911 - it's almost 10 years

[Ideologue]

Saw an ad on TV the other night with Bobby DeNiro looking a million years old and asking you to text $10 donations to the 9/11 memorial fund.  The memorial itself looks OK, I guess.  Big fountain thing, with a square hole in the middle, I suppose to symbolize the depths of hell to which all Muslim souls descend.  Looks way better than that bizarre MLK statue at least.

The MLK statue is really weird.  It looks like some of the old Soviet war memorials.

I love it.  I like how it looks unfinished.  Much as MLK's work as left unfinished.

You would.  It's ugly.  The soviets were also big into making it look like it was half carved out of the living rock.  It dehumanizes the subject.

Mythologizes.  It mythologizes the subject.

[Razgovory]

No, the statues are designed to have a person coming out a formless mass. The individual is subsumed into the mass becoming a mere aspect of state power.



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[Sheilbh]

Mass doesn't necessarily represent state power and there's nothing wrong with dehumanisation in sculpture if it has a greater effect. 

But I suppose there's an inherent difficulty in trying to design a memorial to MLK the individual and to the movement he represents.  It's difficult to do both.

Having said that I think the statue's ugly and vulgar.  It seems to fall between two stools of trying to do something interesting and trying to be quite conservatively figurative.  It does neither well.

[DGuller]

Seems like the soldiers are standing up against a wall.  That seems realistic, many Russian soldiers stood up against the wall at some point of their lives (usually the very last one).

[Ancient Demon]

According to Aaron McGruder, King would be pretty pissed off if he came back.

Yes, I loved that Boondocks episode. 

[CountDeMoney]

Boondocks is passe' Black Panther bullshit.

I like the King statue, but it would look better if it were John Brown.

Don't like the quote, either.

[Ideologue]

Boondocks is passe' Black Panther bullshit.

Funny, though.

No, the statues are designed to have a person coming out a formless mass. The individual is subsumed into the mass becoming a mere aspect of state power.

Anyway, if that's the actual purpose, I still like it.  The heroes of socialism rise out of the masses and assume the responsibilities of the vanguard.  Which, as I said, mythologizes them.

[Razgovory]

Boondocks is passe' Black Panther bullshit.

Funny, though.

No, the statues are designed to have a person coming out a formless mass. The individual is subsumed into the mass becoming a mere aspect of state power.

Anyway, if that's the actual purpose, I still like it.  The heroes of socialism rise out of the masses and assume the responsibilities of the vanguard.  Which, as I said, mythologizes them.

Yeah, see they actually carved that one out of the side of a mountain.  They didn't find a large stone, bring to the site and half carve it.

[Ideologue]

Exactly.  Those fuckers were lazy.

[mongers]

Around lunchtime on 9/11 my sister phoned me to say someone had told her about a plane hitting the WTC, I thought she was joking/repeating the usual small town stupid gossip, so ignored it.

IIRC, I had a reasonable quantity of large denomination US dollar bills, so was more concerned with seeing what the exchange rate would be doing that day.  This was in the days when if an American wanted to buy someone off me, they'd send greenbacks via regular airmail !

I then went up to town to do some shopping, so I spent most of the time of the attacks sitting on the wall opposite Mr Ben's Bike Shop chatting with a girl.

When I eventually came back, I turned on the tv and just caught the first tower falling. 



As for Marty's OP, I think he's largely wrong, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the world; I think there are less wars going on now than 10 years ago, and exempting the insanity of the Iraq adventure and the botched Afghanistan war, war is becoming less of a legitimate and viable way of settling differences between states.

The events in Burma, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and Tunisia demonstrate there's a basic human thirst for freedom and this is a rejection of extremism. To which I'd add Al-Qaeda is in the main a broken force and mainly represents an outdated force in the world.

[Ideologue]

This was in the days when if an American wanted to buy someone off me, they'd send greenbacks via regular airmail !

...say, Mongers, what is your actual job?

[Razgovory]

This was in the days when if an American wanted to buy someone off me, they'd send greenbacks via regular airmail !

...say, Mongers, what is your actual job?

Iron mongering, whore mongering, war mongering.  All purpose mongering really.

[Ideologue]

And, not to talk shop, but do you have any Filipinas?

[mongers]

This was in the days when if an American wanted to buy someone off me, they'd send greenbacks via regular airmail !

...say, Mongers, what is your actual job?

Then I was a collectable toy seller, now I'm a stamp dealer, though given what's happening to market prices for a lot of my stock, well let's just say I'd be better off using them to send out tens of thousands of resumes. 

[Ideologue]

This was in the days when if an American wanted to buy someone off me, they'd send greenbacks via regular airmail !

...say, Mongers, what is your actual job?

Then I was a collectable toy seller

Ok, the slavery, I can live with that.  Slavery built the pyramids.  But that's fucking cold, man.