Banksy's Manifesto

Quick, everyone, post something Bri-ish!:

(I had to reflect on this for like three hours to understand what it meant to me. That's the thing with Banksy: Sometimes he seems brilliant, and other times you wonder if he's just an angry, rebellious-albeit talented- vandal. This is a moment of the former.)

An extract from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO who was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diptheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand proping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentary which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Source: Imperial War museum

Taken from Banksy's website: http://banksy.co.uk/manifesto/index.html

Tonight's News

My printer is out of black ink.


this sucks.

tonight, of all nights, when I was going to print my 1000 page epic.

the thing shat out on page 997. Since the epic was unfinished, i burned the printed pages and deleted the text from my hard drive. The world is poorer because dell never got on its game and made everlasting ink cartridges.

If you are as disappointed as I am that the world will never see what was bound to be the piece of literature that defined our generation and want to voice your frustration to dell, you can contact them here.

From the BBC

Man hurt using gun to change tyre

The man had removed all but one of the wheel nuts

A US man has injured himself in both legs after attempting to loosen a stiff wheel-nut by blasting it with his gun.

The 66-year-old man from Washington state was repairing his car outside his home when the accident took place.

Shooting at the wheel from arm's length with his 12-gauge shotgun, he was peppered with buckshot and debris.

The man - whom police say was on his own and not intoxicated - was taken to hospital with severe, but not life-threatening, injuries.

The man, from South Kitsap, 10 miles (16km) southwest of Seattle, had been repairing his Lincoln Continental for two weeks, according to the police, and had removed all but one of the nuts on the right rear wheel.

Frustrated by the one remaining nut which refused to budge, he resorted to fire power in an effort to shift it.

"He's bound and determined to get that lug nut off," said Deputy Scott Wilson, a spokesman from the sheriff's office.

He sustained injuries from his feet to the middle of his abdomen, with some pellets reaching as high as his chin, police said.

taken from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7091904.stm

Gone Gone Gone

So jim is gone. That means he hates all of you. And by all of you i mean me, since i'm the only person who reads this.

Did you know that you can listen to hardcore through theatre speakers when you work in a video lab and nobody else is there?

Yes I did know that, cuz I did it. Next question.

Why can't you find a girl?

They're all out chasing heroes. We're just a wrecking crew, bored boys with nothing to do.

Did you come up with that yourself?

No, it's an adolescents song.

Are they your favorite band?

That's a stupid thing to ask. Next question.

Why are you writing this?

I'm bored at work. Gimcrack needs my attention.

What is 'gimcrack?'

A gimcrack is something that is showy, but ultimately useless. It was the original name of this blog, but gimcrack.blogspot.com was already taken.

You have a big vocabulary--

The internet has a big vocabulary.

I see. Do you store all your knowledge on the internet?

I try not to have any knowledge. In the rare instance when I need to know something, I consult the ultimate source of everything, the internet.

Is this interview over?

Yes. Please close the door on your way out.

Mystery Link, Take Two

As hard as it may be to believe, it's better this time (longest clickable link ever).

Hey Joe, Look What I Can Do

Pretty cool, right? Click it for the Whole Collection

Maus'd

Dying mice are book-marks for really negative memories. The only way I experienced death and loss for most of my life was due to half-eaten and/or mouse-trapped mices.

Out of sight, out of mind works.
I prefer comic relief:

Today is November 1st

Halloween is over, and I didn't get any free candy. I did see a fun-size milky way sitting on the ground outside the CVS. However, deciding that it was most definitely poisoned, I didn't partake in its celestial fusion of chocolate and what-ever-the-hell else is in a milky way these days.
Later, I saw some lady dressed up as a fireman, but when I asked her the primary method of egress during a multi-level burn, she just stared at me. Fireman indeed.

There's a young mouse slowly dying under the radiator in our living room. He tragically found his way to the sticky rat trap a roommate set out. Apparently sunflower seeds are a delicacy worth the risk of one's life. I'm glad all they cost me is a dollar fifteen at 7-11. I discovered the little guy about two days ago when I investigated this strange squeaking noise I heard while watching reruns of the Colbert Report. I peered under the whitewashed radiator and found the creature completely adhered to the adhesive. It appeared that in an attempt to free a leg through the use of leverage, the mouse permanently glued his face down. I picked up the trap and the mouse squirmed wildly. Not knowing what to do, I put the occupied trap back where I found it.
Out of sight, out of mind, right?