At long last, this protracted monster of a research project is complete. The final document weighs in at an obese 81 pages containing 26,279 words. How did I write so much? Don’t ask me, I have no idea!
Really, though, it is difficult to describe large writing projects. From what I have read, every writer tackles an assignment differently. Some people have godlike self control, writing a single page a day for months on end. Others produce hundreds of pages in manic spurts. I’m not that bad, but I was shocked to find in my feedback that the best segments of the essay were the parts that I felt were rushed. I wrote those segments in a fugue, basically. In hindsight, I don’t think it was a trance that made those pages successful–my best research, my most novel ideas, and the subjects I was really interested in were in those parts. I think passion won the day there. It’s easier to write when you love what you are writing about.
Title: Minecraft and the Digital Robinsonade
So, what is this massive project all about anyway? I have been hard pressed to describe it to people because, besides the surface subject matter, it is actually quite boring. Most theses are. In essence, my thesis is about Minecraft and Robinson Crusoe. Specifically, my thesis presents an analysis of the uses of robinsonades (a genre of novels based on Robinson Crusoe) in education, ultimately implicating Minecraft within that didactic framework. The essay is particularly cool because I can throw around vocabulary like “didacticism” and “pedagogy” and not feel like an idiot. As it turns out, robinsonades have a long history in education that you are probably familiar with. There is a reason every kid reads Lord of the Flies in high school. I basically lay out a history in the essay that traces the evolution of the robinsonade from its origins as a socializing tool in the late 18th century to full blown literature of empire, colonial handbooks, by the height of the 19th century. Then, I explore how more contemporary entries to the genre criticize its colonial roots and ultimately shift their focus toward developing an environmental ethos within the reader. Minecraft, being a survival game about settling and managing land, fits into this robinsonade scheme perfectly, and I try to show how the development of Minecraft mirrors of the evolution of the literary genre to emphasize gameplay objectives that mirror the 19th century robinsonade. I conclude the essay with a discussion of my favorite mod, Better Than Wolves, which forces the player engage with Minecraft’s inherent colonial themes overtly while simultaneously laying the groundwork for a slower paced, more environmentally focused form of gameplay.
That’s a decent layout of the jargon. I intend to produce a series of small posts highlighting my most interesting findings, so stay tuned for that. Now that I am all wrapped up with my coursework, however, I hope to resume uploading content more regularly. The desperation of this ridiculous finals period had me drawing some pretty lurid art pieces, so I am going to try to get those scanned and uploaded eventually. My long dream of publishing a pornographic art blog might finally come to fruition! Aaron’s Vintage Pornographics!
Until then, thank you for reading.
Pale oracle,
Chip of bone.
(if you would like to see the original aquarium setup post, click here)
Three months have passed now since I began my aquarium in January. I have checked in on it occasionally, but for the most part I’ve been away at school. Despite my fears that the tank would become a cloudy mass of dead plants and snail shit, it is actually thriving. The set and forget method actually worked! Here is what the tank looks like today:
There have been a few notable editions since my original post. The bushy pine tree thing growing behind the rock is hornwort. It’s not actually rooted into the gravel back there. In fact, it doesn’t have any roots at all. It’s a floating plant that you could probably find in any standing body of water in New England. Back in early February, I was afraid that I didn’t have enough plants, so a vigorously growing floater like hornwort is a great plant for filling in space and suck up extra nutrients. The plant you see in the above image is actually not the original batch of hornwort that I purchased.
Sometime at the end of January, I visited my local pet supplier in search of plants. They had some brown looking hornwort in an axolotl tank. The axolotls were cute, but the hornwort itself was a bit disgusting. After searching my local waterways in search of wild hornwort for hours to no avail, however, the pet store plants seemed like my only options. Unfortunately, this specimen did not work out. The brown coloration only grew more sickly over the coming days, and it eventually shed all of its needles and died, leaving the floor of my tank a sludgy mess. The fact that I was dosing WAAYYY too much ammonia at this time might have also contributed to the fallout… oops. Thankfully, a friend of a friend happened to have a bunch of hornwort in their own tank and graciously sent me some. I would like to give a shout-out to mailman Noah and his faithful Bronco for delivering that.
