Death to Art Critics

Fuck Roger Ebert. Yes, fuck him. Fuck film critics in general. Some people hate artists because they're pretentious or arrogant. I don't, they're just fools. But art critics. Oh. They are the parasite that feeds off the fool. And everyone else. They survive by trying to convince people that their opinion weighs more than anyone else's. And while they try to convince everyone else they also convince themselves. So they slowly adopt the appearance of a judge, condemning or praising a piece of creation based on their own, oft ill-informed, subjective criteria.
I fucking hate art critics. And most of all film critics. They have even developed their own dialect which they try to make more and more exclusive so that people will feel more and more stupid for not being privy to their secrets. In essence, it is yet another glorified boys' club.
Not to mention they diss films I like and praise some of the dullest, most uninspired shite that was ever shat into creation. So yeah. Fuck them.

Chasseurs de Skins

These young men refused the brand of victimisation through the technique of cracking nazi skulls. And here I am, unable to stop thinking how hot they look.

The Butterfly and the Chair

Excerpt of a letter from Subcomandante Marcos to Angel Luis Lara, 12 October 2002.

the butterfly

Rebellion is like the butterfly that flies out towards that sea without islands or rocks. It knows that there will be no resting place, and yet it does not waver in its flight. And no, neither the butterfly nor rebellion are foolish or suicidal; the thing is, they know that they'll have a resting place, that out there is a huge old island that no satellite has ever detected. And this big island is a sister rebellion which will set out just when the butterfly, that is, the flying rebellion, starts to falter. Then the flying rebellion, that is, the sea butterfly, will become part of that emergent island, and will be the landing point for another butterfly already beginning its determined flight towards the sea. This would be no more than a mere curiosity in biology books, but as I-don't-know-who said, the flutter of a butterfly wing is often the origin of the greatest hurricanes. With its flight, the flying rebellion, that is, the butterfly, is saying NO!

No to logic. No to prudence. No to immobility. No to conformism.

And nothing, absolutely nothing, will be as wonderful as seeing the audacity of that flight, appreciating the challenge it represents, feeling how it starts to agitate the wind and seeing how, with those drafts, it is not the leaves of the trees that tremble, but the legs of the powerful who until then naively thought that butterflies died if they flew out over the sea.

...........................................................

And there are times that butterflies from all over gather, and then there is a rainbow. And the task of butterflies, as any respectable encyclopedia will tell you, is to bring the rainbow down closer so children can learn how to fly.

the chair

The Revolutionary (like that, with capital R) scorns ordinary chairs and says to others and himself: “I don't have time to sit down, the heavy mission commended to me by History (like that, with capital H) prevents me from distracting myself with nonsense.” He goes through life like this until he runs into the chair of Power. He throws off with one shot whomever is sitting on the chair, sits down and frowns, as if he were constipated, and says to others and himself: “History (like that, with capital H) has been fulfilled. Everything, absolutely everything, makes sense now. I am sitting on the Chair (like that, with capital C) and I am the culmination of the times.” There he remains until another Revolutionary (like that, with capital R) comes by, throws him off and history (like that, with small h) repeats itself. The rebel (like that, with small r), on the other hand, when he sees an ordinary chair, examines it carefully, then goes and puts another chair next to it, and another and another, and soon, it looks like a gathering because more rebels (like that, with small r) have come, and then the coffee, tobacco and the word begin to circulate and mix, and then, precisely when everyone starts to feel comfortable, they get antsy, as if they had ants in their pants, and they don't know if it's from the coffee or the tobacco or the word, but everyone gets up and keeps on going the way they were going. And so on until they find another ordinary chair and history repeats itself. There is only one variation, when the rebel runs into the Chair of Power (like that, with capital C, capital P), looks at it carefully, examines it, but instead of sitting there he goes and gets a fingernail file and, with heroic patience, he begins sawing at the legs until they are so fragile that they break when someone sits down, which happens almost immediately.

Shamelessly taken from here
The whole thing here (in .pdf)

The Last Will and Testament of Alexander Dragoumis

My name is Alexander Dragoumis and this is my last will and testament. I sense my end coming and I cannot help but feel blessed by Lady Fortune that my life will end by natural means. I have lived to see things no man should see, things I could not have hoped to see and retain my sanity. And yet I did. But perhaps that is not so fortunate. Maybe I should have lost my mind along with my naivete. Maybe then I would not have to carry this burden. But I cannot complain about what life dealt me.

