1mo ago  Books

@Durek_The_Bald

Wow. I have read a LOT of things. I am speechless.

This is...

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2mo ago  Books

@Durek_The_Bald

This story is so universal.

“Because it’s not true that time heals all wounds.” The wounds just become dead no-go zones of the psyche, and you live in the rest, like living in a house where one of the rooms has been condemned and, unable to fix it, you just board it up.

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2mo ago  Books

I read this (short) short story earlier today, and still can't shake it. It's not RP related. It just really, really good.

To kill a child Author: Stig Dagerman (1948) Translation: Steven Hartman

It’s a peaceful day as sunlight settles onto the fields of the plain. Soon bells will be ringing, because today is Sunday. Between fields of rye, two children have just come upon a footpath that they have never taken before, and in the three villages along the plain, window panes glisten in the sun. Men shave before mirrors propped on kitchen tables, women hum as they slice up cinnamon bread for the morning meal, and children sit on kitchen floors, buttoning the fronts of their shirts. This is the pleasant morning of an evil day, because on this day a child will be killed in the third village by a cheerful man. Yet the child still sits on the kitchen floor, buttoning his shirt. And the man who is still shaving talks of the day ahead, of their rowing trip down the creek. And still humming, the woman places the freshly cut bread on a blue plate.

No shadows pass over the kitchen, and yet even now the man who will kill the child stands near a red gas pump in the first village. He’s a cheerful man, looking through the view-finder of his camera, framing a shot of a small blue car and a young woman who stands beside it, laughing. As the woman laughs and the man snaps the charming picture, the attendant screws their gas cap on tightly. He tells them it looks like a good day for a drive. The woman gets into the car, and the man who will kill the child pulls out his wallet. He tells the attendant they’re driving to the sea. He says when they reach the sea they’ll rent a boat and row far, far out. Through her open window, the woman in the front seat hears his words. She settles back and closes her eyes. And with her eyes closed she sees the sea and the man sitting beside her in a boat. He’s not an evil man. He’s carefree and cheerful. Before he climbs into the car, he stands for a moment in front of the grille, which gleams in the sun, and he enjoys the mixed aroma of gasoline and lilacs. No shadows fall over the car, and its shiny bumper has no dents, nor is it red with blood.

But as the man in the first village climbs into his car and slams the door shut, just as he is reaching down to pull out the choke, the woman in the third village opens her kitchen cupboard and finds that she has no sugar. The child, who has finished buttoning his shirt and has tied his shoes, kneels on a couch and sees the stream winding between the alders, pictures the black rowboat pulled up into the tall grass of the bank. The man who will lose his child has finished shaving and is just now closing his portable mirror. Coffee cups, cinnamon bread, cream, and flies each have a place on the table. Only the sugar is missing. And so the mother tells her child to run over to the Larssons’ to borrow a little. As the child opens the door, the man calls after him, urging him to hurry, because the boat lies waiting for them on the bank of the creek, and today they will row much, much further than they ever have before. Running through the yard, the child can think of nothing else but the stream and the boat and the fish that jump from the water. And no one whispers to the child that he has only eight minutes to live and that the boat will lie where it is today and for many days to come.

It isn’t far to the Larssons’. It’s only across the road. And just as the child is crossing that road, the small blue car is speeding through the second village. It’s a tiny village, with humble red houses and newly awakened people who sit in their kitchens with raised coffee cups. They look out over their hedges and see the car rush past, a large cloud of dust rising behind it. The car moves fast, and from behind the steering wheel the man catches glimpses of apple trees and newly tarred telephone poles slipping past like gray shadows. Summer breathes through their open windows, and as they rush out of the second village their car hugs the road, riding safely, surely, in the middle. They are alone on this road — so far. It’s a peaceful thing, to drive completely alone on a broad road. And as they move out onto the open plain, that feeling of peace settles deeper. The man is strong and contented, and with his right elbow he can feel the woman’s body. He’s not a bad man. He’s in a hurry to get to the sea. He wouldn’t hurt even the simplest creature, and yet, still, he will soon kill a child. As they rush on towards the third village, the woman again shuts her eyes, pretending those eyes will not open again until they can look on the sea. In time with the car’s gentle swaying, she dreams about the calm, lapping tide, the peaceful, mirrored surface of the water.