This second batch held a vibrant green shade, seemingly much healthier. And it was healthier! This hornwort has thrived in my tank. It has grown so prodigiously that I have had to trim it and disperse it among other jars. I actually set up three other biospheres with the stuff, each hosting a colony of snails. The really astounding thing about the second batch of hornwort, in fact, was that it was carrying snails! Some aquarists consider bladder snails a pest, but they have been an invaluable boon to my tank environment. They are constantly cleaning the surface of the glass of algae, their poop acts as a non-ammonia source of nitrates (I haven’t dosed ammonia since adding them), and they are genuinely really fun to watch as they grow up and slurp around. The poop thing can be a bit gratuitous, though. At least, at first there was a ton of it. They broke down the old hornwort needles, but they replaced the needles carpet with a shit carpet of their own. I think the bacteria in the tank has finally caught up with it, but for a while it was just everywhere. On the bright side, if I did not get these snails, it is possible that my tank would not have cycled very much over the months of my absence.
In the above picture you might notice that the plants look a lot weaker than they did in my original post. The vallisneria on the left in particular pretty much melted. This is normal. The stress of shipping the plant and acclimating to a new water quality causes most plants to die back significantly as they re-calibrate. None of my original plants have actually died. When I visited the pet store, I picked up some cryptocoryne (crypts). Those are the little leafy plants on the left and right sides of the tank. They haven’t grown very much even after three months, and perhaps they never will. In the right environment, however, their leaves, palm-like, can grow quite substantially.
By the late February, I started to feel like I had a real living thing on my hands. The plants were growing back and propagating, the snails were getting absolutely massive, and the junk in the substrate was actually breaking down. The water was a bit cloudy, though. It has cleared significantly since then, which makes me think that the cloudiness was a temporary side-affect of the cycling process. To this day I have not actually run a test to see if my tank is cycled, so I’ll have to remember to do that before buying any fish.
My dad took an interest in the tank around this time and decided to add a bubbler. You may be able to see the plastic air tube coming out the back there. He was afraid that the tank would grow stagnant without one, and he was probably right. I did notice a little bio-film early on. That’s certainly not a problem anymore. The gas exchange of the bubbles popping might introduce some CO2 to the plants, which is a resource that many planted aquariums have trouble with.
A month later, things got really wild. The vallisneria had returned to its previous size and began over flowing the top of the tank. It isn’t called “Jungle Vallisneria” for nothing! With enough time and nutrients, the long blades could fold over the entire top of the tank. I hope to see something like that some day. It was turning red, too, which I chock up to not enough soil nutrients. I ought to buy some fertilizer tabs. It should be noted that, between February and March, the light apparently did not turn off. I took the timer off of timer mode and accidentally forgot to switch it back. The plants did not seem to mind, and the hornwort went absolutely crazy, but I also got a ton of hair algae. A shrimp will take care of that someday.
Also, pond snails were not the only variety of mollusk to inhabit my tank. I noticed this behemoth gliding around and pretty much cried:
I am optimistic for the future of my aquarium. With graduation on the horizon, however, I suppose I will have to start thinking about what I’m actually going to do with it. I suspect it could endure on its own like this for a year or more, but if I manage to escape my parents’ basement I will want to take it with me. I can also more seriously consider what kind of animal life will be living in it. A betta fish? Larger snails? Shrimps? Minnows?
I’ll leave you with this astounding image of a triple snail pileup:
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Minecraft mod known as Better Than Wolves. I’ve followed the project for almost a decade, and I interact with the community almost daily. I’ve pumped more hours into the game than probably any other activity. It’s hard to explain the appeal of the thing, but basically it is a version of Minecraft with industrialization and mass extinction and tree stumps. It is an immersive and sometimes painful version of the game. Some have described it as “hardcore.”
