| James Cagney and the Dead End Kids |
... faces?
(And minds?)
'We lorde,' quoþ þe gentyle kny3t, 'wheþer þis be þe grene chapelle?' He my3t aboute mydny3t þe dele his matynnes telle.
| MY first thought was, he lied in every word, | |
| That hoary cripple, with malicious eye | |
| Askance to watch the working of his lie | |
| On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford | |
| Suppression of the glee, that purs’d and scor’d | 5 |
| Its edge, at one more victim gain’d thereby. | |
| What else should he be set for, with his staff? | |
| What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare | |
| All travellers who might find him posted there, | |
| And ask the road? I guess’d what skull-like laugh | 10 |
| Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph | |
| For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare, | |
| If at his counsel I should turn aside | |
| Into that ominous tract which, all agree, | |
| Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly | 15 |
| I did turn as he pointed: neither pride | |
| Nor hope rekindling at the end descried, | |
| So much as gladness that some end might be. | |
For, what with my whole world-wide wandering, | |
| What with my search drawn out thro’ years, my hope | 20 |
| Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope | |
| With that obstreperous joy success would bring,— | |
| I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring | |
| My heart made, finding failure in its scope. | |
As when a sick man very near to death | 25 |
| Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end | |
| The tears and takes the farewell of each friend, | |
| And hears one bid the other go, draw breath | |
| Freelier outside, (“since all is o’er,” he saith, | |
| “And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;”) | 30 |
| While some discuss if near the other graves | |
| Be room enough for this, and when a day | |
| Suits best for carrying the corpse away, | |
| With care about the banners, scarves and staves, | |
| And still the man hears all, and only craves | 35 |
| He may not shame such tender love and stay. | |
| Thus, I had so long suffer’d, in this quest, | |
| Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ | |
| So many times among “The Band”—to wit, | |
| The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search address’d | 40 |
| Their steps—that just to fail as they, seem’d best. | |
| And all the doubt was now—should I be fit? | |
So, quiet as despair, I turn’d from him, | |
| That hateful cripple, out of his highway | |
| Into the path he pointed. |
| All the day | 45 |
| Had been a dreary one at best, and dim | |
| Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim | |
| Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. | |
For mark! no sooner was I fairly found | |
| Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, | 50 |
| Than, pausing to throw backward a last view | |
| O’er the safe road, ’t was gone; gray plain all round: | |
| Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound. | |
| I might go on; nought else remain’d to do. | |
So, on I went. I think I never saw | 55 |
| Such starv’d ignoble nature; nothing throve: | |
| For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove! | |
| But cockle, spurge, according to their law | |
| Might propagate their kind, with none to awe, | |
| You ’d think; a burr had been a treasure trove. | 60 |
| No! penury, inertness and grimace, | |
| In the strange sort, were the land’s portion. “See | |
| Or shut your eyes,” said Nature peevishly, | |
| “It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: | |
| ’T is the Last Judgment’s fire must cure this place, | 65 |
| Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.” | |
| If there push’d any ragged thistle=stalk | |
| Above its mates, the head was chopp’d; the bents | |
| Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents | |
| In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruis’d as to baulk | 70 |
| All hope of greenness? ’T is a brute must walk | |
| Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents. | |
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair | |
| In leprosy; thin dry blades prick’d the mud | |
| Which underneath look’d kneaded up with blood. | 75 |
| One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, | |
| Stood stupefied, however he came there: | |
| Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud! | |
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know, | |
| With that red, gaunt and collop’d neck a-strain, | 80 |
| And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; | |
| Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; | |
| I never saw a brute I hated so; | |
| He must be wicked to deserve such pain. |
| I shut my eyes and turn’d them on my heart. | 85 |
| As a man calls for wine before he fights, | |
| I ask’d one draught of earlier, happier sights, | |
| Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. | |
| Think first, fight afterwards—the soldier’s art: | |
| One taste of the old time sets all to rights. | 90 |
| Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face | |
| Beneath its garniture of curly gold, | |
| Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold | |
| An arm in mine to fix me to the place, | |
| That way he us’d. Alas, one night’s disgrace! | 95 |
| Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold. | |
| Giles then, the soul of honor—there he stands | |
| Frank as ten years ago when knighted first. | |
| What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. | |
| Good—but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman hands | 100 |
| Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands | |
| Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst! | |
Better this present than a past like that; | |
| Back therefore to my darkening path again! |
| No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. | 105 |
| Will the night send a howlet of a bat? | |
| I asked: when something on the dismal flat | |
| Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. | |
A sudden little river cross’d my path | |
| As unexpected as a serpent comes. | 110 |
| No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; | |
| This, as it froth’d by, might have been a bath | |
