Then again, few things are. That might be a reason for cheerfulness. Then again, maybe not.

(As to the title of this post: This was written listening to Matt Howdens record As They Should Sound. It's not half bad. But it's useless for Para Para.)
_____

WATCH YOUR CAPS!

2010-01-17T00:50:00.001+01:00

Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.
______

IT BITES!

2010-01-15T20:00:00.003+01:00

Some things ... Some things are just too damn scary ...

This, my friends, is a Fleshlight. It's for the pleasuring of ... male ... members ...

Though it's of course not a regular Fleshlight. It's a "... Succu Dry Sex in a Can from Fleshlight, the world’s first vampire inspired sex toy for men. Take a walk on the dark side and get familiar with this pale brew. But be careful! Though this may feel like love at first bite, make sure you have wood poised to penetrate before you get completely drained!"

The Dodologist is ... fascinated by it's dedication to ... truthfulness and ... detail. As they say: "The amazingly detailed vampire mouth and fangs beg you to drive your wooden stake deep inside."

Perhaps some other day, baby.
_____

Thanksalot to Lady Mju for the tip.
_____

“THE MAD GARDENER'S SONG", BY LEWIS CARROLL

2010-01-15T13:51:00.002+01:00

He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
‘At length I realise,’ he said,
The bitterness of Life!’

He thought he saw a Buffalo
Upon the chimney-piece:
He looked again, and found it was
His Sister’s Husband’s Niece.
‘Unless you leave this house,’ he said,
“I’ll send for the Police!’

He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
‘The one thing I regret,’ he said,
‘Is that it cannot speak!’

He thought he saw a Banker’s Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
‘If this should stay to dine,’ he said,
‘There won’t be much for us!’

He thought he saw a Kangaroo
That worked a coffee-mill:
He looked again, and found it was
A Vegetable-Pill.
‘Were I to swallow this,’ he said,
‘I should be very ill!’

He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four
That stood beside his bed:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bear without a Head.
‘Poor thing,’ he said, ‘poor silly thing!
It’s waiting to be fed!’

He thought he saw an Albatross
That fluttered round the lamp:
He looked again, and found it was
A Penny-Postage Stamp.
‘You’d best be getting home,’ he said:
‘The nights are very damp!’

He thought he saw a Garden-Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
‘And all its mystery,’ he said,
‘Is clear as day to me!’

He thought he saw a Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
‘A fact so dread,’ he faintly said,
‘Extinguishes all hope!’

_____

KEEPING THE FLAME ALIVE

2010-01-13T23:03:00.005+01:00

These days it seems like every Norwegian is reading a book (or rather a series of books) called Min Kamp. Which in German is ... Mein Kampf (though rumours are the German tranlation will have another title).

We don't like modern copyists here at The Dodologist. We like the old stuff. The originals. So it's nice to see that someone is keeping the flame alive:

(Ehr, borrowed from AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com.)
_____

A JINGLE IN MY BONES

2010-01-12T14:03:00.001+01:00

Just before Christmas, December the 23rd to be precise, I had the pleasure of letting loose on the world the 4th issue of Knokkelklang. Knokkelklang (which is best translated as Jingle Bones) is a blog magazine dedicated to “the marginal, the curious, the horrible and the fantastic” and it’s edited by a dodologist very close to you. Two articles this time are by theverysame dodologist:

The vampire as victim
Or: It’s terribly sad, but I have to kill you. Boo hoo!

Child In Time
Desmond Child & Rouge – the best band you've never heard

Oh, come on, take a peek.
_____

THE WHY OF THE VAMPIRE

2010-01-11T20:06:00.002+01:00

OK, so I’m a vampirologist. That might sound like fun to you, but I tell you: These days it’s a lot of hard work. Not only the watching of mormon teenage vampire fantasies or the unspeakable parts (of which I may speak, but then of course have to kill you), but also all the parts that speak. Especially all the speaking-to-journalists-parts.

It’s not that I mind journalists as such (at least not more than the average man, which is, of course, a great deal); it’s rather that they are all so bloody repetitive. It’s like they are not separate creatures, with separate minds. They are one head, only able to come up with the same idea over and bloody over again.

So, for the last two months, I’ve been asked why vampires are so popular right now approximately fifty times. Man, if questions could be staked …

Anyway, here it is: It’s because it six years since last time - more or less. (That was Boring Buffy, by the way.)

Vampires are fascinating creatures. I tend to sum the fascination up as “sex, death, violence, blood and embroidery”. They give a director or writer, serious or not, a chance to dive into some pretty juicy subjects, subjects that touch on some of the basics of our human existence.

They also are a lot of fun. In 1820, the year after the publication of John Polidori’s The Vampyre, it was dramatized no less than four times for Parisian theatres. Two of those dramatisations where comedies. So ever since the introduction of the modern vampire, its comic potential has been obvious.

It is, in other words, no big mystery why the vampire appeals to us. So, ever since it became a movie star, the vampire has returned again and again to the movie screen to haunt us. It is, after all, a ghost.

The problem is that, fun and fascinating as the vampire is, it is also a rather limiting figure. The vampire is so well established as a pop cultural icon that you mess with it at your own peril. Move too far away from the established concept, and you have to spend a lot of time explaining why and defending your choices.

The point is this: For a while the vampire is fun. Then it becomes repetitive. And then it becomes boring. So you put it back in its coffin. Six years later, and a whole new generation of teenagers are out there. Then it’s time to raise the bugger from the grave and off we go again.

That’s about it, really.
_____

"A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES", BY DYLAN THOMAS

2009-12-27T00:14:00.002+01:00

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs. "He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

_____

"LIMITS", BY JORGE LUIS BORGES

2009-12-25T20:18:00.003+01:00

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

_____

"A CHRISTMAS CAROL", BY G.K. CHESTERTON

2009-12-24T00:33:00.001+01:00

The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast,
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world's desire.)