As a depressing marker of the occasion, Flowerchild officially announced that development of the mod has ended. He will be disengaging from the community and disbanding his social media and forum accounts related to the mod. The plan to step back was actually made known months ago, but I did not quite realize that the end was nigh. This is a pretty emotional event for me, all things considered. I’ve gotten to know many members of the community, and I’ve made many lasting memories playing this game with them. I also feel I owe a debt of gratitude to Flowerchild and the BTW community for fostering a sense of creativity and critical thinking within me. I was like 12 or 13 when I discovered BTW. I basically grew up alongside it. I would say that the crass humor of the players, the wisdom of Flowerchild, and the thoughtful and at times subversive design of the mod itself helped me, for better or worse, develop into the edgy bastard that I am today. I don’t know if my love of literature or analytical drive would be quite so deep had I not discovered this mod.
With the conclusion of the mod comes the first official release of the BTW source code. Flowerchild, who for years forbid the creation of most add-ons, has given total permission to do whatever the hell we want with his code. This is an incredible turn of events. Players have already been discussing the creation of a kind of mod loader utility for a while, so I suspect add-on development to totally explode. I’m considering opening up some of my own add-on projects and reviving them! To us, BTW is the default Minecraft experience, so it makes sense that we would want to modify it. The potential for new content is unparalleled. Code savvy folks like Dawnraider have already produced amazing content. Her BTA project revamps the 1.5.2 terrain gen to look amazing (though it is strangely reminiscent of, dare I say biased toward, the west coast).
Perhaps somebody could even port the mod to the latest versions of vanilla? A pipe dream, that one.
If you have no idea what Better Than Wolves is and have an interest in trying it out, I am always down to play. Shoot me an email. It’s a hard game, but the experience is so rewarding and immersive. Perhaps I will do a write up of the game someday? I have long dwelled on plans to create a BTW guidebook, but that project never moved past some initial drafts before school work swept me away.
BETTER THAN WOLVES IS DEAD, LONG LIVE BETTER THAN WOLVES! Praise Flowerchild, 420 yolo placenta
(The following is an article that I wrote back in January of 2020 and published in the Brandeis Hoot. Before the pandemic stunted many of my journalistic endeavors, I set myself a goal of documenting and redefining the various arts and artifice that generate my university’s look and appeal. In this case, I reviewed a spectacular plant specimen. It took a little convincing to get my editor to accept that an article about a tree would be fit for the arts section!)
When we think about “art on campus”, most people tend to imagine objects made of paint, canvas, and wood displayed in either the Rose or Dreitzer galleries. The multitude of statues and busts with plaques nailed to them that litter the campus also come to mind, but what about all the stuff that makes up the campus itself? I’m talking about the foundational aesthetic stuff that defines the look and attitude of Brandeis University, its architecture and landscaping. The buildings, walkways, and the decorative plants did not spontaneously generate when Brandeis was founded. On the contrary, almost every object on this campus was the result of a conscious decision made by the interplay of designers, architects, and administrators. We can’t afford to take these easily overlooked aesthetics lightly. Accounting for the landscaping alone, hundreds of thousands of dollars are likely set aside every year to maintain our many acres of lawns, vast array of ornamental trees, and the annual flower beds. I would like to make the case that “art” can extend beyond the gallery and into every aspect of this campus’s design. In short, plants matter.
Observe the Metasequoia, a tree planted between the administrative building and the SCC. It is a fairly nondescript tree, at least at a glance. Careful examination reveals certain irregularities in its features. It is markedly taller than any of the non-oak in the vicinity of Fellows Garden, and its branches sprout from the very base of the trunk, bestowing upon the tree a distinctive triangular or arrowhead-like profile. The girthy lower branches are upturned in apparent exultation as they spiral up the trunk, and at this time of the year (January) they are entirely barren of foliage. This configuration of branches would not be surprising at all on a pine, and while the metasequoia is just as much a needle-bearing conifer as your average Christmas tree, it is not evergreen. In fact, this rare specimen is one of only two species of deciduous conifers within many miles of Brandeis University. The metasequoia will drop its needles just as readily as the birches next to it will drop their leaves when autumn comes around, resulting in the uncanny pine-tree nakedness that you can observe right now.