| For the fiend’s glowing hoof—to see the wrath | |
| Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. | |
So petty yet so spiteful All along, | 115 |
| Low scrubby alders kneel’d down over it; | |
| Drench’d willows flung them headlong in a fit | |
| Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: | |
| The river which had done them all the wrong, | |
| Whate’er that was, roll’d by, deterr’d no whit. | 120 |
| Which, while I forded,—good saints, how I fear’d | |
| To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek, | |
| Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek | |
| For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! | |
| —It may have been a water-rat I spear’d, | 125 |
| But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek. | |
| Glad was I when I reach’d the other bank. |
| Now for a better country. Vain presage! | |
| Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage | |
| Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank | 130 |
| Soil to a plash? Toads in a poison’d tank, | |
| Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage— | |
The fight must so have seem’d in that fell cirque. | |
| What penn’d them there, with all the plain to choose? | |
| No foot-print leading to that horrid mews, | 135 |
| None out of it. Mad brewage set to work | |
| Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk | |
| Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews. |
| And more than that—a furlong on—why, there! | |
| What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, | 140 |
| Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel | |
| Men’s bodies out like silk? with all the air | |
| Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware, | |
| Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. |
| Then came a bit of stubb’d ground, once a wood, | 145 |
| Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth | |
| Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, | |
| Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood | |
| Changes and off he goes!) within a rood— | |
| Bog, clay, and rubble, sand and stark black dearth. | 150 |
| Now blotches rankling, color’d gay and grim, | |
| Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s | |
| Broke into moss or substances like thus; |
| Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him | |
| Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim | 155 |
| Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. |
| And just as far as ever from the end, | |
| Nought in the distance but the evening, nought | |
| To point my footstep further! At the thought, | |
| A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend, | 160 |
| Sail’d past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penn’d | |
| That brush’d my cap—perchance the guide I sought. |
| For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, | |
| Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place | |
| All round to mountains—with such name to grace | 165 |
| Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. | |
| How thus they had surpris’d me,—solve it, you! | |
| How to get from them was no clearer case. | |
Yet half I seem’d to recognize some trick | |
| Of mischief happen’d to me, God knows when— | 170 |
| In a bad perhaps. Here ended, then, | |
| Progress this way. When, in the very nick | |
| Of giving up, one time more, came a click | |
| As when a trap shuts—you ’re inside the den. | |
Burningly it came on me all at once, | 175 |
| This was the place! those two hills on the right, | |
| Couch’d like two bulls lock’d horn in horn in fight, | |
| While, to the left, a tall scalp’d mountain … Dunce, | |
| Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, | |
| After a life spent training for the sight! | 180 |
| What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? | |
| The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart, | |
| Built of brown stone, without a counter-part | |
| In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf | |
| Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf | 185 |
| He strikes on, only when the timbers start. |
| Not see? because of night perhaps?—Why, day | |
| Came back again for that! before it left, | |
| The dying sunset kindled through a cleft: | |
| The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, | 190 |
| Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,— | |
| “Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!” |
| Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it toll’d | |
| Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears | |
| Of all the lost adventurers my peers,— | 195 |
| How such a one was strong, and such was bold, | |
| And such was fortunate, yet each of old | |
| Lost, lost! one moment knell’d the woe of years. | |
There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met | |
| To view the last of me, a living frame | 200 |
| For one more picture! in a sheet of flame | |
| I saw them and I knew them all. |
| And yet | |
| Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, | |
| And blew “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.” |
JUDSON: (reads) Let the chains of Fenric shatter. Even with an alphabet more than a thousand years old, the Ultima machine can reveal it's meaning.The point, of course, is that what the inscription is supposed to mean, and what the words in it actually mean, are no less than four different things. In the story the inscription is supposed to mean literally 'Let the chains of Fenric shatter'. And this indeed has another, deeper meaning which when, er, programmed into a computer, will then, in a slightly dodgy, psionic-y, Season Twenty-Six-type sort of a way, start putting Fenric's final programme into operation, waking up the Haemovores at Maidens' Point to look for the Flask,which, er, contains Fenric.
DOCTOR: It can translate it, but who knows what it might mean?*
ᛚᚨᚢᚲᚨᛉ:The ash runes are all the wrong way roung and the elk is upside down. The fourth rune in the second line, meanwhile, is a need rather than an aurochs, as it should be. And in the third line the lake at the beginning should probably be a Tiw (though that mistake, at least, is based on an actual archaeological source), and between the other Tiw and the game there should be another aurochs.
