Jeremy Maddux > Recent Status Updates

'Sun Yucheng, chief of Zhetang brigade of Banqiao commune, caught a woman stealing and shoved his gun up her vagina.'

Is it that Communism is inherently horrible, or that China itself was inherently horrible? I'm beginning to think the latter.

'He told Chang to bury the old woman before the others returned from working in the fields. Hua said that if she did not do this immediately he would force her to bury her mother in the house when she died. Chang had no choice but to bury her mother alive.'

"At first, the villagers tried to bury their dead in coffins but later, when the wood ran out, the living just wrapped the dead in cotton. Finally there was no cloth left, so at night people mounted guard over buried relatives until the flesh had sufficiently decomposed to prevent others from eating the corpse."

Communism is awesome! I can't wait to see how much necrophagia goes on under Bernie and Cortez's watch!

"Nothing that matters in the history of the world is ever set down in writing. Word-of-mouth, private conversations, gentlemen’s agreements, a nod, a whisper, a wink."

Exactly. I never understood people who only believe things that are supported by document. Do they need a document to confirm their own personal history to themselves? Do they need a document to affirm that they woke up that morning?

"You don’t defeat brutes by showing them what they are—least of all ‘objectively.’ They’re proud of what they are. They like it. That’s what sadism means: beyond shame. Films like Salo just appeal to the same in the rest of us. The only way to deal with fascism is to show people what it isn’t over and over again. Joy, love, innocence. Singin’ in the Rain—that’s the ultimate anti-fascist movie.”

I. Hate. Clare.

"You don’t defeat brutes by showing them what they are—least of all ‘objectively.’ They’re proud of what they are. They like it. That’s what sadism means: beyond shame. Films like Salo just appeal to the same in the rest of us. The only way to deal with fascism is to show people what it isn’t over and over again. Joy, love, innocence. Singin’ in the Rain—that’s the ultimate anti-fascist movie.”

I. Hate. Clare.

"Lookit crazy old Iggy Pop. That son of a bitch is takin’ self-immolation to the max. You know what happened to that dumb fucker last time he jumped into the audience like he does? Somebody tried to bite his pecker off.” Sharkey, always prompt to put the relevant question, piped up to ask, “Who was it tried? Male or female?” “You ever seen his audience? Who could tell the difference?"

"And if it ever happens that a Praetorian accidentally kills someone - they can be court marshalled! Do you understand? A Praetorian can get court marshalled just for sticking some civilian instigator! I'm telling you, Commodus was far from perfect, there's no denying that, but he was fairer to us than this democrat! I'm beginning to understand that a real man can't stand those windbags."

Some things never change.

'Kracauer’s big idea was that the Germans of Hitler’s time had been driven crazy by the movies. Following the First World War, the country, still dazed by defeat, had been flooded with films that acted upon its wounded psyche like so many viruses. To begin with, there was The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, a movie about madness and murder in which all the borders of sanity were systematically erased.'

“Don’t you realize what the Nazis did to homosexuals, as well as Jews?” Chipsey assumed a deeply confidential tone. “Clarissa, I don’t have a prejudiced bone in my body, you know that. But believe me, I’ve met plenty of Jews and queers who would’ve deserved it.”