The Christ-child stood at Mary's knee,
His hair was like a crown.
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.
_____

JINGLE BONES

2009-12-23T12:10:00.002+01:00

The Dodologist has the pleasure to announce the release of Knokkelklang nr. 4 - a blog magazine editetd by His Grumpiness. It's a terribly jolly read for Christmas.
_____

THE BEATLES - A THOUSAND YEARS FROM NOW

2009-12-23T01:55:00.000+01:00

_____

"YULE HORROR", BY H.P. LOVECRAFT

2009-12-20T12:57:00.001+01:00

There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats o'er the wold;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings un-hallowed and old.

There is death in the clouds,
There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
Hail the sin's turning flight.
And chant wild in the woods as they dance round a Yule-altar fungous and white.

To no gale of Earth's kind
Sways the forest of oak,
Where the sick boughs entwined
By mad mistletoes choke,
For these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark, from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.

_____

MUST BE SANTA, ONCE AGAIN

2009-12-19T19:06:00.003+01:00

All this Christmas-stuff is making blogging a tiny bit difficult. Pressed for time and all that stuff.

While we do what we have to do before Santa comes calling, we tend to play Mr. Zimmerman's latest. I've already shared his video to Must Be Santa with you, my dear readers. That song made me search YouTube for more Christmas polka. And I found this, a live version of the same song, by the kings of modern American polka, Brave Combo:

You sort of hear where Dylan got his inspiration ...
_____

TO BE OR ... WHAT TO BE?

2009-12-14T12:46:00.003+01:00

Brian Cox happens to be one of The Dodologist's favourite actors. He also turns out to be a great teacher. Here he is teaching young Theo a not entirely unfamous monologue by some Danish prince:

Priceless, isn't it? Though as someone points out in the comments on YouTube: "I don't know. Cute, yes, but his performance lacked substance. I had trouble feeling any real inner torment from him. I think Hamlet should be cast a little older, in my humble opinion."

Some of the discussions between teacher and student reminded me of this little dialogue, that I found on the website of Twitter favourite @lipstattoo.

– You remind me of the babe.
– What babe?
– Babe with the power.
– What power?
– Power of Voodoo.
– Who do?
– You do.
– Do what?
– Remind me of the babe.
_____

Thanks to Trond for bringing it to my attention.
_____

MUST BE MR. ZIMMERMAN (AND THAT SANTA DUDE)

2009-12-13T13:45:00.002+01:00

The Dodologist isn’t among the biggest fans of Robert Allan Zimmerman. He has made some good records, by all means, but as being of his biggest fans means never listening to anything else, The Dodologist limits himself to liking Mr. Zimmerman.

But, as The Dodologist’s wife was very clear that Mr. Zimmerman's Christmas record was destined for The Nest, off His Grumpiness went, ho-ho-ho-ing.

And lo and behold what a good idea that was. It’s playing right now and it’s great fun. Yep, it actually sounds like Mr. Zimmerman is having fun. Now that’s a real surprise for Christmas.

Whatever, here is the man, singing William Fredericks and Hal Moore’s Must Be Santa. Now that’s what we needed: Christmas polka.

_____

FOUR POEMS BY DOROTHY PARKER

2009-12-10T23:56:00.007+01:00

A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.

Inventory

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

I Shall Come Back

I shall come back without fanfaronade
Of wailing wind and graveyard panoply;
But, trembling, slip from cool Eternity-
A mild and most bewildered little shade.
I shall not make sepulchral midnight raid,
But softly come where I had longed to be
In April twilight's unsung melody,
And I, not you, shall be the one afraid.

Strange, that from lovely dreamings of the dead
I shall come back to you, who hurt me most.
You may not feel my hand upon your head,
I'll be so new and inexpert a ghost.
Perhaps you will not know that I am near-
And that will break my ghostly heart, my dear.

Portrait Of The Artist

Oh, lead me to a quiet cell
Where never footfall rankles,
And bar the window passing well,
And gyve my wrists and ankles.

Oh, wrap my eyes with linen fair,
With hempen cord go bind me,
And, of your mercy, leave me there,
Nor tell them where to find me.

Oh, lock the portal as you go,
And see its bolts be double….
Come back in half an hour or so,
And I will be in trouble.

_____

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS ...

2009-12-09T18:52:00.001+01:00

Christmas is closing in, and it is time for those familiar sounds that create that very special Christmassy feeling:

Bing Crosby singing White Christmas, Eartha Kitt moaning Santa Baby, a bunch of adorable little boys singing carols in some English church. And of course this tender classic from the Australian folkie Kevin “Bloody” Wilson:

For some reason The Dodologist seems to be the only one who finds this funny …
_____

THEIR PALL FOOT FOOT

2009-12-08T11:06:00.004+01:00

In a comment to my last post, my good friend, themostexellent Lord Bassington-Bassington, reminded me of the once existence of The Shaggs. I haven't heard them in years, so I just had to dig them up on YouTube and share this, their, eh ... best ... sort off ... in a weird sense ... track with you, my dear readers.

As it was the last time I heard it, some ten years ago, it is still fascinating and sort of catchy, in a very, very painful way. Enjoy! The lyrics are below.

If you don't know The Shaggs, read Wikipedias article on them.

My Pal Foot Foot

My pal's name is Foot Foot (Foot Foot)
He always likes to roam
My pal's name is Foot Foot (Foot Foot)
I never find him home

I go to his house
Knock at his door
People come out and say
Foot Foot don't live here no more

My pal Foot Foot (Foot Foot)
Always likes to roam
My pal Foot Foot (Foot Foot)
Now he has no home

Where will Foot Foot go
What will Foot Foot do
Oh, Foot Foot
I wish I could find you

I've looked here, I've looked there
I've looked everywhere
Oh, Foot Foot
Why can't I find you?

