Scott Vaught Loves Chocolate

Bocaledonia furrybackmimus (subspecies: fecalis)

The rare and awe-inspiring "Hairy Scotty Bo," alternatively known as the "$#!@ty Bo" is here seen in his natural environment - an awe-inspiring moment never before captured on film. Watch as he consumes chocolatey products until, having attained an unfathomable sugar high, he bolts for the nearest "watering hole" where he will drink until passing out, lounging with his astounding pelt shining in the moonlight where it terrifies both women and children. This particular specimen has been tracked by the reknowned scientist Allen W. Worrell, NBC, FBN, and HorS, for over a decade now - waxing poetic, he once stated about this breed, "they are magnificent, like wild buffalo addicted to candy. . . until you've seen one rip a Wal-Mart to shreds for M&Ms and Reeses Cups, you have never known fear . . . or awe."



Hing.




Also, his pledge name was Chewbacca.

Hieronymus Bosch

Time to make up for some lost "blog karma." After all, I did just publish an entry about killing animated gerbils for entertainment. Guess I owe the world some higher-order thoughts. So I don't die. Or go to hell. Or get reborn as a largish shrub.



One of my favorite artists is Hieronymus Bosch - yes, the same Hieronymus Bosch I mention below but otherwise ignore. Anyway, Mr. Bosch is the granddaddy of all surrealism, and, I might add, quite by accident. Think of it like this - Dali tried really, really hard to make us all think he was a surrealist and an eccentric. Bosch? He painted what he felt, what he the world to be like beyond his front door. And I mean that in a literal sort of sense. Sure, there is metaphor in his work, but remember, this is a man emerging from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance not in wacky, wild, and wonderful Italy, but in the devout, slightly stodgy (in the best way possible) Netherlands (some things have, by the way, changed). This man was actively trying to portray the universe he imagined existed, a universe full of demons and angels and monstrosities, all within the context of contemporary, up-to-the minute fashion and technology. Makes you wonder if we all shouldn't reread Dante's Inferno (not to mention Paradiso and Purgatorio) again in the absence of professors of literature, doesn't it?

Well, I don't want to bias your interpertation of Mr. Bosch too much - he deserves better than that. I just want to throw a couple links at you and let you check out his work. First, as always, there is Mark Hardin's fantastic Artchive page - in particular check out St. Anthony in Meditation. And, of course, the WebMuseum doesn't let us down - here I recommend spending an hour looking at The Ship of Fools. That said, I have three other sites that have collected a whole jonx-load of images - specifically a lady named Olga's web gallery, Carol Gerten-Jackson's web gallery, and the Art Renewal Center's gallery.

In particular, I think the work of Bosch is fantastic for art history and art education for one key reason - his imagery, which may be favorably called a fine arts version of Ripley's Believe It Or Not interbred with the Book of Revelation, well, it captures your attention, and not just the attention of us artsy-fartsy types. No indeed, here is fine art you can throw up on the projector screen and get high schoolers or, dare I think it, even middle schoolers to look at. Oh, they may not shut up or stop passing their notes and listing to their, um, New Kids on the Block and Vanessa Williams or whatever, but they will absorb it. I mean hell, its tough to ignore a fish devouring a human soul. Probably.

And that is a beginning.

[cue theme song to The Facts of Life]

Beach Bully Theology

Dude, I was looking for an image for the post below, and what turns up? This animated gif from a Catholic magazine called Envoy. I'm a (bad) Methodist, but I can definitely say this - this is funny stuff, and anything that makes fun of self-righteous, pushy, "beach bully-protestants," well, I'm for it.

"Silly papists." Wow.

Joe Cartoon

So way back in 1999, when I was in language school for Chinese at Beloit, I thought I was gonna' knock myself off. Stress was high, to say the least. But I had a high-speed internet connection and a dream. So I used both. My second Friday there (yes, I do remember it in that much detail) I was waiting for my pals Ben and Faust, and six or seven other guys (Andy, Joe, Bunny, that blonde guy who thought he was dating Jessamyn, etc.), when I decided to do a search on WebCrawler (yes, I do remember the search engine as well) for online cartoons.

This is how I found Joe Cartoon.