The height of the metasequoia can be explained by its relation to the giant and coastal sequoias of the west. You’ve seen the textbook pictures from Yosemite. The redwoods of California make up some of the tallest organisms on the planet, boasting trunks so massive that a car can be driven through them. While the metasequoia, also known as the Dawn Redwood, has never been known to reach such insane sizes, it is by no means a small plant. You have probably walked by this tree hundreds of times and had no idea you were passing the only deciduous redwood of the three surviving sequoia species on Earth. The metasequoia’s radical fall coloration makes it the most stylish of its cousins, and I suspect that is why it was allowed to be planted so conspicuously next to the admin building. In marketing a “New England University,” autumn is everything, and the needles of the metasequoia take on brilliant copper-red hues during the fall that compliment the yellow-orange leaves of its neighboring birches. The fact that it remains barren throughout the winter is a secondary bonus–it doesn’t stand out as a lone conifer when the other trees have finished their show. A landscaper is like a painter that employs foliage as his medium, and the metasequoia, which is growing in popularity as an ornamental across the board, is a great addition to the toolkit.
Beyond surface aesthetics, our environmental studies department has good reason to keep a species as scientifically interesting as the metasequoia around. It shares a story with the famous coelacanth, a lobed fish which was thought to be extinct for millions of years but was miraculously discovered alive off the coast of Africa. The metasequoia is another of these “lazarus species,” with fossils indicating that vast forests of these kinds of trees once populated much of the northern hemisphere. In the 1940’s, clusters of living dawn redwoods were discovered in China. The locals had been logging these things for years to build bridges and such, completely unaware that they were in the presence of a scientifically significant, not to mention critically endangered tree. The intervening years saw expeditions for seed collection, and now the endangered metasequoia has a proud home right next to the office of president Liebowitz.
Interest in this tree is not limited to the scientific and landscaping communities. In fact, a certain cult-like interest has grown up around the dawn redwood with private entities taking an extreme interest in the ideal of restoring healthy redwood forests to the eastern United States. A vintage looking HTML website known as dawnredwood.org speaks of one such endeavor that has supposedly been taking place in North Carolina since 1995. Doug Hanks, the sites curator and apparent redwood fanatic, speaks of a project known as the Crescent Ridge Dawn Redwoods Preserve. It is a privately funded attempt to grow a self sustaining metasequoia forest in the most theoretically optimal climate to maximize tree growth. The man is convinced of the economic promise that such a preserve could offer. His website optimistically details his ambitions for the park, which include a pre-planned trail system to mimic “ancient Indian trails”, fairy circles for scenic marriages, and a cable car system to allow tourists to explore the crowns of the yet non-existent mature sequoias. A link at the top of the website leads to an appeal to prospective filmmakers in which he argues that the low cost of living and scenic views of North Carolina could provide a future hotspot for movies. It might be safe to say that this man’s ambitions grow even larger than his favorite trees.
In reality, an eastern redwood forest will likely never match the scale or vigor of the Yosemite sequoias, but the idea is potent enough for the stuff of dreams. Imagine that–our own redwood forest revived from the dregs of a nearly extinct species! It is not hard to see why tree-lovers and scientists alike could be enthralled by the dawn redwood. The Crescent Ridge website optimistically poses that the project could be “completed” by 2035, but I suspect this is a wildly optimistic estimate. In all likelihood, the minds behind this project will be dead long before the trees ever achieve their full potential. Trees do not conform to humanity’s transiently frail sense of time. The dawn redwoods have subsisted for millions of years regardless of human evolution, and they might very well outlast us by a few million more.
In the meantime, we can appreciate what we have. Brandeis students and faculty have easy access to not only a beautiful and rare landscaping piece, but a tree with a potent history and an alluring future. How could such a thing be anything but art? The next time you find yourself speed walking through Fellows Garden to reach your lonely village single, slow down and smell the flowers. Many of them carry a fantastic story.
I produced this video recently:
It isn’t my best work, but it was good to brush up on my editing knowledge. I used to work in a pirated version of Sony Vegas, so I have had to transition to Premiere.
The poem is “To the Naked Mole Rats at the National Zoo” by Steph Burt.
Art assignment deferred,
Deadline tomorrow.
So seek the monolith,
Go forth to the Rose.
Descend the bone bleached step spiral
Skirt the divider and enter
The Lois Foster Gallery.
There it is,
Big, blue,
Impossible.
Approach that sovereign form,
God of canvas,
Dominator of the gallery floor.
Mindfucker, postmodern trash
Made of trash.