Foot Foot, where can you be?
Foot Foot, why won't you answer me?
Foot Foot, Oh Foot Foot
Wherever you are
I want you to come home with me

I don't have time to roam
I have things to do
I have to go home
Oh, Foot Foot, where are you?

If Foot Foot didn't like to roam so well
He would still have a place to dwell
Foot Foot, please answer me
I know where you are
You're behind that tree

Foot Foot, please come to me
Foot Foot, now that you're here
Won't you come home
Foot Foot, promise me this
That you will never again roam
_____

TOMORROW BELONGS TO ... ME?

2009-12-07T13:29:00.009+01:00

Irony is difficult stuff – especially if you are really good at it – because people all to easily misunderstand.

Wikipedia defines irony as “… the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite”. In other words: Saying one thing, but meaning the opposite.

Over at Harry’s Place they are making fun of Swedish Neo Nazi folkstress Saga, because she sings the song Tomorrow Belongs To Me – from the musical Cabaret.

Making fun of Saga is always a good thing, not the least because her version of the song is unspeakably dreadful. (Though you’ve got to hand it to her: At least she sings in tune – in itself rather remarkable among Neo Nazi singers, as Prussian Blue time and again has demonstrated.)

For one thing Cabaret was an all out anti Nazi musical, and as such it is rather remarkable that Saga performs the song. For another, as Harrys’s Place enjoys pointing out, Fred Ebb, who wrote the lyrics to Cabaret, was Jewish. And gay. Not the most popular personality traits among Nazis. (So was John Kander, who wrote the music, by the way.)

The point of the song, as someone pointed out in a comment to one of many versions on YouTube, is that bad ideas don’t present themselves as bad ideas. They present themselves as – and more important: are considered by the people who hold them to be – good and noble. The Nazis were a bad lot – because their political ideas where really bad stuff. But they considered themselves brave defenders of nation, volk and family – and surrounded by enemies to on all sides.

As do Saga, Prussian Blue (or at least their mother) and most Neo Nazis of today. And they are right to consider themselves surrounded by enemies. At least we do our very best. Tomorrow do definitely not belong to them.

But the real irony of the story, I guess, is that the man who adopted Tomorrow Belongs To Me as a Neo Nazi hymn, in all probability knew exactly what he was doing. He was the skinmeister himself, Ian Stuart Donaldson of Skrewdriver, who recorded the song for their 1984 album Hail The New Dawn.

A lot can be said about Stuart Donaldson – most of it bad – but he wasn’t stupid. Recording Tomorrow Belongs To Me was an act of sheer arrogance: You may make caricatures of our beliefs, but we’ll adopt them and use them as our own. It was an act of real chutzpah, to use a very, very inappropriate term.

Some people within the Neo Nazi scene know this very well. I believe Joe Owens points it out in his autobiography. (Though I’ll be damned if I’m going to check. Reading it once was enough.) Others though, tend to speak of the song as traditional, as they do with The Green Fields Of France by Eric Bogle, another folkie tune Ian Stuart Donaldson recorded. (So does, by the way, Wikipedia's article on him. Funny that.)

There is probably some moral to this story, but I’m uncertain of what it may be. Except to beware of Nazis, even when they are singing gay Jewish tunes.

Here is the song from the movie version of Cabaret (a dubbed version, though that's hard to notice). And below that are the lyrics.

Tomorrow belongs to me

The sun on the meadow is summery warm
The stag in the forest runs free
But gathered together to greet the storm
Tomorrow belongs to me
Tomorrow belongs to me

The branch on the linden is leafy and green
The Rhine gives it's gold to the sea
But somewhere a glory awaits unseen
Tomorrow belongs to me
Tomorrow belongs to me

The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes
The blossom embraces the bee
But soon says a whisper, arise, arise
Tomorrow belongs to me
Tomorrow belongs to me

Now Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign
Your children have waited to see
The morning will come when the world is mine
Tomorrow belongs to me
Tomorrow belongs to me

Tomorrow belongs
Tomorrow belongs
Tomorrow belongs to me!

I don’t link to Nazis, even on YouTube. If you want to hear Saga’s version (and believe me, you don’t) search for it yourselves.
_____

BAD CHRISTMAS JOKES – THE RERUN

2009-12-05T11:46:00.016+01:00

Last December, on a now extinct Norwegian blog, His Grumpiness ran a string of posts with Christmas jokes; all of them funny, though maybe not all of them in the best of taste.

To avoid the temptation to be too lazy and once again post them in bits and pieces, here are the ones worth repeating:

If that did not make you laugh, you are on the wrong blog.
_____

FAVOURITE PAINTINGS: ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI

2009-12-04T21:30:00.005+01:00

Click pic for larger version

Dante Gabrile Rossetti's Ecce Ancilla Domini (aka The Annunciation) was painted in 1850, and is thus one of the earliest Pre-Raphaelite paintings. The model for Mary is Rossetti's sister, the poet Christina Rossetti.

As so often in Rossetti's paintings, the perspective is rather weird. But the highly emotional portrayal of Mary makes it a stunning picture, one of Rossetti's best actually.

It is also, as often is the case with Pre-Raphaelite pictures, rather small: 73 x 41,9 cm.

Ecce Ancilla Domini is owned by Tate Gallery. The Victorian Web has an interesting analysis.
_____

IN MR. HILL'S GARDEN (OF LOVE)

2009-12-03T11:15:00.003+01:00

Deep thoughts ought to be thought, but in the dodological corner no great thinking is being done at the moment.

As both love and horticulture are important to civilizations continued existence, The Dodologist instead presents the everfunny Benny Hill’s ode to both: My Garden of Love:

Great song, isn’t it? And in the tradition of the last days on this blog, there is of course a veryfunnuy fungus-joke.
_____

LOVECRAFTIAN JOKES

2009-12-01T23:55:00.005+01:00

All this talk of Lovecraft and fungi, drove me to dig out some favourite lovecraftian jokes from my archives:

“You Goth?”