First, let me tell you, this site is screwed up. By that I don't mean that links don't work or the animation is poor or any such nonsense. No. By that I mean it graphically depicts screwed up stuff, but in a funny way. I can't possibly explain it, so make sure the kids are in bed then:

1) dice a frog in a blender,
2) fry a gerbil in a microwave,
3) heave lemmings (that look like gerbils) off a cliff,
4) impale-a-boss,
5) sacrifice a gerbil to the fish-gods,
6) abuse a limbless, idiot canine,
7) kick a chihuahua,
8) whoop the Rainman and his poodle,
9) spank his monkey,

okay that last one, maybe my favorite. So horrible. So ashamed.

10) follow the adventures of A.K.
or 11) study intoxicated drosophilia

That's just the tip of the iceberg, but consider those links the "cannot miss" list. Or don't. Whatever.

Oh, and those gerbils, they sound like what would happen if you genetically recombined the DNA of George W. with that of Bill Clinton. Seriously. Or the Bee. Who was a mascot. And is now a vice-principal.

Also, there's a gerbil.

Dinosaur Comics

Jay Burns and I were chatting it up online and he said something along these lines:

"Eric, you suck so bad if you don't read Dinosaur Comics."

Oh hellz no. I don't suck.

This is the homepage of Dinosaur Comics. The main characters of these comics are Tyrannosaurus Rex, Dromiceiomimus, and Utahraptor. Minor characters include a car, a log cabin, and a woman.

I'm not lying to you. A log cabin.

These characters usually engage in philosophical and political discussions. They occasionally crush and/or devour one another. It is, frankly, nifty.

A guy named Ryan North from Canada writes this comic about archosaurs and log cabins and police cars and women. I think he went to Bayside High with Screech and Zach and Slater and the three pseudo-feminists.

Also if your patience is simply too inadequate to deal with "reading" comics, check out this fan film - it makes me happy.

Sea Serpents

I have been to Loch Ness. Let me repeat that for you, because I really like to say it. I have been to Loch Ness. I have ridden across the lake in a boat and I have gazed down at the lake from the top of a centuries old castle. I have stood on the rocky shore of the lake and let the water just barely touch the soles of my shoes then, perhaps instinctively, perhaps neurotically, stepped four or five good paces back. I have been to a place of Monsters.

That is awesome.

All that said, I just found this site on Tinselman's blog. Yeah, there is huge (577 pages) Adobe .pdf file of a late 19th Century zoological masterpiece on sea serpents by a guy with a friggin' awesome name: Anthonid Cornelis Oudemans.

SNAP!


The only man not jealous of that name is Hieronymus Bosch - which is what I'd name my firstborn child if Sarah would let me. But she won't - and we're not even married yet. Damn.

Fatalities

This is, frankly, one of the most elegant representations of the real impact of war on its participants I've ever seen. Just click the red button and watch.

Stamps of the Soviet Era: 1918-1990

So, you like Soviets? You like postage stamps? You like Soviets and postage stamps???

HOLY JUMPING SWEET TEA OF AUGUSTA.

Georgia.

Yeah yeah yeah. All that said, here is a site where you can indulge your desire for totalitarian propaganda and philately. You love it. YOU FRIGGIN' LOVE IT.

Wow. Gotta' lay off the Big K Brand Diet Pink Lemonade.


Also, there's a picture of the Mongolian flag.

They Rule

Before we begin, it should be known - I chose Winn-Dixie because Piggly-Wiggly, the other major hyphenated provider of groceries in these United States of America, was not available.

This one doesn't require very much commentary - its a site that allows you to map the relationships between all the people and corportations that have more money, power, and suits than you. Unless you are one of those people. Or corporations. Of course if you're a corporation that means you're an artificial people.


Damned Frankenstein monsters.

Websites as Graphs and a Band Named Phebus

This website is totally awesome and also serves little to no observable purpose. Can I hear a buya?

Hit the website, enter your website (or the website of anyone else you want to map, for instance, to allow you to storm it more successfully with your, um, stormtroopers). Then wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it.




Eventually you'll get maps something like these:

http://www.smithsbluebook.com

http://smithsblueblog.blogspot.com

Oh damn! That's awesome.

The Maker (a jonx named Sala) is, by the by, also a member of a band named Phebus - I am still considering their groove right now . . . reminds me a little of Coheed and Cambria, but only superficially . . . has a real Euro-rock feeling, kinda' like a light U2. I dunno. You can check 'm out here on mySpace.com - also, their home page is here (in German, but WorldLingo translated it pretty efficiently for me) and you can download a song of Phebus' which pretty much rocks off a link from the mapping/graphing site above here. You also might want to check out this promotional site.

Oh yeah. And there is this thing (conceptual artwork). If you're into that sort of thing.