The lord bristles with spikes,
Glass shards, plastic knots
Like tree burls loaded with
Parasitic wasps.
Ten, twelve feet tall.
Solid blue turns to ripples,
Curved rings of swirls of paint on paint,
Depictions of brush strokes.
Painting paint. Painting
The act of painting.
Can you believe that?
Oceanic breadth,
It could still be wet, you wouldn’t know.
Bubbles of aquamarine, royal suede.
You could touch it,
Step inside it.
Instant transmission,
Blue Planet.
Before you know it,
The kingly portal has devoured your field of view.
It’s too wide for this place,
It should be locked up,
Or torn to shreds.
How long have you been here?
An essay exploring the dark potential of the Atomic Apocalypse in Dr. Strangelove
* * *
The glorious detail that trails most apocalyptic texts is, as it is put in Daniel, the “reward at the end of days.” In Ezekiel, the enemies of Israel are slain en masse and its people are allowed to return and live unafraid. The apocalyptic reward seems at its greatest in Revelation, which promises a “new heaven and a new earth” and an end to darkness for the chosen survivors of the end of the world. Even many modern scientific apocalypses cannot resist the urge to deliver this kind of happy ending, but there are other writers that have suggested that the fabled apocalyptic survival scenario cannot possibly result in moral good. Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove provides a vision of apocalypse that rests on uncomfortable ground. Though humanity is promised a method of survival by the titular Nazi scientist, it is apparent that this new millennium will be dominated by fascist ideals and regressive ideology. Even the war itself, run by generals obsessed with death, seems somehow undivine. Dr. Strangelove criticizes the premillennial fascination with building a new world from catastrophe by highlighting the Darwinian tendencies and moral hypocrisy of the strain of humanity likely to actually survive into the new millennium, and Kubrick succeeds in this satire by maintaining a non-secular vision of the Cold War charged by revelations and a biblical adherence to massive death and procedural exactitude.
In satirizing the biblical apocalyptic model, Kubrick questions the notion that good triumphs in the face of calamity. The conclusion to the film sees the inhabitants of the war room discussing the possibility of living underground in mineshafts to escape the wrath of the bombs—a situation that is evocative of the final imagery of Revelation six. The bible passage in question tells of an earthquake brought about by the opening of the sixth seal, an event that sends the “kings of the earth and the magnates and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free” to seek refuge within “the caves and among the rocks of the mountains” in order to escape the wrath of the lamb. In the biblical narrative, cataclysm is an equalizing power that brings kings and slaves alike back to the earth. It is unsurprising that an atomic cataclysm would send humanity underground as well, but there is nothing egalitarian about Kubrick’s vision of the descent of mankind. The idea is broached by none other than Dr. Strangelove himself, who rapidly concludes that a computer, programmed to seek eugenic traits like “health, sexual fertility” and “intelligence,” could decide who is allowed subterranean shelter and survive the doom. Of course, the president and his entourage of generals get a free pass in order to preserve “leadership and tradition,” and “females” will be reduced to breeding mares ten to a single man. These ideas send the scientist into an excited Nazi tizzy. In the absence of God, cataclysm offers an opportunity for selection.
Apocalyptic fascist ideation is not new to Dr. Strangelove—older works of scientific apocalypse like H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds also play with the suggestion that an underground or fleeing humanity is likely to indulge in selective processes against its own perceived weaknesses. The artilleryman that Wells’s protagonist reunites with in the final segment of the novel declares that he means to live underground and form a society in which “life is real again” (Wells, 256). In his proposed configuration, “the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die” (Wells, 256). This potential reality is conveniently and optimistically avoided; the Martians have already succumbed to Earth’s bacteria. American authors appear more willing to explore the ramifications of humanity surviving a doomed Earth. Lisa Vox’s essay on “Race, Technology, and The Apocalypse” notes a particular work by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer, When Worlds Collide, in which the earth is destroyed and “a small remnant of humanity” flees to another planet, the “new earth” of revelation made literal. This flight is ideologically charged, with one survivor noting, “I cannot regret that the world which was afflicted by us is flying in fragments, utterly incapable of rehabilitation.” The questions that go unasked: who is privileged to survive, and what is the perspective of this new, supposedly better civilization? Kubrick’s work answers this question with startling pessimism: the strong and ideologically ruthless will sculpt a world even more fit for their exploitation than the old one.