Because life is constructed in such a merciless fashion, even one minute before a cheerful man kills a child he can still feel entirely at ease, and only one minute before a woman screams out in horror she can close her eyes and dream of the sea, and during the last minute of that child’s life his parents can sit in a kitchen waiting for sugar, talking casually about the child’s white teeth and the rowing trip they have planned, and that child himself can close a gate and begin to cross a road, holding in his right hand a few cubes of sugar wrapped up in white paper, and for the whole of that minute he can see nothing but a clear stream with big fish and a wide-bottomed boat with silent oars.

Afterward everything is too late. Afterward there is a blue car stopped sideways in the road, and a screaming woman takes her hand from her mouth, and it’s red with blood. Afterward a man opens a car door and tries to stand on his legs, even though he has a pit of horror within him. Afterward a few sugar cubes are strewn meaninglessly about in the blood and gravel, and a child lies motionless on its stomach, its face pressed heavily against the road. Afterward two pale people, who have not yet had their coffee, come running through a gate to see a sight in the road they will never forget. Because it’s not true that time heals all wounds. Time does not heal the wounds of a dead child, and it heals very poorly the pain of a mother who forgot to buy sugar and who sent her child across the road to borrow some. And it heals just as poorly the anguish of a once cheerful man who has killed a child.

Because the man who has killed a child does not go to the sea. The man who has killed a child drives home slowly, in silence. And beside him sits a mute woman with a bandaged hand. And as they drive back through the villages, they do not see even one friendly face—all shadows, everywhere, are very dark. And when they part, it is in the deepest silence. And the man who has killed a child knows that this silence is his enemy, and that he will need years of his life to conquer it by crying out that it wasn’t his fault. But he also knows that this is a lie. And in the fitful dreams of his nights he will try instead to gain back just a single minute of his life, to somehow make that single minute different.

But life is so merciless to the man who has killed a child that everything afterward is too late.

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2mo ago  Books

@carnold03 He definitely trained dramatically differently from other bodybuilders of his era. I remember reading some of his articles and he seemed pretty sharp. Seems like he and his bodybuilder Ray died within days of each other.

2mo ago  Books

High-Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way

A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

High-intensity bodybuilding advice from the first man to win a perfect score in the Mr. Universe competition

This one-of-a-kind book profiles the high-intensity training (HIT) techniques pioneered by the late Mike Mentzer, the legendary bodybuilder, leading trainer, and renowned bodybuilding consultant. His highly effective, proven approach enables bodybuilders to get results--and win competitions--by doing shorter, less frequent workouts each week. Extremely time-efficient, HIT sessions require roughly 40 minutes per week of training--as compared with the lengthy workout sessions many bodybuilders would expect to put in daily.

In addition to sharing Mentzer's workout and training techniques, featured here is fascinating biographical information and striking photos of the world-class bodybuilder--taken by noted professional bodybuilding photographers--that will inspire and instruct serious bodybuilders and weight lifters everywhere.

#2002 #HighIntensityTrainingtheMikeMentzerWay #MikeMentzer #JohnLittle #Books #Nonfiction #Fitness #Exercise #Weightlifting #Health #Sports #Kindle #eBooks #Reference #PersonalDevelopment #BiologicalWarfare #KineticWarfare

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2mo ago  Books

Goldeneye: the story of Ian Fleming in Jamaica and the creation of British national icon, James Bond.

From 1946 until the end of his life, Ian Fleming lived for two months of every year at Goldeneye - the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white sand beach on Jamaica's north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written here.

Fleming adored the Jamaica he had discovered, at the time an imperial backwater that seemed unchanged from the glory days of the empire. Amid its stunning natural beauty, the austerity and decline of post-war Britain could be forgotten. For Fleming, Jamaica offered the perfect mixture of British old-fashioned conservatism and imperial values, alongside the dangerous and sensual: the same curious combination that made his novels so appealing, and successful. The spirit of the island - its exotic beauty, its unpredictability, its melancholy, its love of exaggeration and gothic melodrama - infuses his writing.