NCAA Football Predictions

Listen, I can't pretend to be a true expert in football. I consistently am amazed at what I'm learning about the game, both through the process of reading about the game and watching it, not to mention long conversations with men and women far more acquainted with it than I.

That said, I am excited about this fall. Not only do I expect great things from WVU, but I hope Tennessee's program will recover substantially.

And I have cable for the first time in years.

Regardless, I thought I'd share some research I'd done with you: the predictions of a substantial number of experts as to the NCAA final rankings.

ESPN/USAToday Coaches Poll

1. Texas
2. USC
3. Penn State
4. Ohio State
5. LSU
6. West Virginia
7. Virginia Tech
8. Alabama
9. TCU
10. Georgia
11. Notre Dame
12. Oregon
13. UCLA
14. Auburn
15. Wisconsin
16. Florida
17. Boston College
18. Miami (FL)
19. Texas Tech
20. Louisville
21. Clemson
22. Oklahoma
23. Florida State
24. Nebraska
25. California

The Associated Press Poll

1. Texas
2. USC
3. Penn State
4. Ohio State
5. West Virginia
6. LSU
7. Virginia Tech
8. Alabama
9. Notre Dame
10. Georgia
11. TCU
12. Florida
13. Oregon
14. Auburn
15. Wisconsin
16. UCLA
17. Miami (FL)
18. Boston College
19. Louisville
20. Texas Tech
21. Clemson
22. Oklahoma
23. Florida State
24. Nebraska
25. California

Athlon Sports

1. Oklahoma
2. Notre Dame
3. USC
4. Ohio State
5. Florida
6. West Virginia
7. Texas
8. California
9. Auburn
10. Louisville
11. LSU
12. Clemson
13. Michigan
14. Miami (FL)
15. Georgia
16. Iowa
17. Florida State
18. TCU
19. Oregon
20. Tennessee
21. Virginia Tech
22. Texas Tech
23. Utah
24. Arizona State
25. Nebraska

The Sporting News

1. Notre Dame
2. Ohio State
3. Auburn
4. LSU
5. West Virginia
6. USC
7. Texas
8. Florida
9. Oklahoma
10. Florida State
11. Iowa
12. Georgia
13. California
14. Miami (FL)
15. Penn State
16. Virginia Tech
17. Michigan
18. Tennessee
19. Louisville
20. Texas Tech
21. TCU
22. Nebraska
23. Oregon
24. Clemson
25. Alabama

Lindy's Sports

1. Notre Dame
2. Ohio State
3. West Virginia
4. Texas
5. Florida
6. USC
7. Oklahoma
8. Auburn
9. California
10. LSU
11. Michigan
12. Florida State
13. Louisville
14. Georgia
15. Utah
16. Miami
17. TCU
18. Clemson
19. Arizona State
20. Virginia Tech
21. Penn State
22. Nebraska
23. Oregon
24. Texas Tech
25. Iowa

and finally. . .

Street & Smith's

1. Ohio State
2. West Virginia
3. Texas
4. Notre Dame
5. Florida
6. California
7. USC
8. Auburn
9. LSU
10. Oklahoma
11. Florida State
12. Michigan
13. Louisville
14. Miami
15. Virginia Tech
16. Arizona State
17. Nebraska
18. Alabama
19. Georgia
20. Penn State
21. Iowa
22. Texas Tech
23. Clemson
24. Oregon
25. TCU

Interesting stuff, eh? What interests me the most about this is that there seems to be relatively little agreement as to who should be where. . . such unsettlement, in my opinion at least, makes for an interesting season - one full of doubt and high hopes, the combination of which leads to good football.

Being a firm believer that the more informed decisions, the better accuracy we can arrive at (sometimes), I amalgamated the charts through weighting the rankings and averaging them. This is the result:

1. Ohio State
2. Texas
3. West Virginia
4. USC
5. Notre Dame
6. LSU
7. Florida
8. Auburn
9. (tied) Virginia Tech/Georgia
11. Oklahoma
12. California
13. (tie) Florida State/Miami
15. TCU
16. Louisville
17. Alabama
18. Texas Tech
19. (tied) UCLA/Clemson
21. Wisconsin
22. (tied) Iowa/Nebraska
24. (tied) Arizona State/Boston College

Also, Alabama was ranked on only four lists, Michigan and Iowa on only three, UCLA, Arizona State, Wisconsin, and Boston College on only two lists, and Utah and Tennesse on only one list.