I used to be a ruthless man in my youth. A greedy little runt. Never looking beyond bottom lines and personal gain and for that I am sorry. But for some things I do not apologise. I still find man to be a sorry excuse of a being. A bottomless well into which the hopes of gods are forever cast, never to return. I do not hate man, I pity him. For he is a feeble beast, capable of brilliant ascension and uttermost horror but seldom the clarity to choose wisely between the two. Pardon me reader if these seem the last ramblings of a faltering old mind. My mind is as youthful as it ever was though my body is weakened by time. I have lived through things I would not wish upon my bitterest of enemies and yet my mind has steeled itself and stayed strong. Or at least I think so.

As I said, I was a cold and calculating thing and it was this moral deformity that lead me into the line of work that made me a small fortune. In the shining glory of Smyrna and Constantinople I lived and worked in the dank shadows. I pawned off works of art to the highest bidder, effectively selling off the great culture of Asia Minor. At the time I may have rationalised what I did as providing a service to noble people that knew how to appreciate exquisite cultural artifacts but I see now that it would not have mattered what I sold and to whom as long the price was right.

It was this social degeneracy of mine that lead me to flee with as much money as I could the troubles of Smyrna. I should have burned in its flames. Cruel but fair is the judgment of our future selves and woe to the man that fails himself as an old man for he shall be cast into non-existence. I have to live with the things I did and I can only hope that in the balance of my judgment my evils will not outweigh any selflessness I may have shown. I fled to Athens and slowly resumed my loathsome work there with a fledgling gentry almost literally devouring anything I could bring over. It helped that some of my clients were military men. The imperialist Greek army did most of my dirty work while I was in Greece. Soon I had enough funds and influence to try and get back to Constantinople and maybe even Smyrna to build again my foul business.

I booked a ticket on the Orient Express and that was what condemned me and enlightened me. I have seen unspeakable horrors, O reader, the human form twisted and mutated until it is a mere mockery of its former self. Innumerable human lives treated casually as we treat dirt and dust. I looked into Insanity’s gaping maw and felt irresistible forces pull me in. I cannot pretend it was my resilience that saved me, nor my cunning, though I had plenty. It was sheer, dumb luck. I was a mere plaything in the infinite playroom of gods and though I was occasionally rattled, I was never broken.

On that damned train ride I met a group of what now only seems as a group of broken and insane folk. People that had been poked and prodded once too many by the gods, their minds now lesser than what they used to be. I cannot blame them now, I used to, for surely they suffered much more than I did. They never trusted me and how could they. Our lives became inexplicably entwined on that train after facing a vile creature which at the time terrified me but only because I did not yet know what was to follow.
I saved them and I am ashamed to admit that I felt vengeful that they did not recognise it. As if the goal of selflessness was profit. Such an imbecile I was. I helped them time and time again, facing unspeakable terrors with them until a horrible accident befell me and I was left with incurable wounds. They left me without a second thought and I must admit I blame them too for what I did next even though I take most of the responsibility. I betrayed them to enemies that then seemed inconsequential until I found out that bigger things were at stake than our little insignificant lives.

What fools men are. And our enemy was the biggest one. I took great pleasure in killing him and enjoyed it even more the second time around. I kept them safe from danger and they did not even know it, let alone acknowledge it. In the end, when I had stopped caring for my life we faced cruel, cavernous intellects beyond the planes that any mortal should ever be allowed to inhabit. Elder gods that no living thing should ever have to face no matter how heinous its crimes. And yet we survived.
I left them and everything else behind. No kind of normalcy could ever be expected after that. We never really became friends. Necessity kept us together and now I felt that I was needed elsewhere. Smyrna pulled on my soul and now I knew what I had to do. Since then I have dedicated my life making sure that no man will ever have to face what I did. I have uncovered every possible kind of artifact imaginable that channeled powers that should not be and made sure it would become unusable.

I am a man that has made his peace with how the world is and with himself. I hope I have redeemed myself and I hope I leave the world in a slightly better shape than when I found it. May no man ever see the things I have seen and if they do, may the gods grant them mercy in the form of insanity or a swift death.

Smyrna, 11th August 1953