Fleming threw himself into the island's hedonistic Jet Set party scene: Hollywood giants, and the cream of British aristocracy, the theatre, literary society and the secret services spent their time here drinking and bed-hopping. But while the whites partied, Jamaican blacks were rising up to demand respect and self-government. And as the imperial hero James Bond - projecting British power across the world - became ever more anachronistic and fantastical, so his popularity soared.

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2mo ago  Books

Just got my hands on Psychological Warfare written by Linebarger

3mo ago  Books

ON THE MANNER OF NEGOTIATING WITH PRINCES;

on the Uses of Diplomacy; the Choice of Ministers and Envoys; and the Personal Qualities necessary for Success in Missions abroad; by MONSIEUR DE CALLIÈRES

3mo ago  Books

Breaking the First Rule of Fight Club

"The Club That Dare Not Speak Its Name"

This is an essay that appears in the new and wide-ranging SmartPop anthology, entitled *You Do Not Talk About Fight Club: I Am Jack’s Completely Unauthorized Essay Collection*. The anthology was edited by the brilliant media ecologist Read Mercer Schuchardt and features a forward by Chuck Palahniuk himself.

The Physics of Fight Club

There is a savage joy in violence. The secret of the success of Fight Club is its acceptance of that basic and uncomfortable truth, which is as well-known to every martial artist, gang member, and football hooligan as it is completely alien to the sedentary sort of middle-aged individuals favored by those who publish novels. For as men have known since long before the Colosseum’s sands were first soaked with blood, there is no adrenaline rush so great as the moment when two men put one another to the physical test.

Fight Club is a fascinating little book which not only embraced that truth, but in doing so, translated surprisingly well to the cinematic medium. This should probably not have been surprising, given that the author’s witch’s brew of male fury and raw but stylized violence is almost perfectly suited for that male audience which so enjoys the cinematic adventures of Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude van Damme, Jackie Chan, and a host of other aggressively oriented male leads. The combination of that visceral appeal with the brilliant casting of a ripped and shirtless Brad Pitt for the ladies all but assured Hollywood hit status.

When viewed from a technical perspective, Fight Club is nearly as absurd as any wuxia extravaganza featuring aerial acrobatics and mad dashes through the treetops, whereas from a psychological perspective, it is impressively accurate. To the combat-aware reader, the book raises the interesting question of how the author could have gotten the latter so right and the former so wrong.

Fight Club subscribes to the common conventional fiction that it is not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, but rather the size of the fight in the dog. Although in Fight Club terms, this might be better described as the size of the proverbial canine’s violent sociopathy. As with most aphorisms, there is an element of truth to this; all things being equal, the tougher individual will usually prevail. But outside of the formalized structure of the boxing ring, all things are very seldom equal.

The most basic truth of unarmed combat is that F = M x A: Force equals Mass times Acceleration. Since Force is the measurement of what is smashing into your face and is the primary variable determining exactly what the effect of that blow will be, it is very important to understand the significance of this equation. Since Mass is a function of size, this means that a larger individual will usually pack a more powerful punch than a smaller one. Usually, but not always.

Review continues here: voxday.net/2008/08/04/fight-club-anthology/

#2008 #Voxday #Essay #Review #Book #Adapted #Film #FightClub #US #America #Propaganda #Media #SSH #Lambda #FemaleHeaded #Household #Promiscuity #Predditors #Grooming #Homosexuality #SamesexAttracted #Sodomites #Pedophiles #Noncery #Pederasty #Pedophocracy #GenderDysphoria #MentalIllness #MoralIllness #ChuckPalahniuk #DavidFincher #JimUhls

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3mo ago  Books

@Chantfire

You Old Buck, I didn't know that. I placed this here as a reminder, Illimitable men recommended it in one of his works on dark triads.

Now you know...

...and knowing is half the battle.

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