The suggestion that the post-apocalypse world might not be a utopia seems to affront the basic scheme of the Christian apocalypse. Central to biblical apocalypse is the notion of the millennium: the peaceful epoch either directly following (premillennialism) or preceding (postmillennialism) the second coming of Christ. Vox argues that a premillennialist “belief in a final judgment and destruction of the world followed by a millennium of peace” ruled among Christian writers after the civil war. Like the characters in Wylie and Balmer’s story, social change without cataclysm is seen as an impossibility in a world overly corrupted by sin (and the context she provides of a post-reconstruction south all but assumes racial tensions as a major catalyst of these feelings). Purging the world in preparation for the millennium necessarily assumes that specific groups of people must be left for dead, and this is how apocalypses like Ezekiel and Revelation play out. Goodness is assumed in the survivors in these narratives because they are chosen by God, but this dichotomy is muddied by the context of the Cold War. Ideology supplants Christian morality. The satanic barbarians, the Gog, of the latter twentieth century becomes the Russians, and MIT scholar Norbert Weiner noted in 1950 that the American “probability of annihilation would remain high” because of “rigid propaganda which makes the destruction of Russia appear more important than our own survival.” Justice can only be derived from this conflict if America is morally good and the Soviets inherently bad, and Dr. Strangelove toys with this assumption without conceding to propaganda.
Kubrick’s film satirizes atomic apocalypticism by highlighting the Cold War as not only an ideological struggle, but a Christian one against atheistic communists. Despite its emphasis on science and bureaucracy, Kubrick’s film is a parody of non-secularism. General Turgidson reminds his girlfriend to “say your prayers” over the phone, and he blankly calls the Russian ambassador a “degenerate atheist communist” (Kubrick, 31:10 & 37:25). Turgidson’s religious flair is particularly ironic/amusing because he’s an unmarried sexual maniac. While Strangelove describes that every mineshaft man, in order to breed most prodigiously, must be paired with ten women, the shot is fixed on the Turgidson, who turns to face Strangelove inquisitively. His eyebrows slowly lift in delight and his mouth gapes, and he eventually asks with faux concern whether Strangelove’s plan would “necessitate the abandonment of the so called monogamous sexual relationship,” even after he promises his secretary that he was going to marry her at the start of the film (Kubrick, 1:30:00-1:31:20). The survival kit that outfits every pilot on the B-52 conspicuously contains “one miniature combination Russian phrase book and bible,” so that perhaps the soldiers can be both spiritually and physically fortified by the word of God in enemy terrain. If the pilots do not feel like soldiers of God, the generals vying for the war in the first place certainly do.
It goes without saying that divine revelation itself is a central trait of biblical apocalypse narratives (though it is an element seemingly not noted in many works of scientific apocalypse), but Dr. Strangelove showcases a twisted prophet of its own in General Ripper. Mandrake begs Ripper to explain his strange theory about bodily fluids and communist plots that justify nuclear war, and the general responds that he “first became aware of it” during sex (Kubrick, 57:00). The use of language here is strange—it is as if the knowledge were a cosmic fact that came to Ripper from the mists of his post-coital fugue. He uses the word “interpret” to describe his realization, and though his idea that women “sense his power” and must be rebuked lest they suck out his “life essence” seems absurd, is it not the fornication of the whore of Babylon that tempts the fall of man in Revelation? Sex is the great metaphorical sin of the Revelation narrative, and Ripper is actually the only general to disavow sex in contrast to an entire war room of eager mineshaft-fornicators. There is even the suggestion of final judgement in Kubrick’s apocalypse: “I happen to believe in a life after this one, and I know I’ll have to answer for what I’ve done. And I think I can” (Kubrick, 1:00:00). Ripper is self-assured in his visions and the righteousness of his actions, though his sweaty face betrays intense nerves. Even this anxious, uncertain adherence is reminiscent of the biblical apocalypse.