“No, I’m just a Fun Guy”

So Nyarlahotep pops across to the library where Cthulhu’s actually a bit more rugose and squamous then usual. And he says, what’s up?

And Cthulhu says “Rl’yeh fthagn, ahem! Blimey! Sorry, phlegm. Bit ill, actually.”

So Nyarlahotep rubs three of his pseudopods together and says, “I have just the thing!”

And he leads the mighty Elder One across the non-Euclidean town sqaure, down a dodgy back alley, where an eldritch couple of debt collectors are lurking.

And Nyarlahotep says:

“Here’s that sick squid I owe you.

“Waiter! Waiter! There’s a dead squid in my soup!”

“It’s not dead, Sir. It’s just dreaming.”

HP Lovecraft and August Derleth are sitting at an al fresco cafe on the abominable plateau of Leng. Sipping absinthe, as you do. It’d be a nice place if it wasn’t for the maddening cyclopean architecture with the obviously alien non-Euclidean geometry, but it’s the only spot for unthinkably vast distances and it’s got a lovely view, so you make do.

As they sit there, the ground before becomes disturbed by the passing of a great Dhole, burrowing beneath the earth, space rippling around it as it goes.

They sip their absinthe as the Dhole is followed by a Mi-Go, flapping and screeching – the noise driving several nearby patrons mad.

A shoggoth comes after, shambling along. It takes some time to pass, so they order another round of absinthe.

Then a long train of the spawn of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, ooze, crawl and tilt their way past – the locomotive systems reminiscent of slime running down a rock… but sideways… unthinkably sideways.

Then for a moment, there’s quiet and the plateau is empty… and Derleth turns to Lovecraft and says…

“Good Lord, Howard. Today it’s just one damned thing after another.”

Necrotelecomnicon: the book of dead phone numbers.
_____

"THE COURTYARD", BY H.P. LOVECRAFT

2009-12-01T12:04:00.003+01:00

It was the city I had known before;
The ancient, leprous town where mongrel throngs
Chant to strange gods, and beat unhallowed gongs
In crypts beneath foul alleys near the shore.
The rotting, fish-eyed houses leered at me
From where they leaned, drunk and half-animate,
As edging through the filth I passed the gate
To the black courtyard where the man would be.

The dark walls closed me in, and loud I cursed
That ever I had come to such a den,
When suddenly a score of windows burst
Into wild light, and swarmed with dancing men:
Mad, soundless revels of the dragging dead -
And not a corpse had either hands or head!

_____

"The Courtyard" is poem no. IX from the cycle Fungi from Yuggoth.
_____

THE EMO VAMPIRE SONG

2009-12-01T07:00:00.002+01:00

Some things ... some things really need no comment:

_____

THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY

2009-11-29T20:14:00.008+01:00

It's first Sunday of Advent today, and hereby starts the season to be jolly. The Dodologist promises lotsa Christmas fun, but starts out by recommending some really rather tasteful Christmas music: Christmas Carols by Dutch viola da gamba player Ralph Rousseau Meulenbroeks:

Christmas Carols by Ralph Rousseau Meulenbroeks
You can download this CD from the most excellent people at Magnatune, one of The Dodologist's favourite sources of legal downloads. The deal is thus: You pay a minimum of 10 $ a month (through PayPal), and then can download anything you like from Magnatune's catalogue. Or, if you prefer, stream it without those annoying messages at the end of each song that you get in the player above.

It is, to tell the truth, a jolly good deal. And thereby perfect for the season.
_____

THE BIG ONE

2009-11-27T14:34:00.013+01:00

Judge Dread was one of the big ones. In his own, curious way, he was the biggest – the rudest of the rude boys. For one thing, he was BIG, for another he had a string of "Big" hits, starting with Big Six in 1972. According to Wikipedia, he “He was the first white recording artist to have a reggae hit in Jamaica, and has the most banned songs of all time”.

The thing was that the judge was a naughty boy. He was the Benny Hill of ska, only lacking Mr. Hill’s subtle humour and sophisticated jokes. Where Hill remained in the land of the double entendre (though veering dangerously close to its far border from time to time), the judge was an all out, in your face spokesman for pure, joyful vulgarity. The joke – and it is a mighty funny one – was to be obviously vulgar, while pretending to be subtle. As in the hilarious Up With The Cock:

The Dodologist tend to use the judge’s music as a test of peoples sense of fun. It they look away in sheer embarrassment, they are found wanting. You may not find him funny, but if you are embarrassed by him, you probably take yourself a bit to seriously. The judge’s humour may be a stupid one, but we should all find the time to honour our inner blockhead.

And for all his “music hall gone bad” sense of bad taste, it is quite intelligent humour from time to time. As in his version of Je T’aime (Moi Non Plus). The punch line still has this extinct bird roaring with laughter, ten years after he heard it for the first time:

Dread was born Alexander Minto Hughes in 1945, and had a colourful past when he finally became a recording artist. He had worked as a bouncer, a bodyguard, professional wrestler (under the moniker "The Masked Executioner") and a debt collector. He took the stage name from a Prince Buster song, and the title Big Six is a reference to Prince Busters 1969 hit Big 5. Here is a, eh, live version:

For a time Judge Dread really was big. He had eleven chart hits in the UK during the 70s – more than any other reggae artist, including Bob Marley.

The Beeb didn’t like him, though. You just didn’t record songs like Up With The Cock and get away with it. So they banned him. Even when he recorded entirely innuendo-free songs, they still banned him. It was Dread, so it had to be dreadful. If they heard no innuendo, it was probably just because he was speaking in code.

As the 70s came to an end, so did the judge’s career. He died in 1998, on stage in Canterbury – but his was definitely no Canterbury sound. And while we today might see him simply as vulgar, this kind of vulgarity had an important element of counter culture in the still righteous and self-satisfied cultural climate of the 70s.