Before I sign off, I just want to point out a sad, sad thing. For years the Peach Bowl, one of the great classics of college football, has been sponsored by a major corporation that, until this moment, I had long given creedence as being somewhat "different" from other corporations - by different I mean willing to combine good business practices with a certain level of moral propriety, that is to say a genuine dedication to values (to the the nature of the values is less significant than the fact that their dedication to them). That company was, and is, Chik-Fil-A.

I am disappointed in Chick-Fil-A. They have changed the name of the Peach Bowl to the Chik-Fil-A Bowl. Because, I suppose, the Chik-Fil-A Peach Bowl didn't give them enough air and face time. My disappointment is palatable, not merely because another corporation has decided their marginal gains are more important than keeping a great American tradition about more than money (at least a little). Here is the letter I have just sent them:

Dear Sir or Ma'am:
I am writing not in reference to your restaurant or its products per say - I have long been a customer of your company and have never had any complaint as to the quality of food, cleanliness of facilities, or quality of service at any of the locations I have visited (primarily, I might add, in Bluefield, WV and Knoxville, TN). Instead, I am writing to mention my disappointment with your company's decision to change the name of the Peach Bowl to the Chk-Fil-A Bowl. I understand that your sponsorship of this nearly forty year-old institution is part of your efforts to make an honest profit for your shareholders/owners. That said, I have long been impressed at your company's willingness to sacrifice certain potential profits for long-term customer and employee loyalty - specifically I mention your high-quality of food and your no-Sundays policy. My father is a business man who has made certain sacrifices, though of a different type, on principle as well and I know and appreciate how difficult such sacrifices can be. Yet your company has endured through this without complaint. Yet now your company is willingly sacrificing a small part of a great American tradition for, if we are honest, likely to yield only marginal returns. I make no complaint to your affixing your corporate name and logo to the Peach Bowl's, but replacing it entirely strikes me as unacceptable and, to be frank, as money-grubbing. In a time when corporations are buying stadiums and teams around the world and franchising themselves through those institutions, I never expected yours to engage in such an act.

I hope that you will reconsider your action - perhaps it is a little thing and my concerns are misplaced, but given your company's history, I felt it warrented attention - unlike some corporations, I feel yours is genuinely concerned with the preservation of quality, not merely the acquisition of wealth. My best wishes for your future endeavors.

Sincerely,
Eric Drummond Smith

I sent the letter using the Chik-Fil-A corporate website and I encourage you to do the same - just click here and ask them to please let the Peach Bowl be called the Peach Bowl. Its not a bad company, really, it just needs its conscience "stoked."

Love the football.

Jose Guadalupe Pasada

You're gonna' wanta' click on these, see them in the large. Consider:




Wow. That's the kind of stuff that makes me jealous.

Here's the gist of things - one of my favorite artists of all time is a gentleman from Mexico, circa the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, by the name of Jose Guadalupe Pasada. Mr. Pasada was an illustrator, favoring in particular lithography. If you want a general biography, I recommend this one from the Posada Collection at the University of New Mexico - otherwise, let me share some of Posada's work in a style I can only describe as a la BibliOdyssey. In particular however, the art history books tend to remember Mr. Posada for his calaveras:





They're beautiful aren't they? I'm a particular fan of two elements of Posada's work - on the one hand how he demonstrates the universalness of humanity's essential characteristics (our differentiations are artificially and socially constructed, for the most part) and his expressiveness, with particular reference to his use of line and gesture. Sure, his work looks, for lack of a better word, "complete," planned out, not particularly spontaneous, but even amidst that it retains life - the line and form of his works aren't subjected to any sort of iconic tyranny, which is particularly astounding in reference to Pasada's use of traditional Latin and Western iconography. But I do go on.

I've got a few links for you. First, there is the Posada Collection at UNM (where I got not only all these wonderful pics but also the link to the biography above). It has a substantial assortment of images which you can search by subject, description, or number, or you can just watch as a slideshow. Be sure to watch the little calavera drag in the page options at the top of the page - he's the most adorable undead being since Casper.


The ghost.


Artchive has four large calaveras as well - most famous among them, the infinitely reproduced La Calavera Catrina. The University of Hawai'i also has a great travelling exhibit, most of the works of which are online at this great site.

Death's Head Mouse

So I've been perusing old archives of different sites a lot lately - comes with the sudden, overwhelming access to the internet when I'm trying to calm down for bed, and I found this Boing Boing entry. So awesome - nothing like combining calaveras with the animated delight who is the greatest masterpiece of American popular design. Huzzah!

