MotherShip by Sam Wise ___ PLEASE REFRESH PAGE FOR WEB FONTS

Friday 31 March 2017

008: Operation Exterminate

(A 008: Operazione Sterminio)

Written and directed by Umberto Lenzi, Italy, 1965

Ingrid Schoeller (German actress) as MacDonald, American Agent 008
Alberto Lupo as Frank Smith, British Secret Service Agent 606


"The British Secret Service sends agent 606 to Cairo to collaborate with an American colleague in searching for a stolen anti-radar device. Arriving in Egypt, he finds that agent A008 is actually an attractive female...Ingrid Schoeller plays what is quite possibly the first attempt of international cinema to create a female James Bond-type character: she is beautiful, curvaceous, sweet, intelligent, armed with gadgets, expert with a gun, and can handle herself in a fight without needing a man to rescue her (as she proves in a daring escape from an enemy-riddled beauty saloon)." (IMBd).





Bonus

Black Tigress (Lola Colt)

Co-written and directed by Siro Marcellini, 1967

(A bit cheesy but rare to find a heroine among Spaghetti Westerns)

Tuesday 28 March 2017

The Strange Woman

 Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and Douglas Sirk, 1946


Starring Hedy Lamarr, George Sanders, Louis Hayward

"In 1820s New England beautiful but poor and manipulative Jenny Hager marries rich old man Isaiah Poster but also seduces his son and his company foreman..,Beautiful Jenny Hager finds she can always get what she wants from the men in the 1820's port of Bangor, Maine. Freed by his death from her drunkard father she soon manoeuvres herself into a position to marry a middle-aged monied local businessman. Though she often uses his money to do good, she continues to consider all other men fair game." (IMDb).


 





 
 




Recommended

Monday 27 March 2017

Vengeance

Spaghetti Western directed by Antonio Margheriti (Italy)

Starring: Richard Harrison as Rocco, Claudio Camaso as Mendoza and Spela Rozin as Jane


A man tracks down the five outlaws who murdered his brother, all the while being shadowed by a mysterious Pinkerton








Bonus

The Moment to Kill

Directed by Giuliano Carnimeo, Italy, 1968


Wednesday 15 March 2017

Walden

By Henry David Thoreau, 1845

Selected passages read (beautifully and hypnotically) by Archibald MacLeish, 1968






Man Who Cried for Revenge

Directed by Mario Caiano, Italy, 1968

Original title: Il suo nome gridava vendetta

Starring Anthony Steffen as Davy Flanagan

 



 

 

John the Bastard

Original title: John il bastardo

Directed by Armando Crispino, Italy, 1967



Monday 13 March 2017

Winter Academy

Billy MacKenzie



From the posthumous album Beyond the Sun, 1997


Ex-Associate Billy Mackenzie was working on the tracks which comprise Beyond the Sun when he committed suicide. The Cocteau Twins' Simon Raymonde, among others, completed the demos for release.





I've heard around
That you've been crying
All over town
They say you're buying
Cheap thrills with hearts
You couldn't care for
Cheap thrills with hearts
But I know different

Till the Winter Academy
A gift to flowers
Needless to say
We spent these hours
All around town
These young pretenders
So jagged the crown
Breakfast remembered

When I close my eyes I think of you
When I close my eyes
See all of you
When I close my eyes
I see you for what you were
Before the autumn came
But life itself is strange
Night and day


Written by Kenny Brady (who was in The Fall) from Edinburgh


'squashed again' by wandering bohemian

Sunday 12 March 2017

The Torture Never Stops



Frank Zappa, 1976

 




Flies all green and buzzin'
In this dungeon of despair
Prisoners grumble and piss their clothes
And scratch their matted hair
A tiny light from a window-hole
A hundred yards away
Is all they ever get to know
About the regular light in the day

And it stinks so bad the stones been chokin'
Weepin' greenish drops
In the room where the giant fire puffer works
And the torture never stops
The torture never stops

Slime and rot and rats and snot and
Vomit on the floor
Fifty hill billy soldiers man
Holdin' spears by the iron door
Knives and spikes and guns and the likes
Of every tool of pain
And a sinister midget with a bucket and a mop
Where the blood goes down the drain

And it stinks so bad, the stones been chokin'
Weepin' greenish drops
In the room where
The giant fire puffer works
And the torture never stops
The torture never stops,
The torture
The torture
The torture never stops

Flies all green and buzzin'
In this dungeon of despair
An evil prince eats a steamin' pig
In a chamber right near there

He eats the snouts and the trotters first
The loins and the groins are soon dispersed
His carvin' style is well rehearsed
He stands and shouts
All men be cursed (4x)
And disagree, hell no one durst
He's the best of cause of all the worst
Some wrong been done
He done it first

And he stinks so bad his bones been chokin'
Weepin' greenish drops
In the light of the iron sausage
Where the torture never stops
The torture never stops
The torture
The torture
The torture never stops

Flies all green and buzzin'
In the dungeon of despair
Who are all those people
That he's locked away down there
Are they crazy
Are they sainted
Are they zeros someone painted
That had never been explained
Since at first it was created
But a dungeon like a sin
Requires not much lockin' in
Of everything thats ever been
Look at her
Look at him
Thats whats the deal we're dealin in
Thats whats the deal we're dealin in
Thats whats the deal we're dealin in




Frank zappa (guitar)
Captain beefheart (harmonica, vocals)
Napoleon murphy brock (saxophone)
Bruce fowler (trombone)
Denny walley (slide guitar)
George duke (keyboards)
Tom fowler (bass)
Terry bozzio (drums)




Saturday 11 March 2017

When you break a writer’s heart


By Ceres




They say that if a writer falls in love with you, you’ll never die.
But no one talks about what happens when you break a writer’s heart.