He died before I ever heard him. I still miss him though. The world is poorer without men like Judge Dread in it. Here he is in his soft mode, Bring Back The Skins (aka The Last Of The Skinheads – it's the best version of the song, the pictures are completely absurd, though):

_____

"MAY", BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

2009-11-26T23:59:00.002+01:00

I cannot tell you how it was,
But this I know: it came to pass
Upon a bright and sunny day
When May was young; ah, pleasant May!
As yet the poppies were not born
Between the blades of tender corn;
The last egg had not hatched as yet,
Nor any bird foregone its mate.

I cannot tell you what it was,
But this I know: it did but pass.
It passed away with sunny May,
Like all sweet things it passed away,
And left me old, and cold, and gray.
_____

GOODNIGHT KEITH MOON

2009-11-26T14:56:00.006+01:00

The thing about spending too much time on Twitter, is that from time to time you come across some true oddities. Like the internet version of the not-exactly-children's book Goodnight Keith Moon. (Thanks, @Glinner.)

It's sad. It's funny. It's a gem. Go ahead, say goodnight to Keith.
_____

DON'T STRAY ON THE PATHS OF ABNORMALITY

2009-11-24T20:14:00.009+01:00

OK folks, this is a serious blog, discussing important issues in a time of cultural decline and spenglerian regress. Still, The Dodologist has to admit that from time to time it does seem like the abnormal ones are having a good time. Sometimes they even have an important message for us upstanding citizens.

My friend, the most upstanding citizen of Little Storping in the Swuff, the ever well dressed Lord Bassington-Bassington, brought to my attention the popular music singer Gay Pimp and his joyful song Soccer Practice, about young, healthy men playing sports. And even though Gay Pimp is a pervert, The Dodologist cannot deny that he enjoys this youthful and innocent ode to youth and healthy frolicking on the field.

But it is another song of Mr. Pimp that truly brought on The Extinct Ones admiration – a warning to young women not to stray on the paths of perversion. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Don’t Fall In Love With A Homo:

Such style, such grace, such a charming tie. No homo. Obviously.
_____

HARD ROCK. NO HOMO

2009-11-24T13:12:00.011+01:00

My friend, the utterly Mad Mullah, recently posted a joyful celebration of the upcoming CD of Norwegian nazi odinist black metal guru Burzum (though Burzum himself denies all charges of … more or less everything except the CD).

The CD is due next spring, according to a press release. It will be something entirely different than that low life black metal stuff:

”The 'black metallers' will probably continue to 'get loaded,' 'get high,' and in all other manners too behave like the stereotypical Negro; they will probably continue to get foreign tribal tattoos, dress, walk, talk, look and act like homosexuals, and so forth.”

As an advice to the black metal community on how to avoid being accused of homosexual tendencies, the mullah now has posted a video about the “no homo” phenomena in hip hop culture. It’s both instructive and rather funny, and has some great advice for the emotional poets in corpse paint.

Not to be outdone, The Dodologist offers another introduction to the same phenomena, by hip hop blogger Jay Smooth (who has been exploited by The Extinct One before):

There ought to be some good advice for the spiked leather boys here. Though, as The Extinct One has pointed out before, you should consider dropping the gay couture, boys. Even it those spikes are long … and hard. Just as hard as your music.

No homo, of course.
_____

NO WAY TO TREAT AN ENT

2009-11-23T18:20:00.002+01:00

It’s autumn. Late autumn, actually. Last time I wrote about autumn, there were still a few leaves on the trees. Not so anymore.

And, as it’s autumn, I have gotten the urge to return to Middle Earth. I picked up where I left off – as Merry and Pippin enters Fangorn forest.

I read Tolkien like that: Read a few chapters, then stay away for a long time, sometimes a year, then pick up again from wherever I left. I know the story, after all.

And Tolkien himself left the company outside the gates of Moria for more than a year. Now, that’s a bleak place to spend twelve months or more. (There was a war coming in Europe.)

Though Merry and Pippin doesn’t know, entering Fangorn is the start of great things – for them personally and for Middle Earth. It rouses the ents, as Treebeard realizes he can no longer stay out of worldly things. Which spells the end for Saruman’s dreams of power. Which again means that Gondor is not threatened from two sides at once – and that the forces of Rohan are free to ride to Gondor’s support.

All this because of two hobbits that only want to get away from their orc(ish) captors.

We can none of us know the whole story of our times. We are all part of the great narrative that is history, but we have no way of knowing what – if any – influence we will have on it. An ethics that focuses on consequences only is pointless. Because we have no way of knowing the consequences. And sometimes our actions are of importance for entirely unintended reasons. For good – or for bad.

Merry and Pippins actions are of pivotal importance for the victory over Sauron, but they cannot know that as they enter Fangorn – or as they meet Treebeard.

Neither can we know the ultimate consequences of any single action.

All of this just to state my annoyance at Peter Jacksons’ movie. There are three things in the movie that still annoy me. One is the compressing of time at the beginning, where 17 years turns into a few months. Which means that a lot of things go slightly unfocused in the story.

Like Saruman, who uses those 17 years to go from bad to worse. Or the ring wraiths, which must already be at the gates of The Shire as Bilbo gives Frodo the ring (by way of Gandalf). Or Gandalf himself, who should have spent some of those years to uncover the secret of the ring – and now has to do it in mere months.

It simply doesn’t add up. And all that Jackson had to do was put up a poster that said “17 years later”. He could even have kept Frodo looking like a German disco kid, as he doesn’t age much in those 17 years – thanks to the power of the ring.

The two other tings that really rile me about the movie, is the treatment of two of its heroes: Faramir and Treebeard.

Faramir, who in the book is a noble man – one of the few that instantly sees the dangers of using the ring – in the movie becomes a silly, scared kid. And all because they needed a cliffhanger to end the second movie.

