Who needs drugs when life as it is is this trippy?
This video presented by the Enoshima Aquarium shows the bioluminescent mantle of a flame scallop (Ctenoides ales, a.k.a. noble file clam or electric eye scallop), a bivalve mollusk found around reefs in shallow tropical waters. The purpose of the flashing lips remains a mystery.
Ah, sweet mystery of life.
Via Pink Tentacle
The question of whether or not Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has quit Throbbing Gristle remains not fully answered. Despite Thee Deevelopment, TGers Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti have gone on to fulfill their early-November live TG obligations in Italy and Portugal as X-TG. The group has uploaded some media from those shows on their new site.
P-Orridge’s ambivalent statement on the matter was offset by “Unkle Sleazy’s” take, and there’s likely debate as to how much value a P-Orridge-less TG holds. I’d think the excerpts below from the two shows speak for themselves.
X-TG ‘XPad’ Live at Porto Casa Musica by Industrial Records
Coughs and sneezes spread diseases, so we must learn how to sneeze properly, as this British Public Information Film, with the wonderful Richard Massingham, from 1945 explains.
With thanks to Paul Darling
Hikikomori is a term used to describe individuals who have chosen to withdraw from social life, often to an extreme degree of isolation. The word literally means “pulling away, being confined,” and was first used by Japanese psychologist, Dr Tamaki Saitō in his study of sufferers. Dr Saitō believes the cause of the problem lies within Japanese history and society, as there has been a cultural tradition that celebrates the nobility of solitude. This together with the fact that until the mid-nineteenth century, Japan had cut itself off from the outside world for two hundred years.
Dr Saito points to the relationship between mothers and their sons, and has shown how most hikikomori sufferers are male, often the eldest son. “In Japan, mothers and sons often have a symbiotic, co-dependent relationship. Mothers will care for their sons until they become 30 or 40 years old.” This dependency causes the sufferer to be unable to interact with the outside world, and often he will escape into the fantasy world of computer games and on-line activities.
According to Dr Henry Grubb, a psychologist from the University of Maryland, hikikomori is specifically Japanese, as there is “nothing like it in the West.” Part of the problem stems from Japan’s subservient and passive/aggressive culture. Most consider hikikomori a problem within the family, rather than a psychological illness.
Recent Cabinet Office statistics in Japan, put the number of hikikomori at some 696,000 nationwide, making it a national social problem.
The Cabinet Office recently announced that an estimated 696,000 youths nationwide are hikikomori, shutting themselves inside their homes for six months or longer. According to the same report, 1.55 million youths claimed they could sympathize with the inclination to isolate oneself from society. It looks like for the time being, the government will claim the official figure for hikikomori as approximately 700,000.
In reality, the estimated population of hikikomori varies from year to year. According to Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry surveys conducted between 2002 and 2005, the number of affected households was an estimated 410,000 in the first year. The number continued to fall in subsequent years, with a 2005 figure of 260,000 households.
Over the years, there have been many reports of Hikikomori sufferers becoming violent. In 2000, “a 17 year old hikikomori sufferer left his isolation and hijacked a bus, killing a passenger. Another kidnapped a girl and held her captive in his bedroom for nine years.”
Hikikomori - The Silent Sufferers looks at a selection of hikikomori sufferers, examining their lives and how they and their families cope.
‘Hikikomori - The Silent Sufferers’ continues plus bonus clip after the jump…
I originally wrote this elsewhere, but want to share it, in remembrance of a great writer, Derek Marlowe, who died today in 1996.
Marlowe was the author of nine novels, ranging form the Cold War spy thriller A Dandy in Aspic, the historical A Single Summer With L.B., about Byron, Shelley and the creation of monsters and the partially autobiographical The Rich Boy from Chicago. Marlowe started as a playwright, before moving to prose.
