The Souls on the Banks of the Acheron — Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl (1898)

“By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.” — Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

Stomach Monster.

Patsy Slug.

Ocean Tyrant.

Chaos.

Bone Eater.

The saddest line in the saddest scene of one of the greatest films ever made.

I am making an encyclopedia of monsters for my kids...

Моя любимая краткая история СССР. Как только умер Ленин, оказалось, что второй человек в партии, товарищ Троцкий - предатель. Каменев, Зиновьев, Бухарин и Сталин свергли Троцкого и изгнали из СССР. Но через пару лет оказалось, что Каменев, Зиновьев и Бухарин тоже враги и вредители. Тогда доблестный товарищ Генрих Ягода их расстрелял. Чуть позже Ягоду, как вражеского агента, расстрелял Ежов. Но через пару лет оказалось, что и Ежов не товарищ, а обычный предатель и вражеский агент. И Ежова расстрелял Берия. После смерти Сталина, все поняли, что и Берия тоже предатель. Тогда Жуков сверг и расстрелял Берию. Но вскоре Хрущев узнал, что Жуков враг и заговорщик. И сослал Жукова на Урал. А чуть позже вскрылось, что и Сталин-то был врагом, вредителем и предателем. А вместе с ним и большая часть политбюро. Тогда Сталина вынесли из мавзолея, а политбюро и примкнувшего к ним Шепилова разогнали честные партийцы, во главе с Хрущевым. Прошло несколько лет и выяснилось, что Хрущев был волюнтаристом, проходимцем, авантюристом и врагом. Тогда Брежнев отправил Хрущева на пенсию. Вскоре Брежнев умер, и выяснилось, что он был маразматиком, вредителем и причиной застоя. Потом было еще два маразматика, который никто и запомнить не успел, потому что дохли, как мухи. Но тут пришел к власти молодой, энергичный Горбачев. И оказалось, что вся партия была партией вредителей и врагов, но он-то сейчас все исправит... Тут-то СССР и развалился. А Горбачев оказался врагом и предателем.

April 18, 1966. The 38th Academy Awards. The presenter opened the envelope. Lee Marvin. Best Actor. Six feet tall, silver-haired, unhurried — Marvin walked to the stage the way a man walks when he genuinely doesn't need anyone's approval. He took the Oscar. The room waited for the usual speech. The tears. The agents. The thank-you to God. Instead, Lee Marvin looked out at the most powerful room in Hollywood and said: "I think half of this belongs to a horse somewhere out in Nevada." The crowd laughed. They thought it was a joke. It wasn't entirely. The horse — a grey named Smoky — had shared every scene with Marvin's character Kid Shelleen, a legendarily drunk gunslinger who could barely stay upright. Smoky leaned, stumbled, and wobbled alongside Marvin with such perfect comic timing that the American Humane Association gave the horse its own award that year. Marvin dedicated his Oscar to an animal because he believed the animal had genuinely earned half of it. That was exactly the kind of man he was. What nobody in that room fully understood was how he had learned to play that role so honestly. June 1944. The island of Saipan. The Pacific War. Private First Class Lee Marvin was twenty years old, serving as a scout sniper with the 4th Marine Division, when Japanese machine gun fire tore through his unit on the slopes of Mount Tapochau. A bullet severed his sciatic nerve. Another hit his foot. He was one of only a handful of men in his company to survive. He spent the next thirteen months in naval hospitals. Doctors told him he had narrowly escaped permanent paralysis. He wept for the men who didn't come home. He had nightmares for the rest of his life. After the war, still young, still carrying all of it quietly, he drifted into acting almost by accident — first as a plumber's assistant at a community theater, filling in for a sick actor, discovering he had a gift for something he couldn't quite name. When people later asked where he'd learned to act, he didn't mention technique or training. He mentioned the Marines. "I learned to act in combat," he said. "Trying to act unafraid when I was terrified." That was the foundation beneath every performance. Every cold-eyed villain. Every broken soldier. Every lovable disaster of a man stumbling through his last chance. He wasn't performing danger from the outside — he had lived inside it, survived it, and carried its weight so long it had become his natural center of gravity. In Cat Ballou, he played not one but two completely different characters — the shambling, heartbreaking Kid Shelleen, and the terrifying villain Tim Strawn — and won the Oscar for both in a single film. A first in Academy history. He kept almost nothing from his entire career. Four things only: the Oscar (half of which, in his mind, belonged to a horse), a National Cowboy Hall of Fame citation, a gold record for a gravelly talk-sung ballad called Wand'rin' Star that somehow reached #1 in the United Kingdom to the bafflement of almost everyone, including Marvin himself — and one high-heeled shoe that Vivien Leigh had used to hit him with during a scene in Ship of Fools, kept purely out of affection for her. Four objects. That was his archive. The rest was just work. Lee Marvin is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, among the most honored soldiers in American history. His headstone lists none of his films. No Oscars. No awards. No credits. Just four words of rank: Lee Marvin. PFC. U.S. Marine Corps. World War II. He knew exactly what mattered. He always had. And somewhere out in Nevada, one very deserving horse will never know that it shares a piece of Hollywood history with one of the most quietly remarkable men ever to walk across a stage.

The political world is full of things that I dont agree with, yet I appear agreeable only via their proximity to things that I hate.

Work in progress.

Damn fucking better be a joke.

The Green Knight.