Kubrick’s greatest parody is also his most obvious one: the incredible loss of life that the apocalypse entails is not only justifiable, but it is also coldly calculated with a startling precision. The numbers have been worked out in both Revelation and Strangelove. The angels released to slay humanity at the blowing of the sixth trumpet in Revelation cull “a third of mankind,” and the number of those marked by God to stand behind the lamb are “one hundred forty-four thousand.” The number of the millions of angelic warriors, plagues, beasts, and other means of apocalypse are also listed. Kubrick also plays with numbers when Turgidson explains to the president why attacking Russia would result in only “twenty million” dead rather than one hundred fifty million. Foregrounding this scene is an easily missed prop, a binder that reads “WORLD TARGETS IN MEGADEATHS” (Kubrick, 27:45). Even the dropping of the atomic bomb itself is filmed in a rigid, list-like way. A series of hard cuts between various switches flipping and instructions being read, like the cyclic breaking of seals, bring about doom. Apocalypse is a dark but formal calculus.
Of course, it isn’t especially innovative to note that apocalypse is concerned with human death, but attention ought to be given to the idea that apocalyptic modes of thinking propagated by certain Christian sects provide a genocidal solution to human degradation. Premillennialist writers in particular seem to find solace in the idea that the end of the world might actually be a good thing for the future of mankind. Kubrick shuts this idea down. It cannot be overlooked that the only non-scientific miracle that occurs in Dr. Strangelove is the magical healing of the doctor himself. The very last moment of the film (besides the explosions themselves) sees the miraculous removal of the Nazi’s paralysis. It is as if Kubrick is saying that God ultimately sides with the fascists. I predict oppositions to this idea, of course. Were the premillennialist slaves not justified in craving a rapture that could free them from bondage? It should be noted also that, while religious fervor promotes these ideas, it was also a conglomerate of scientists, Christians and Jews that provided some of the most stalwart oppositions to nuclear apocalypse during that era. Eugene Rabinowitch of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, commenting on the discourse of nuclear attacks against Russia, questions whether this discourse is “asking the American people to acquiesce in advance to the final conversion of war into genocide?” It must not be forgotten that, regardless of divine fantasy, a real apocalyptic calamity would be a ripe ground for the practitioners of genocide. Rapture should not be sought.
A Brutal Adonais rises over the horizon to smite his foes. Beware his deadly grapples!
Mamma Chen craved crab
And, being a biologist,
Thought she could kill one.
Mallet for masticator,
Fist focused white
Poised
To make art of arthropod
But the grey thing hummed.
The benthic baby,
With glistening stalks and
Rubber banded nippers blubbered
Harmlessly as it scuttled against hard sink chrome.
Mother was moved,
But mallet was not.
Wrist cracked a whack
But obstinate carapace objected!
Glance after glance
The bout went on.
Despite brittle bones and a chitin chitter,
The creature scrabbled on.
Mamma broke,
Cheek streaked
With salty water that reminded
The crustacean of home.
Pot on the burner brought to boil
And that was that.
Hiss
Bye bye
Bubby the Wanderer, lost in the rain.
The blog is one year old today. Hurray!
You really take on a project like this for the archive page. You want to be able to open that sucker up every once in a while and see a huge list of links. I got the idea from Homestuck’s archive of comic pages spanning thousands of entries. There was nothing fancy about it, just a massive wall of blue text flowing downward for miles. My archive doesn’t even necessitate a scroll wheel to traverse, it’s that small. And it isn’t for a lack of publishable content on my part either. I’m writing all kinds of junk all the time, stuff that either gets submitted once or thrown away and never again sees the light of day. I have some work to do this year, that is for sure. I’m pretty busy writing this big stressful thesis on Minecraft at the moment, so I won’t make any concrete promises. I do, however, intend to push some kind of content at least once a month. I suppose a crappy pen sketch counts. We’ll see what I can muster.
Now the fun part… site analytics!
Last month, February 2021, aaaahh.net received 827 visits. Of that number, 443 of them were unique visits. I have no idea how any of that is calculated. On average, the site gets 8.58 hits per visit with 7,130 hits total in February. I don’t know if most of those are bots or if 400+ living humans actually visited my website. A good chunk of those have to be real people, right? I think the software is supposed to sift out robots and worms.
