deadken posted:

yesterday i read extension du domaine de la lutte and the day before i finally got round to hollow land and read it all in one day; its really good but i find it kinda cute the way weizman feels the need to keep pointing out that when he talks about the elasticity of israel's borders he doesn't mean that if you ran headfirst into the apartheid wall you'd be catapaulted backwards into the surrounding hillsides with a satisfyingly resonant 'sproing' noise

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3501588

aerdil posted:

vice magazine is such shit, not surprising at all its run by libertarians

http://www.streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/the-lynching-of-lesley-arfin-what-really-happened/

MadMedico posted:

http://www.streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/the-lynching-of-lesley-arfin-what-really-happened/

hey i got written about in that blog once

EmanuelaOrlandi posted:

MadMedico posted:

http://www.streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/the-lynching-of-lesley-arfin-what-really-happened/

hey i got written about in that blog once

i havent read it, but, he was right

babyfinland posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Killing the Cranes, i believe BF recommended it

dumb Soviets, dumb NATO


so good

Yeah it’s cool, I’m up to the soviet invasion. Good journalistic storytelling prose but with a light touch….i read great war for civilization by Robert fisk and it’s cool but he’s the dourest motherfucker ever.

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Killing the Cranes, i believe BF recommended it

dumb Soviets, dumb NATO

i just requested this from the library, for some reason ive been interested in reading some more modern type history so hopefully this works out. just about finished with sayings of the desert fathers, v. interesting stuff

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Tsargon posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Killing the Cranes, i believe BF recommended it

dumb Soviets, dumb NATO


i just requested this from the library, for some reason ive been interested in reading some more modern type history so hopefully this works out. just about finished with sayings of the desert fathers, v. interesting stuff

yo ironically i tend to read only modern history....what's some good accessible ye-olde shit that will open a new love in my heart....i tend to view everything before 1800 as a Game of Thrones/Monty Python skit hybrid

oh, i apologize, when i said modern stuff i meant like last 40 years, i generally stick around the 19th and early 20th century in my reading. the last history book i read (unless you count sayings of the desert fathers) and really liked was 'the british industrial revolution in global perspective' by robert c allen, which is a bunch of stuff comparing the english economy in the 18th century to france, holland, india, and china, and looking at why the industrial revolution happened there instead of in the other leading economic powers of the time.

Neither his record of service as an educator and courtier, nor his presidency of the academy, nor his steadily growing list of scholarly publications could save Gundling from degenerating into a figure of ridicule at the court of Frederick William I. In February 1714, the king demanded that he deliver a lecture before the assembled guests on the existence (or not) of ghosts while taking regular dr
aughts of strong drink. After much raucous hilarity, two grenadiers escorted the inebriated commercial councillor back to his room, where he shrieked with terror at the sight of a figure draped in a white sheet emerging from a corner.Provocations of this kind soon became the norm. Gundling was confined in a chamber where the king kept a number of young bears while fireworks were rained down into the room from above; he was forced to wear outlandish courtly attire modeled loosely on French fashions, including a towering wig in an outdated style that had belonged to the previous king; he was force-fed laxatives and locked in a cell overnight; he was pressed into a pistol duel with one of his chief tormentors, the joke being that everyone but Gundling knew that the weapons contained no shot. When Gundling refused to grasp or fire his gun, his opponent discharged a spray of burning powder into his face, setting fire to his wig, to the huge hilarity of all present. He was prevented by his debts from leaving Berlin and constrained by the pleasure of the king his master to return daily to the scene of his humiliations, where his honour and reputation were martyred for the amusement of the royal court. Under these pressures, Gundling’s liking for drink soon developed into fully fledged alcoholism, a weakness that, in the eyes of his detractors, merely enhanced his suitability for the role of court fool. And yet Gundling continued to generate a flow of learned publications on such subjects as the history of Tuscany, imperial and German law, and the topography of the Electorate of Brandenburg...
Gundling even had to to lerate the presence in his bed chamber of a coffin in the form of a varnished wine barrel inscribed with a mocking verse:

Here there lies within his skin

Half-pig, half-man, a wondrous thing

Clever in his youth, in old age not so bright

Full of wit at morning, full of drink at night

Let the voice of Bacchus sing:

This, my child, is Gundeling.



Reader, say, can you divine

Whether he was man or swine?

After his death in Potsdam on 11 April 1731, Gundling’s corpse was publicly displayed propped up in the barrel in aroom lined with candles, dressed in a wig hanging down tothe thighs, brocaded breeches and black stockings withred stripes – all clear references to the baroque culture of the court of Frederick I. Among those who came to ogle atthis macabre spectacle were commercial travellers on their way to the great fair at Leipzig. Gundling and his barrel were buried soon afterwards under the altar of the village church outside the city. The funeral address was given by the writer (and sometime Gundling-baiter) Fassmann, thelocal Lutheran and Reformed clergy having conscientiously refused to take part.