ᛊᚨᛚᚾᛊᚨᛚᚢ:
ᛚᚢᚹᚨᛏᚹᚨ:
ᛚᚨᚢᚲᚨᛉ:
ᛚᚨᚢᚲᚨᛉ:
ᛊᚨᛚᚢ ᛊᚨᛚᚢ:
ᛏᚢᚹᚨ ᛏᚢᚹᚨ:
ᛚᚨᚢᚲᚨᛉ:
LAUKAZAnd literally they mean
SALU SALU
TUWA TUWA
LAUKAZ
'Leek'Leek' could of course mean 'garlic', which would at least fit with the "Dracula" theme of the story, though for the Viking it almost certainly had a magical significance of its own. The second line is a religious or magical address to a deity or demon. 'Tove' is a feminine given name, derived from 'Thor'.
Hail Hail
Tove Tove
Leek'
There's the witty boy and the pretty boy,
And the boy who oils his hair;
There's the catfaced boy, and the rat-faced boy,
And the boy with the bovine stare.
There's the steamy boy, and the dreamy boy,
And the boy who is 'up to date';
There is the boy who mopes, and the boy who jokes,
And the boy who is always late.
There's the tender boy, and the slender boy,
And the boy with limbs like a bear's;
There's the stoutish boy, and the loutish boy,
And the boy who slides downstairs.
There's the cheerful boy and 'that fearful boy';
And the boy who deserves a flogging;
There's a boy with a heart and the boy who's too 'smart',
And the boy whose brain wants a jogging.
There's the grass-green boy, and the bright, keen boy,
And the boy who is always blubbing;
There's the climby boy and the grimy boy,
And the boy who shirks his tubbing.
There are many others, oh men and brothers,
And none are all bad, you bet;
There are boys and boys - yet, through grief and joys,
They are Somebody's Darlings yet.
[The Boy's Own Reciter]
| Elton's BOYcott of Dolce & Gabbana didn't last very long. |
I think it undeniable, however, that most gay men in their 40s and 50s would rather be having frequent sex with as many 18-21-year-old men (“twinks”) as possible, rather than posing as “married men” with “children” in tow.
The Elton John style fake family seems to me to be a freak show—one that even more freakily is what the British Establishment is recommending as the ideal life for gay men.
More recently, there have been a number of news stories showing that an older generation of gay men are “turned off” by the new politically correct developments in gay culture. The fashion designers, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, caused uproar when they criticised the attempt to create “same-sex families” along the Elton John model. The Dolce and Gabbana statements—“no chemical offsprings [sic] and rented uterus: life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed” and “the only family is the traditional one”—illustrates perfectly the fact that there is no consensus among homosexual men on creating an artificial family-like gay life.
The fashion designer Giorgio Armani has joined the fray, criticising effeminate or overly obviously gay dress styles, saying “a homosexual man is a man 100%. He does not need to dress homosexual” and “when homosexuality is exhibited to the extreme—to say, ‘Ah, you know I’m homosexual,’—that has nothing to do with me. A man has to be a man”.
It seems there is a culture that is an acceptable part of the multicultural political project that is identifiably gay. A way of dressing. A hairstyle. A musical preference. A less manly mode of behaviour. This culture can be incorporated into the general attack on family values by means of gay marriage, gay adoption of children, by the mainstreaming of the gay identity.
But most of this amounts to taking the homosexuality out of being gay. It is becoming a culture—largely a young person’s culture—and an identity. But at its most fundamental, being “gay” should be about having sex with men. It is possible to enjoy sex with men, even exclusively, and not share the cultural aspects of “gay identity”. Who cares about the hairstyles and the music? If it isn’t about sex, then this culture is a synthetic creation of the political and media class.
Real homosexuality is incompatible with the family, because homosexuality is about sex, not love. I don’t deny that gay men do fall in love with each other—but shorter relationships are statistically more common in the absence of any real family relationship. And, yes, gay men do love attractive young men—but they love all of them, and want to have sex with all of them. Large numbers of sexual partners is what being homosexual has really always been about. A monogamous family-style gay life is really for unattractive gay men.I think this just about covers everything, and it certainly helps to explain why in real terms George Michael is actually much less objectionable than the appalling Elton John and David Furnish.
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| "Being gay's about having sex with other men. What?" |
Yes, there's a slight misreading of history going on here. Röhm and his followers were murdered in the so-called Night of the Long Knives as part of a power struggle within the Nazi Party. It certainly wasn't because they were gay. (Have a quick check on Wikipedia.) As for the Nazi "persecution" of homosexuals, whereas it is true that male sodomy was illegal under the Third Reich (although lesbianism was not), it's also true that it had been illegal before Hitler came to power and continued to be illegal after Germany was "liberated" by the Allies. It only stopped being a criminal offence in the 1960s. Yes, homosexuals were sent to concentration camps, but they were sent there as sex criminals, not because they were members of a particular group such as Jews or Jehovah's Witnesses.