How this gift of immortality becomes their curse.
How they keep you alive in their poetry even while it kills them.
How they recreate the crime scene on paper.
Words spread out like map coordinates
Looking for where things went wrong.
Writing down the word ‘forever’ and
Wondering how those three syllables sounded like an eternity when you said it.

Every poem they write is a sketch of your face; as if their pen only knows how to make posters of the people they miss; each full stop a reminder of your freckles; each semicolon an image of your sideways smile and the dimple under your cheek.

Every poem is just ‘I still love you’ written in code.

Every poem is a letter unsent; because if hearts were mailboxes you wouldn’t have one.

Every poem is an attempt to soothe the ache in their left chest; to let inked words bleed instead; to shrink the memories into sentences.

Every poem is the Heimlich maneuver; so they write until the words locked in their throats fly out like freed birds and bruised lungs can finally taste oxygen again.

Every poem is a paper boat called acceptance.

Every poem including this one








      'Le Sang d’un Poète' (The Blood of a Poet) 1930


 
 
 
 













Wednesday 8 March 2017

Lost Monstaville Journal Entries June 2002


Monstaville Journal Entries in my I Ching readings notebook




2 June 2002

Yesterday I offered to cut the Bengali neighbours’ hedge (on the far side) and made them happy. Then I broke the shears doing the other hedge and Pigsy came home at the same time so I left it as I hadn’t locked the door. Pigsy went up to his room in a visible tantrum! Such a baby. You have to accept that he is just a little boy, volatile, emotional, angry, bad-tempered and so jealous and immature. His mother evidently helped him not to grow up.


Today, I cut off from the last sexual contact and cut myself loose, so this is the first day of freedom. Beautiful, sunny day, too. Meditated for a long time. Studied the Osiris book by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge. Practised tai chi long and slow after doing standing meditation. Great. Also practised the word which went well. Did some gardening too. A boy next door in the Pakistani family’s garden smiled at me. That was cool.

Then went out to the front to see what I could cut – the remaining hedge, that is, while Pigsy was out and I was feeling strong and calm! The Pakistani neighbours came out to cut their side of the hedge at the same time. So I went and mentioned the fact that the stems on top had grown so long and thick that they broke my shears. Hence I could not cut it all. It was a friendly exchange and healed a few wounds between us I think.

 
Dragon Insights: 30 – Li. Fire and light. The sun as their source. Your brightness can illuminate the four corners of the world and you have great successes. Right action (dharma).


3 June 2002

Pigsy Monster: what’s in his head and what can I do about him?

I watched the Brazil vs Turkey World Cup game this morning at 10am and tried to keep it as quiet as possible. Then, this evening, he came home and the Africans up the road were playing atrocious music on a car stereo loudly. Pigsy got an idea and put his radio on loud both to cover it up and annoy me. The Africans’ music only lasted for 15 minutes and he left his on for a long time. I wore earplugs.


Dragon Insights: 53 – Jian. Gradual development. Glide, advance, flow, penetrate and reach gradually, little-by-little. “A tree grows slow and strong on the mountainside. Like planting an enormous tree as a seedling – it’s going to take a long time to grow to full maturity. Don’t apply force or pressure. Careful, unhurried, constant work returns great profit in the end.”

Pigsy doesn’t trust anyone, especially at home.


“Don’t push things or be overconfident or use impulsive action. If you go too far, too fast, you ill unexpectedly land in a situation, space or place where it is hard enough for you just to survive let along thrive. I’m already there, no? It could mean that Pigsy needs to prove that he is right to distrust me, that I am the villain and should be kicked out, jailed, thrown in to the gutter so he can have the house for himself!


“Gradually conditions change. You will reach the summit of your endeavours. It is a high, lovely place. You must work very, very hard amid some jealousy and slander. But in the end your light is seen and none can deny it. Freed from all difficulties, your glory will shine.

You find yourself temporarily nesting in the wrong tree with some hostile and strange birds for company, like a wild goose perching on the tip of a branch; a tricky situation requiring dexterity and a delicate state of balance. Retreat inwardly if you cannot fly away outwardly. At least this is a safe place where you can hang on.”

Don’t confront or engage him then.

 
“After you have achieved your success, people will regard you as a shining example to motivate them onwards in their own endeavours.” Good, because it heralds eventual and gradual success.

Excerpts from Dragon Insights: A Simple Approach to the I Ching by Jillian Lawler, 2001

Monday 6 March 2017

It Came From Outer Space







It Came From Outer Space (The Xenomorph)



Ornella Muti as Princess Aura, in the space opera Flash Gordon (directed by Mike Hodges, 1980). She is the daughter of Ming the Merciless and the rightful heir to the throne of Mongo. In the 1979 Filmation animated series, she at first assists her father in battling Flash and friends but turns against him and joins the rebel forces of Mongo. She also has an elite guard of female warriors under her command known as the Witch-Women. After Ming is removed from power, the Witch-Women remain in Princess Aura's service. (Wikipedia).



Virgil Finlay


It Came From Outer Space (The Xenomorph)

 
A depiction of a Dakini UFO Valkyrie pilot of a Vril Society Vimana, otherwise called a Flying Saucer


It Came From Outer Space (The Xenomorph)