Oh, and for you jewelry addicts, a search on Metacrawler for images only revealed this additional gem which, um, lacks a gem. Yeah. Bottom of the table.

David Choe

Rarely do I come across an artist who I decide, almost the instant I peruse his or her work, will be one of my favorites. Favorite is an important concept, underrated often, not because it is different from respect, but because it implies respect with something extra - like the difference between necessary and sufficient in science, perhaps.

David Choe is one of those artists. His work, well, it is amazing, frankly. Subtle and emotional, a mixture of delicately applied pigments, masterfully utilized composition and design, an amalgamation of expressionism and East Asian tradition with primitivism (or at least the non-Western and/or non-Modern artists who inspired Western primitivism). I find myself repeatedly comparing Choe to the man whose work I consider the pinnacle of expressionism - the great, the masterful, the utterly astounding Egon Schiele.

Choe is different though - his work has not only been transfigured by pop art, but furthermore by conceptual and neo-expressionist work - for instance his work utilizes non-traditional pigments, including bodily fluids, a development which seems to be a by-product of a stint in a Japanese prison.

As for samples of Mr. Choe's work, well, we can turn to a number of valid sources. First and foremost, of course is his home page, a well-designed, easily navigable site with a substantial collection of works of every conceivable material, subject matter, and scale. Also, check out a sample of the works he produced in prison with found materials. . . really astounding fine art made with found materials, the epitome of beauty. GuerrillaOne also has some samples of Choe's paintings.

A warning, though, to those with kids or conservative bosses or co-workers. Mr. Choe, like many expressionists and neo-expressionists, frequently portrays sexual themes, often in extremely sensual (that is to say "expressive") ways which often border on the pornographic - again, like Mr. Schiele. This isn't meant to be taken as either vindictiveness or criticism: it isn't. But his work might be taken as NSFW: not safe for work. Or whippersnappers. Trust me - I intend to own one of his works as soon as I have a paycheck that can afford a sample of his work.

In conclusion, I just want to note the Biblical verse Mr. Choe references, Revelation 22:21:

The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

Coming from Mr. Choe, that's deep stuff - of course, it was always intended to be, wasn't it?

Energy Fiend

Have you ever had so much caffiene and sugar, probably during exams, that you start flipping out like Cornholio on a bender? Yeah, me too. You remember when your forehead was pounding and you were like, damn skippy, what is going on? Is my forehead going to blow up? Or something else equally not cool?

Yeah, you do.

Well, this website is for you. You want to know how many delicious Mountain Dews it would take to kill you? Well, it'd take 373 to kill me. I guess really quickly, you know, all the chemicals in the system at once. How many Coca-Cola Classics? 602. RC Colas? 474. And an even 500 Sunkists. Yum!

Of course, if you're more interested in sugary caffiene than, um, caffeine-y caffeine, we, just click here - you might find out it'd take 3,413 Kit Kats to wax you. Huzzah!

Virtual Jamestown

Earlier I posted an article about a wonderful book, Love and Hate in Jamestown. The other day, just randomly surfing, I found an interesting link about the same the same subject. There are a plethora of truly impressive options available - in particular a substantial set of maps and simulations, including time-scale settlement simulations and not to mention original watercolor images and their etchings. Trust me, the Virtual Jamestown site, well, its worth a couple hours of your day, especially if you're planning a little vacation. To Virginia, not like, France. Or China. Or Somewhere.

BibliOdyssey

Jumping French-Canadians. I found this one earlier, linked off of Boing-Boing, and cripes and hamburgers its good stuff. In essence, the "author" (or perhaps I should say "editor") collects fantastic pieces of artwork from books and other resources and posts them. The key here, however, is that the work is just the kind of work we all should have access to (and as artists, should have already been influenced by) but have, by the nature of things, never had the opportunity to have been so graced. BEAUTIFUL stuff.

I am going to give this site, and its anonymous creator, my greatest recommendation, for what that is worth.

Thank-you for making the web what it is supposed to be - a bastian of truly excellent, intellectually stimulating, life-enriching data and images. You deserve every award this infernal electronic-communal-just-three-miles-short-of-Wonderland system can give you.

Vaughn will be pleased.

Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages

This is one of those websites I have read and reread over and over again, ever since I was back at the University of Virginny. . . heck, I even exchanged e-mails a few times with the good professor, who gave me advice on trying to specialize in propaganda studies and writing my master's thesis (specifically that it was gonna' be tough - it was, and now I study warfare). Regardless, this website, well, its flat awesome. If you're fascinated by how good design can be used to convince good people to do ungood things, well, bam, here you go. I'm always impressed, by the by, by two elements of Chinese propaganda: its utter lack of subtlety or irony and its so-very-odd blend of Socialist realism with classical (popular) Chinese color schemes. I dunno'. I hope you enjoy it.

Historical Anatomies

I love macabres and calaveras. Love 'm. Am I obsessed with death? Sure, a little. But that is probably to be expected of someone whose first horribly painful near-death experience was at the age of five. Huzzah!

Anyway, ever since I did a paper on Renaissance anatomist Vesalius for my mentor Dean James Dawsey (a truly great man, no joking aside) at glorious Emory & Henry, well, I have become equally fascinated with the artwork of anatomy and physiology. Here is a kind of art/craft that joins science and art more completely than virtually any other (even if the other arts utilize science to an incredible extent).

Well, when I came upon this website, I knew I had to add it to the ol' Blog. Historical Anatomies on the Web, you say? No, surely not! Yes, surely so! But the title, Eric, you're saying, so boring, so "humdrum." Look at the website, I declared loudly.

Whoa. Sorry. . . I was slipping into poorly written drama mode. Apologies.

Anyway, check out the site. I know its a little odd, but if you're not fascinated by the material, well, I just don't know what will fascinate you. Chief.

Factual Material

Let me start at the beginning. This website that I'm about to review, well, they say some pretty mean things, and they say them while using some pretty foul language. That said, I think its awesome, even if I disagree with alot, if not most, of what they're screamin' - though I know they're using irony like a palette and sarcasm as their brush.

The site, Factual Material, is really a collection of opinions that are, in the author's stated opinions, to be regarded as fact. They use HTML in the most elementary way, giving (I think intentionally) their website that "doomsday conspiracy" look. Awesome.

They really don't seem to like the French. Hmm.

Anyway, when the kids are tucked or the boss is out of town, and you are a little bored, this site (recommended, by the way, by the instant messenger buddy info thingy of my former student, Tricia the Militia) is worth a few minutes. Beware of drinking while reading it - you'll blow soda all over yourself.

Fishbar

Few things from my time at the University of Virginia warrent as much sighing and happiness as what I am about to link you to. Say thank-you preemptively (like an Iraqi war).

The Fishbar series was developed by Honkworm International, a company who I, admittedly, never bothered to find out what they did. We used to sit in my dorm room and watch them till our guts would pop.

Pop.

Well, one day Honkworm radically changed their website and I was left Fishbar-less. Then, randomly, for some unknown reason, I did a search for Fishbar. This website (by an artist named Shawn Johnson who does amazing paintings that take advantage of organic forms) is what I found.

Be warned, when you go to check 'm out, you won't quit watching till your done and odds are you won't be able to laugh just to yourself. Punk.

Love and Hate in Jamestown

I know what you're thinking already: Eric, I know you read. We all know it. Why don't you review something other than a book.

I will kids, but I have fallen upon good book after good book lately and I just gotta' share 'm. I hope you'll get in the trust tree with me.

As for the newest one (which I intend to purchase for my brother and Dad in the very near future), its by a fellow named David A. Price (a former reporter for Investor's Business Daily and freelancer) and its about the first foothold of English-speaking culture, economics, and politics in North America to stick: Jamestown, (the Glorious Commonwealth of) Virginia.

Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation elaborates on the early history of the first permanent British settlement at great length, dispelling myth and romance with every page. "Bad guys" become either incompetent 'gentlemen' or just ordinary people making uninformed political decisions (clouded by inexperience, naivete, or prejudice). "Good guys" (specifically John Smith and Pocahontas, as well as several other minor players), on the other hand, aren't lauded for their mere "goodness," rather, their specific character traits, skill-sets, and so forth are elaborated upon at length.
It is Smith in particular who holds Price's attention, receiving an elaborate biographical treatment that makes me wonder if Smith shouldn't be studied as another Machiavelli or Sunzi (I intend to read his books soon).