It is an ending alien to the book – that also gives us the unbearably stupid scene were Frodo actually waves the ring in front of one of the ring wraiths. So much for a secret mission.

And poor Treebeard. He is the tree herd. OK, we have to repeat that: He is the tree herd of Fangorn. He knows what goes on in his own forest.

Instead of deciding to go to war at the entthing, they decide to stay away. And Treebeard only changes his mind after Pippin (all of this is done simply to make it seem like Pippin is getting smarter) lures him to follow them towards Isengard. Only when he comes to the edge of Fangorn does he see the destruction which has been done to his forest.

He roars with anger, and seconds later a whole gang of ents (that have no reason whatsoever to be there) come out from Fangorn and they march towards Isengard.

His anger tells us one thing: That he didn’t know of the destruction until this moment.

Once again: He is the tree herd. And he doesn’t know that thousands of trees have been cut down to fuel Saruman’s war machine? That is utter nonsense.

I can forgive the compression of time at the beginning. I dislike it, but I realize that it was important for creating the urgency that drives Jacksons’s version of the story. I can almost forgive what is done to Faramir. It is a disgrace, but I understand the need for a cliffhanger at the end of the second movie – even if it is a stupid one.

But I really can’t forgive what is done to Treebeard. Ents have been in Middle Earth almost since the world began. They are a proud race and a truly original one – together with hobbits one of Tolkien’s great feats of true sub creation.

To imply that Treebeard doesn’t know what is happening in his own forest – he has, after all, known some of the cut down trees since they were acorns – isn’t merely to change the plot a bit. It is to fundamentally change one of the races in Tolkien’s world.

It’s an insult to Treebeard, an insult to ents and an insult to Tolkien. It is, in truth, quite unforgiveable, Mr. Jackson.
_____

"ALBUM", BY R.S. THOMAS

2009-11-22T23:41:00.000+01:00

My father is dead.
I who am look at him
who is not, as once he
went looking for me
in the woman who was.

There are pictures
of the two of them, no
need of a third, hand
in hand, hearts willing
to be one but not three.

What does it mean
life? I am here I am
there. Look! Suddenly
the young tool in their hands
for hurting one another.

And the camera says:
Smile; there is no wound
time gives that is not bandaged
by time. And so they do the
three of them at me who weep.
_____

WAHRHEIT MACHT FREI

2009-11-20T01:02:00.000+01:00

As the evil conspiracy of Illuminati and their, ehr, Zionist allies, tries to poison us all with the ”vaccine” against the swine plague – a disease every thinking person knows was invented in the basement of the UN building – it is heartening to see that someone is willing to stand up for truth.

Today 70 brave friends of freedom marched in the streets of Oslo, carrying torches to bring light to our darkened hearts, speaking out against the lies of our government, and their jewi…, sorry, Zionist puppet masters.

The Dodologist raises his hat to such bravery. And heartily recommends extinction.
_____

ZE GERMAN PROFESSOR

2009-11-18T18:21:00.001+01:00

Man, this is annoying. The Dodologist was writing this great post on one of his favourite recording artists, and then he figured out it was even better suited for this blog magazine of which he is the editor. It’s called Knokkelklang, which in English means something like Bone Song. Though, being a word play on the Norwegian title of a rather famous Christmas tune, it’s better translated as Jingle Bones.

As the post has been in progress for a few days, it has effectively eaten up all the time The Extinct One had for meaningful posting, leaving only time for YouTubeing and junk blogging. Something has to be done. It has to be done right now.

What is one to do?

Oh, bugger it, another Benny Hill video will carry us over to a new shiny day of blogish geniusness. Meet Ze German Professor:

_____

HOW TO PLAY THE RACE CARD

2009-11-17T22:10:00.000+01:00

The Dodologist knows a thing or two about being a repressed minority. No one is standing up for the rights of the extinct these days. Bloody vitalism, that's what it is.

Anyway, well … it’s not too fond of racism either. And on the third hand, neither is it all that fond of accusations of racism being used as a stick to beat ones opponents with. How then is one supposed to discuss racism without falling into the trap of stick beating? Here’s how:

_____

ONE READS MORE

2009-11-17T15:17:00.001+01:00

Three very different blogs have been added to the list of What One Reads. They are A little ray of sunshine, the blog of English pagan folk musician Paul Newman, Nothing To Do With Arbroath, one of the greatest purveyors of nonsensical news on the infamous internet, and Magia Posthuma, a blog dedicated to the traditional vampire, written by fellow Scandinavian Niels K. Petersen. They are all well worth a visit.
______

RIP EDWARD WOODWARD

2009-11-16T14:29:00.000+01:00

Must watch out for the danger of YouTubeing. But still, there really is only one way to mark the death today of Edward Woodward. Sending you on, ladies and gentlemen, to The Death Scene from Wicker Man.
_____

POETRY, HILL-STYLE

2009-11-11T12:18:00.000+01:00

Due to popular demand, more Benny Hill. This time in a poetic mode ...

_____

THE VAMPIRE AS VICTIM

2009-11-10T20:53:00.000+01:00

The vampire lecture I’m giving this Thursday carries the title “Poor Vampire. The bloodsucker’s development from monster to victim” (it sounds better in Norwegian). I will air some of the things I’m going to talk about here, to see if I actually agree with myself when I see my opinions published.

The subject is one that has interested me for some time. It is the logical conclusion of a development that started with Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire: When the vampire becomes the protagonist (or a close ally of the protagonist) only a short step is necessary to see it as a victim.

It can be seen as a victim in two senses: Because it is an addict and simply because it is a vampire.

The vampire as addict
The vampire as addict is among the metaphors I find most interesting of all things vampirological. The vampire is not simply addicted, as an alcoholic or a drug addict desperately needs his drink or her fix. Its addiction runs deeper – because it is fatal. Without blood, it will die. This makes it the perfect metaphor of drug addiction as many see it: The moment you are “addicted” you are lost.