In 2020, the website received 4,981 total visits and 1,723 unique visitors. Over 33,000 hits AKA page views across all of that. The total bandwidth for 2020 reached 694.23 MB. Not even a gigabyte of content consumed! I suspect I am overpaying for hosting.
As one might expect, the view counts really seem to shoot up during months that I actually post content. Total views seems to be on an upward trend, so maybe people are actually bookmarking this thing. Or the bots are finding it valuable.
That is all for now. If I discover any other interesting stats, they will be posted. If you have enjoyed the site and would like to ask a question, feel free to contact me at aaron@aaaahh.net. I don’t have this email on my phone yet, so expect significant delays in response time. If you would be interested in being part of an infrequent email list with notable content updates, please let me know.
Happy holidays!
Neck an unfurling fern
Blooming from the dirt
Already larger than a golden retriever
Soon larger than a car
Larger than anything
that will ever roam land
Just try to eat me
These trunks that churn loam
Forest feller
Meadow maker
You cannot fathom my girth
O, but these lungs are tired
This behemoth drum
This sweeping neck
A titanic burden
Balanced by a tendril tail that whips in the wind
Steel not
This suspension bridge needs
The bristles and cones of bygone trees
Fuel the greatest engine that ever breathed
For twenty million years and more
And you, monkey?
Just six million
And probably not one more
Even now, my remains stun the world
America has not forgotten my tour
An acre per a step for a lifetime as long as yours
And I am not forgotten
My hulking form
Makes your children
Awed
Weep
Tom Brady is the strongest man that ever lived.
He’s clever too.
Look at those sharp eyes, shining diadems upon a high cheek dobbed in black. The luster of his smoulder, slickened by the sweat of other men, emboldens the eye of the watcher. He inspires in a glance. His teammates move with him, organs, extensions of his will and love.
I love Tom Brady. I love his form. I love his mind. He is a man that lives for what he does. We aspire for the same, but hope is not the distillation of Brady’s life. He is a crystal of victory, a diamond that drives the point into the rock and shatters it. All that lives and breaths bends toward his star. He drives, hands before and aft as he wills the earth beneath him. How can a wrist so twisted with muscle perform such supple machinations? We cannot experience these things. We cannot know victory as Tom does.
Tom Brady is the heart that beats at the center of the United States of America. The dream is his, as is the family. When he stands upon the stage of victory, the wife and children are never far from his thoughts. They are often with him as he accepts the fruits of his work. Those lips, still wet from the battle cries of the open fields, do not stray far from his son’s. A man that is not afraid to kiss his aging children is a man that must be respected. Not only is he a paragon of the physical; Tom Brady is a man of value, of heritage. The adoring eyes of his wife would inspire envy if they did not already fill the soul with a longing for the more noble standard of manhood established by the king himself.
If victory were a sash worn upon the shoulder, Tom Brady would appear to us as an angel. His shining aura blinds as it illuminates. His opponents slide from his armor like slugs. The unrighteous are repelled by his visage while the feeble find in his gaze the will to move mountains. Blessed. Divine.
Once, when I was too young to understand the intricate dance of Football, a vision came to me. My spirit was whisked into the firmament where I was greeted by Tom Brady himself. He said, “Do not be afraid,” and told of me the truth that lies at the heart of universe. Clothed in robes of white and shining like an eagle, the impression of his honed musculature could be made out among the folds. His arms, gentle but infinitely capable, enfolded and warmed me, and I glanced openly at the fine, jet-fighter pectorals. Where his sturdy hips met, the outline of a turgid force made itself apparent, and I blushed. Tom Brady was unshaken by my stare, and he held me closer.
“Understand, son, that you do not move about the world. This Earth is but a canvas upon which the tread of your heels work to mold fissures of time and energy.”
I did not fully comprehend Brady’s words then, but he reassured me that all would be clear in time. All I had to do was believe in my self and promote the best in those around me.
The vision slipped away all too soon. My spirit returned to Earth long before my mind remembered its true state, and when my eyes finally fluttered open, the light of the dawn star was already flowing through the cracks in my shades.
Civilization will not forget Tom Brady. The Earth will not forget Tom Brady. We can only hope to attain even a fraction of his power in our short lives. God bless him and his children.