All in all, especially with the 400th Anniversary of the Founding of Jamestown approaching in 2007, I have to say this book is a must read. It really illustrates the differences between the intended "British" form of colonialism (every man an Englishman), the actual practices of English colonialism, and the practices of other nations' colonialism (particularly Spain and Portugal's attrocities). Not only that, it does so without pretending the native Americans (specifically of the Powhatan Confederacy) were naive, Rousseau-pot-dream, Smurf-esque, anti-political, charicatures of themselves: native Americans in Price's version of 17th Century Virginia are militarily savy, political involved people, the New World equivalents, in many respects, of Greek polei.

My favorite parts? Well, in this book that's awfully tough to sort out: the entire breadth and length were fascinating. The outlining of Algonquian linguistic concepts, place names, and political structures ranks up there, as do the details of John Smith's pre-Jamestown life. Price's incredibly insightful explanation of the Starving Time (well-known to anyone who has read about or visited Jamestown), as well as his efforts to become a realpolitick scholar (having read most of the realpolitick works extant during his lifetime) also kept me fascinated. Intriguing as well is the analysis of the change in British attitudes away from cohabitation with native Americans and towards more traditional forms of imperialism as a result not of greed, but of a declining idealism following attempted genocide by certain Powhatan tribes.

Want a little more, eh? Sure. Here is a review from National Review and the official book website (which has several interesting reviews and links).

Angry Liquor Store Peepaw

Robert Jones and I took a picture of this. What can I say?

We went somewhere else.



No we didn't.

Various & Sundry

It was eight this morning - I rolled out of bed, giddy as a child preparing for the Christmas holiday, rushing downstairs for my treat. Today, today I had cable installed in my house for the first time in three years and the internet for the first time in four. As Stimpy would say, "joy." Needless to say, I've been online all day, rocking out. There has been little or no method to this madness - all I've done is seek out new and rocktastic sites. Let me show you what I've found. I think you'll be pleased.

1. World War II Posters: I love propaganda. I mean I straight up sick love it - that shouldn't surprise you, after all, I am a political scientist formally trained in the fine arts, eh? Anyway, this website, a product of Northwestern University, is really worth an hour or two. Not only is it incredibly simple to navigate, it is also home to detailed, high-quality images, you know, the kind you'd have covered your elementary school social science project backboard with (when printed out in full color from a Kinko's or Kinko's-equivalent).

2. Swarm: Voyeurism of a different type . . . I can't possibly describe this one in an appropriate way, so dig on this quote:

Swarm shows you what websites people are visiting, right now. Swarm is a graphical map of hundreds of websites, all connecting to each other. It updates itself every second with where people are going and coming from. As sites become more popular, they move towards the center of the swarm and grow larger. Conversely, sites that lose traffic move away from the center and grow smaller. Website traffic is symbolized with thin lines. Each time you see a line appear, it means someone has moved from one site to the other. You can gauge how many people are swarming around based on the number of lines.

According to its makers, this site is all about browsing, not searching - read "I'm bored." Plus, chat about any site you find with other bored people. Win friggin' win, baby.

3. Pulse Discharge: How my friend Jay S. Burns will probably leave this earth.

4. Altered Books: Defacing books for art?

5. Aliens and Children: Holy Sar Bradley. Kids drawing aliens. Hooray!

And my favorite (in a macabre sort of way):

6. The Lawrence Hutton Collection of Life and Death Masks: The most direction connection we have with hundreds, if not thousands, of great men and women who have fled their mortal frames is the death mask, models for artists and artisians, not to mention the occasional neophyte. This one won't take you long to look through but darned if you won't find yourself going back over and over again - this one is truly fascinating.

Occidentalism

I know I don't rock out on the political on here very often, but here I go again. On my own.

I was down at the discount bookstore the other day and found a book I'd never read nor even seen before - it is called Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (authored by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit) and frankly, it rocks. Just as works on Orientalism explain why the West felt (and continues to feel) justified in oppressing non-Western cultures, polities, and societies, this piece explains why non-Westerners (and traditional, anti-Modern social conservatives) hate the Modern West. Not only that, it does so without talking over the average human being's head. For instance, dig this review in Foreign Affairs:


In this grandly illuminating study of two centuries of anti-Western ideas, Buruma and Margalit contend that the hostility of Islamic jihadists toward the United States is but the most recent manifestation of a long-running, worldwide reaction to the rise of Western modernity. They call the cluster of prejudices and unflattering images of the West conjured by its enemies "Occidentalism," a phenomenon that originated within the West itself in the late eighteenth century and only later spread to the Middle East, Asia, and beyond. German romantics, reacting to the Enlightenment and the rise of capitalism, expressed it in their rejection of a coldly rational Europe -- a "machine civilization," manifest in imperialism, urbanism, and cosmopolitanism. From there, similar themes appear in Occidentalism's other variants: the sinfulness and rootlessness of urban life; the corruption of the human spirit in a materialistic, market-driven society; the loss of organic community; the glory of heroic self-sacrifice in overcoming the timidity of bourgeois life. Western liberalism is a threat -- to religious fundamentalists, priest-kings, and radical collectivists alike -- because it deflates the pretensions of their own brand of heroic utopianism. Ultimately, the picture that emerges is not of a clash of civilizations but of deeply rooted tensions that ebb and flow within and across civilizations, religions, and cultures. What the West can do about Occidentalism, however, is less clear. The anti-Western impulses in nineteenth-century Europe and interwar Japan were only transitional, overwhelmed by the forces of socioeconomic advancement. Whether the Occidentalism of present-day Islamic radicals will also come to accommodate modernity is the great question of our time. Buruma and Margalit do not venture an answer, but their evocative study shows that, whatever happens in the end, it will play out as a long and violent historical drama.

Hellz yes.

Things not to miss:

1. The explanation of modernity as the separation of religious and political/economic spheres (6)
2. The explanation of the Third Reich as an anti-Western movement (8)
3. The contrast of Orientalism and Occidentalism (10)
4. The metaphor of the Urban as the prostitute (18)
5. Occidentalism as a manifestation of threatened traditional elites (30)
6. Anti-Semitism as anti-urbanism/anti-modernism (33)
7. The explanation of anti-modernism as an expression for a desire for meaning through heroic acts (52)
8. Alexis de Tocqueville's explanations of the limits of democracy (55)
9. Militarism as anti-democratic/capitalist (57)
10. The Japanese emperor cult as a flawed interpertation of Western institutions (63)
11. The comparison of Osama bin Laden's beliefs with Nazi fanaticism (68)
12. Anti-Modernism as Utopianism (72)
13. The West as soulless (75)
14. Romanticism as reveling in emotion and failure (79)
15. The discussion of anti-rationalism (94)
16. The rise of the concept of Protestant "individual conscience" (127)
17. The veil as a sign of wealth (131)

Oh snap. . . get on Amazon and rock out kids.

Basically, this work is brilliant not only because of its ability to explain the subject, but because it demonstrates that social conservatives in all states, including the United States, are children of the same monster - reactionism and anti-individualism. To hell.

Yoko Kanno

I don't know if you know what I know, but I do know that I know that Cartoon Network has been at the root of many, many wonderful discoveries in my life. I won't pretend that it's prefect, but darn if they don't set this blue tick to sniffing. And stuff. For instance, there is this one show, Cowboy Bebop, that is just frigging brilliant. Combine friggin' great jazz and blues with tremendous animation and well-written plots (the kind of scifi where the scifi is a distant second to character development and theme development, dig) and bam, you got magic. Well, there I was, at the cabin, everyone else asleep, when the "cable" came up and said, "hey Eric, you bastard, guess what I got for you. I got some Cowboy Bebop. Drink up." And mansakes if I didn't slurp that magic up like a Dairy Queen chocolate shake in mid-August. Amen.

As the credits rolled I was struck by some of that magical "logic" I have sometimes. Crazy, eh? Well, this "logic," it told me to look for the band that did the theme-song. That's right, click on that little blue theme-song link. I'll wait.

Good stuff, eh? I know. I don't make this stuff up. The band listed in the credits is named the Seat Belts. Well, I though, hot dog, lets put'm on the blog. Then I get a hold of a computer and bam, nothing's easy anymore.

The first site I open is this one, which I later find out is an incredibly well-done fansite . . . samples of most of the Seat Belts' music is available for a quick listen. That said, I also find out that the Seat Belts are/were a band created simply to produce music for this show by someone named Yoko Kanno. From what I can tell, she doesn't have her own website, so I will refer you to the following. First, there's the Yoko Kanno Project . . . dig in here for a plethora of samples, and a general overview of her career (including Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade, one of my favorite movies). Second, there's the Yoko Kanno Database, with links to tons of stuff including a great discography, and then I found a Yoko Kanno interview on EX:clusive.

Last, but not least, I dug up some mySpace sites for you: dig 1, 2, and of course, 3. These bits, you should know, lean more towards the electronica/earthy side than the jazz side, and definitely more Japanese/less American than her work on Cowboy Bebop (in general), but they are still worth a listen. See. Er. Yeah.