When I interviewed him in 1984, Marlowe told me the story of how his career really started with a bet. A bet between three young writers, who lived together in a flat in London. Nothing unusual there, except these young writers were Tom Stoppard, Piers Paul Read, and Derek Marlowe. One day, as they watched Mick Jagger on Top of the Pops, the three wagered a bet on who would make a million first. It was decided Stoppard would, but Marlowe pipped him to it, with his first novel, A Dandy in Aspic.
I started reading Marlowe in my early teens and he focussed my thoughts about writing. This then is the story of a fan letter I wrote Marlowe and his reply.
Someone, somewhere, has probably written a thesis on fan letters, showing how the turn of phrase, spelling, sentence structure and language, reveal the psychology of the writer. I can guess the flaws my three or four fan letters reveal about me, both good and bad. That said, the replies always pleased - a signed photograph, a message from a secretary, a written response. The reply that meant so much to me came from the brilliant author, Derek Marlowe.
Marlowe inspired me to see the beauty of writing and the power a novelist has in telling their tale. His books took me away from the comfort of Sherlock Holmes, Alistair MacLean, and the dog-eared ghost stories, into a world of shifting ambiguity, complex relationships, through his dark, witty stories told in his remarkable style.
Marlowe’s response to my Biro scribbled missive was a typed, two-page letter, in lower case and capitals. It is a letter I cherish, for it gave me a sense of what can be made of a life. Derek Marlowe was more than just a novelist, he was a successful playwright, a screenwriter, and an award-winning writer for television. In the letter, he explained how he had started his career after being sent down from University:
“I was thrown out of Queen Mary College, London, for editing and writing an article in the college magazine. The article was a parody of The Catcher in the Rye reflecting the boredom of college seminars. Not very funny or special but times were odd then. Besides, I hated University and I think I’d made that rather too clear.
“I began writing plays since I had started a play for the College which took a surprising course. Continued with plays for about four years, went to Berlin, came back and then I realised, after writing A Dandy in Aspic (I was then a clerk) that I preferred prose to theatre. Besides, the person I was sharing the flat with and had done for six years, seemed better at theatre than me. He was and is Tom Stoppard.”
Marlowe’s first novel A Dandy in Aspic, published in 1966, was the story of a double-agent, Eberlin, sent on a mission to assassinate his alter ego. Dandy, as the jacket blurb said:
After a beautifully arresting plunge-in, a spy is assigned - savage irony! - to hunt himself down. And now, hot on his own trail…
Dandy fitted into the sixties’ pre-occupation with suave secret agents and was made into a so-so film starring Laurence Harvey, Mia Farrow, Tom Courtney and Peter Cook, of which Marlowe wrote:
“Regarding the film Dandy. The director, Anthony Mann died during the filming (a superb man and great director) and it was taken over by Laurence Harvey, the badly cast Eberlin. He directed his own mis-talent, changed it and the script - which is rather like Mona Lisa touching up the portrait while Leonardo is out of the room.”
More on Derek Marlowe, plus bonus clip after the jump…
A sly, surly and sardonically funny Bob Dylan lays into Time Magazine correspondent Horace Judson in this scene captured by D.A. Pennebaker in 1965. This IS punk rock! John Lydon was 9 years old when this footage was shot. Bob went out on a limb when most pop stars played it safe. You know Lennon was paying attention.
Judson ended up writing a favorable piece on Dylan.
Earlier this year, the Holy See’s Chief Exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth claimed, “The Devil resides in the Vatican and you can see the consequences. He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, or even appear to be sympathetic. At times he makes fun of me. But I’m a man who is happy in his work.” He also said that the 1973 film The Exorcist gave a “substantially exact” impression of what it was like to be possessed by the Devil.
“People possessed by evil sometimes had to be physically restrained by half a dozen people while they were exorcised. They would scream, utter blasphemies and spit out sharp objects.
From their mouths, anything can come out – pieces of iron as long as a finger, but also rose petals,” said Father Amorth, who claims to have performed 70,000 exorcisms. “When the possessed dribble and slobber, and need cleaning up, I do that too. Seeing people vomit doesn’t bother me. The exorcist has one principal duty - to free human beings from the fear of the Devil.”