For the vampire there is no way out. Except through death, of course. It is best seen in my perhaps favourite vampire movie: Lost Boys (or “The Just Say No”-movie, as I sometimes call it).

It is a schizophrenic movie indeed: The vampires in the movie are the cool guys (being fought by nerds), who “sleep all day, party all night, never grow old and never die”. But they have to feeeeeeeeeed. And that makes them, after all, the bad guys. Cool, but bad. And always “the others”. To become one of them is to be lost. They are, as the title says, Lost Boys.

When they finally die (for instance by being burned to death in a bath tub filled with holy water), they revert from grown, cool men into innocent boys. In death, they are once again human.

Being addicts, it is in this day and age natural to focus on vampires as victims. And they are the perfect victims, as they cannot stop being addicts. There is (outside of Terry Pratchett’s books) no Anonymous Bloodsuckers, for those who want to overcome their addiction. It can’t be done. There is no point in talking about personal responsibility. They either feed, or they die.

The dilemma is very well shown in the South Korean movie Thirst: A priest becomes a vampire, a very introspective and ethical vampire. But he makes his lover a vampire too, and she is anything but introspective or ethical: She is a jolly vampire, a vampire that enjoys her vampirical existence to the full. She is, in other words, a lunatic killer – a vampire that kills for food, but also simply because she can. She is lost anyway, so why not enjoy the ride?

Hers is an impossible existence. A vampire that fully enjoys “life” is simply too dangerous to exist. She has to die. And she does (sorry about that, but it’s not much of a spoiler really), in one of the most elegant endings of any vampire movie I have seen.

The vampire as victim of abuse
But there is also another sense in which vampires are victims: They are victims merely through being vampires. Or rather: Through having been made vampires.

If we accept the premise that being a vampire is a bad thing – you do, after all, have to cause other people’s deaths to stay alive – then being made a vampire must be considered a rather extreme kind of abuse. And every vampire has at some point in its history been made. Which means that the lot of them are abuse victims.

They are predators. But once they were prey. They are murderers. But once they were themselves “murdered”. In this sense, vampires are parallel to sexual offenders, who often themselves have been victims of sexual abuse.

The one exception to this rule, are vampires like the woman in Thirst: She is made a vampire at the point of dying. Making her a vampire is a way for her lover to “save” her life (and boy, does he regret).

The book (and movie) which takes both these concepts of victimhood the furtherest, is the Swedish Let The Right One In, where Eli is both a victim of vampiric violence and abuse and very obviously an addict. She is a killer, but argues that she is not any different than the rest of us: She simply does what she has to in order to stay alive. Wouldn’t we all?

Like the female vampire in Thirst, Elis existence is an impossible one. You simply cannot kill that many people in a fairly small area and expect to get away with it. She has to stay on the run more or less constantly.

The absurdity of it all
And here we approach the absurdity of seeing the vampire as a victim. Because even if it is one, it is also by nature (or un-nature, if you prefer) a killer. People must die for it to stay alive. Others may murder for them, but they are still, essentially, responsible for their deaths.

In my neo-reactionary view of the world, this is where the vampire teaches us something about ourselves. We may all be victims, one way or another. But we are still responsible for our actions. We may have reasons for hurting others, reasons related to our own claims for victimhood, but we are still hurting them. It is still wrong.

It is no point in feeling sorry for the vampire, even if what brought them to their present situation was a road of pain and hurt. Because they are, by their very nature, murderers.

All of this is of course a fairly ridiculous line of reasoning. They don’t actually exist. They are figments of imagination.

True enough, but entertainment – even slightly arty entertainment, like True Blood – tells us something about ourselves. Because entertainment, unlike art, appeals to what we hold dear, rather than, like art, challenging our view of the world. And what we seem to find entertaining these days, is to feel sorry for the vampire. They are the ultimate bad guys, but, we seem to ask ourselves, maybe – just maybe – they are redeemable after all.

This is absurd. Vampires are what the Victorians thought them to be: Demonic murderers. We may no longer fear that they will cost us our salvation and eternal life – which was the real horror of the 19th century vampire – but they want our blood. No, more than that, they need our blood.

There is just one thing to do. We must bring out the hammers and stakes. We must light the pyre. We must defend ourselves. That our entertainment tells us otherwise, tells me that something is truly rotten at the very centre of our culture.
_____

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF BENNY

2009-11-09T23:32:00.000+01:00

As the news arrive that the Royal Mail have found Benny Hill unfit for a stamp, because "... concerns were raised by our public relations team as it was in direct opposition to company's policies on harassment in the workplace", it is as good a time as any to remind oneself of the greatness of one of the funniest men in television.

Here is the wonderful avant garde cinema sketch:

What is of course really funny about it, is that it is not making fun of French movies, but of the pretentious drivel fans of such movies come up with to "analyze" them. It is not the director, but the journalist that is the laughing-stock of the sketch.

And just notice, at 1 minute and 37 seconds, how he ...

True genius!
_____

THE DODOLOGIST, VAMPIROLOGIST

2009-11-09T14:47:00.000+01:00

Not only is The Dodologist well versed in the way of dodologism, he is also a folklorist by education and a (self declared) vampirologist.

Back in the early years of the decade, he wrote a book on vampires in his native Norwegian, and, as the bloodsucking monsters once again are frolicking on a screen near you, his publisher has, in their infinite wisdom (i.e. need to make some money), decided to release it as a paperback. Which is nice.

That again means he has to do things like debating vampires in a panel at the Oslo Science Fiction Festival (which was fun), talk to journalists (which mostly isn’t) and give talks (which very well may be, at least for him).

Being a board member of Oslo’s Heretic Basement, he said yes to himself when he asked if he would like to give a talk there. So he will. This thursday, November the 12th, to be precise.

In the words of the formidable C.M.O.T. Dibbler: “Bee there orr bee a rectangular thyng!”
_____

The picture, by the way, is from the Spanish language version of the classic Dracula, filmed at night at the set where the English one, with Bela Lugosi, was being made during the day. Carlos Villarias is Draula.
_____

"WE HAVE MADE FICTION TO SUIT OURSELVES"

2009-11-07T23:02:00.000+01:00

"... a man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into a fixed star, and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope. Millions of mild black-coated men call themselves sane and sensible merely because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world."

"Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves."

Quotes from G.K. Chesterton: Heretics, chapter 4
_____

SUPPORT THE GREATEST SWIM TEAM!

2009-11-07T00:36:00.000+01:00

As a man of class and style, The Dodologist obviously prefers cardigans, tweeds and bow ties. But sometimes, just once in a rare while, he puts on a t-shirt. And as he enjoys supporting great athletics, there was no way around ordering this one:

There simply wasn't.

Click pic for a chance to support some really great athletics. Like running for your life ...
_____

THE FALL AND RISE OF THE WALL

2009-11-06T10:42:00.000+01:00

The Dodologist is a lover, not a hater... Yeah, right!

Well you wouldn’t be all that perky yourself, if extinction was a fact of your daily life. And, after all, being a neo-reactionary is more than simply being gloomy. It’s being gloomy with an axe to grind.

Whatever. The Dodologist loves irony and hates – and he really, really means hates – those Irish wannabe messiahs – U2. You know, the great enemies of greed and capitalism that fled Ireland to skimp on taxes. Smug bastards.

Now, this is wonderfully absurd: Because U2 are such great lovers of freedom, they celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by playing a free concert for 10 000 people in front of the Brandenburg Gate. And for safety reasons they obviously had to put up a huge fence around the bloody thing, blocking the sight for everybody else.

So, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, they … put up a new wall!

Oh, the irony.
_____

THE BIRD SEX SONG

2009-11-05T22:28:00.000+01:00

The Dodologist presents an old favourite, by the veryveryfunny Garfunkel & Oates.

It is hardly strange that it is a favourite: Beautiful women singing about sex with birds (even if they’re not dodos). What’s not to like?

_____

IRONICALLY SPIKED

2009-11-04T14:05:00.001+01:00

The Dodologist is listening to classical music. Judas Priest, to be precise. Something he is hard-pressed to do without being reminded of one of the great jokes of rock´n´roll couture. To quote Wikipedia:

"Distinct aspects of heavy metal fashion can be credited to various bands, but the band that takes the most credit for revolutionizing the look was Judas Priest, primarily with its singer, Rob Halford. Halford wore a leather costume on stage as early as 1978 to coincide with the promotion for the Hell Bent for Leather album. In a 1998 interview, Halford described the biker and leather subculture as the inspiration for this look."

Anyone who has seen pictures of the performers of that great Norwegian cultural export, Black Metal, knows where this would end: In sheer, ridiculous absurdity. The spiked leather gauntlets grew steadily spikier, until they were more than sufficiently long to spike their leather clad, vampiric looking wearers.

Now, you can say a lot about the Black Metal scene – most of it strongly sarcastic – but they do, like many of their metal cousins, tend to be more than a little bit homophobic.

And here’s the joke: Halford, who came out as gay in 1998, was rightly inspired by the “leather subculture”. And though that subculture was not exclusively homosexual, to a large extent it was. Which means that when the homophobic metal-heads of today prance around in leather and metal gauntlets, they are sporting a style largely taken from the homosexual leather scene.

Now, how is that for irony?
_____

THE DYING SPIDERS

2009-11-03T14:44:00.000+01:00

The spiders in our basement are dying.

They are young males, I hear, gone astray on their search for a mate. And they are, at least for Norwegian spiders, big fellows. They show up every year, signalling the end of summer.

Mostly, it must be said, they are dying through unfortunate run ins with The Dodologists wife. But even if they manage to steer clear of The Wife – and whatever she may happen to, eh, drop upon them – they are dying.

We find them crouched up, with their legs pulled up underneath them; very, very dead. Which means autumn is coming to an end.

Not that I need the spiders to tell me winter is on its way. A week ago, the trees were yellow. Now it’s the ground underneath them that is. The trees are almost naked; skeletons awaiting the inevitable cold.

I like this time of year, even if I’m not all that fond of the spiders. It’s a time of death and decay. But it’s also a time of hibernating indoors, with a pot of tea and 39 Chesterton-books on my Kindle. It’s a good time.

Unless you’re a spider of course.
_____

THE DODO DECLARATION

2009-11-02T14:18:00.000+01:00

The dodo bird is extinct.

It was a big, slow and peaceful pigeon – entirely unable to fly – that had adapted perfectly to the conditions on a group of islands where it didn’t have a single enemy.

Then humans showed up. They brought dogs and pigs.

And suddenly it was a really bad idea to lay one egg, once in a rare while, directly on the ground – and then mock about doing other stuff while it hatched itself.

Suddenly the dodo bird was extinct.

The Dodologist is a project in the spirit of the dodo. While reality runs its course around us, we drink our tea and take note of the sufficiently unimportant with our virtual fountain pen.

These notes may cover a large area of subjects, but stuff like music, literature, religion and politics may show up.

Consider yourself warned.

The Dodologist is male and middle aged, rude, annoyed and elitist. He does agree than no one has invented a better political system than democracy – but still doesn’t like it.

The Dodologist is a self declared reactionary, but realizes that the best thing about the past is that it is past. It's not that they did everything well back then, but the past being past means we can focus on the good stuff.

And at least they didn’t have gangster rap. Or “psychics” solving crimes on television.

People are people, and mostly annoying, but if you have the dignity not to reduce yourself to a group membership or your own victimhood, there is every chance we may interact in a civil way.

This being the internet, though, the chances are good that we won’t. That is probably for the best.
_____