Old Nick finds work for idle hands, and this week sees the National Congress of Exorcists in Poland, as increasing numbers of Poles struggle with Satanic possession, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Since 1999 the number of Polish exorcists has surged from 30 to over a 100, despite the influence of the Catholic Church waning in an increasingly secular Poland.
Exorcists attribute the increase in their numbers to growing scepticism in psychology in the wider Polish population, and people looking for spiritual reasons for mental disorders.
In recognition of modern science, however, exorcists now work in tandem with psychologists in order to distinguish between psychiatric problems and the work of the devil.
But while some cases of Satanic work are difficult to diagnose others manifest themselves in shocking circumstances explained exorcist Father Andrzej Grefkowicz.
“An indication of possession is that a person is unable to go into a church, or, if they do, they can feel faint or breathless,” he said.
“Sometimes if they enter a church they are screaming, shouting and throwing themselves on the ground.”
The national congress comes as part of a policy by Poland’s Catholic Church to lift the veil on what was once a secretive practice. Frustrated by the Hollywood image of cross-wielding exorcists engaged in dramatic conflicts with demons the Church intends to show the complicated and often more mundane world of exorcism.
Father Grefkowicz stressed that the most of the time exorcism required quiet prayer.
Quiet prayer? I was hoping it would be a bit more like this…
Today, we celebrate the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democracy leader and human rights activist who has spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest. Suu Kyi’s release has been welcomed across the world, and it is hoped that this is the first step towards democracy within Burma (aka The Republic of the Union of Myanmar).
Suu Kyi’s political career started in August 1988, after a mass uprising against Burma’s military junta left thousands dead, Suu Kyi gave a speech, in front of 500,00 supporters, calling for an end to military rule and a new democratic government.
The following month, Suu Kyi co-founded the National League for Democracy (NLD) and became the party’s general secretary. The pro-democracy movement quickly gained support across the country, which led the junta to place Suu Kyi under house arrest for the first time in July 1989.
In May 1990, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won a landslide election victory, but the ruling junta refused to recognize the results. The following year, Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:
for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.
...Suu Kyi’s struggle is one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades. She has become an important symbol in the struggle against oppression…
...In awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honour this woman for her unflagging efforts and to show its support for the many people throughout the world who are striving to attain democracy, human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means.
In 1995, Suu Kyi was temporarily released from house arrest, but her movements were restricted. She was offered the opportunity to return to her family in the UK, but Suu Kyi opted to stay an continue the fight for democratic freedom.
These photographs from her family’s collection, reveal Suu Kyi’s life before she returned to Burma. Married to academic, Michael Aris in 1972, the couple had two children, Alexander and Kim, who are now grown men, one with a family of his own. Suu Kyi’s campaign for the greater good has come at great personal cost, her husband Michael died of prostate cancer in 1999, but he accepted what Suu Kyi saw as her destiny, as before they were married she told Aris:
“I only ask one thing, that should my people need me, you would help me to do my duty by them.”
When Aung San Suu Kyi was released today, she addressed thousands of well-wishers, saying:
“There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk. People must work in unison. Only then can we achieve our goal.”
It can only be hoped that Suu Kyi’s release is the first step towards achieving the goal of democracy within Burma.
More rare photographs of Aung San Suu Kyi after the jump
One man band Luie Luie introduces his new dance El Touchy.
Luis Johnston is a Southern California screenwriter, painter, and musician who’s spent the past 30 years working in almost complete obscurity. But he’s also written and starred in a feature film and shaken hands with Elvis Presley. Luie has been playing live at various restaurants, lounges, and country clubs for three decades and is still going strong. He released a handful of 45s in the ‘70s and one full-length LP, “Touchy” in 1974. And he continues to record unknown quantities of yet to be released CDs.
Once a rare and coveted collector’s item, Luie’s album has been re-issued and is available here. As for me, I want to buy Luie’s belt.
