A performance piece for Dionysian Heights. Part Two: Death
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana
This is a revision of the earlier video with something that I consider more appropriate both to us at the time, the feel of the piece, and how I feel right now. The music is the same and I’ve edited lots of WW2 video archive material to fit, where possible, to the sounds.
Recorded circa 1980-81
The music was created by Crawling Chaos as accompaniment to a performance piece by Zyclon B Zombies called Dionysian Heights, a morbid and gory on-stage blood fest with real offal and copious quantities of ketchup.
See http://crawlingchaos.co.uk/1145/zyklon-b-zombies-death/
All music copyright Crawling Chaos
All video and images are in the public domain, free of copyright or under creative commons’ licences. They’re all available here on the wayback machine. These are what I used:
n.b. My dad missed The Battle of Leyte Gulf (some of the footage here) though he was at D-Day and then was part of the British Task Force 57 at Okinawa on his ship, HMS Slinger. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Pacific_Fleet
This piece is dedicated to my dad and folks like him
Crawling Chaos: Zyklon B Zombies Work Back along, Crawling Chaos were asked by Curly Jhon and Mackie to do some background music for a performance they intended to do under their moniker Zyklon B Zombies. The performance was called Dionysian Heights, the name appearing as a band name on the Foetus Products’ compilation Blood Samples...
I’ve cleaned up the above track a bit although it’s still 14Meg in size and lasts quarter of an hour. It’s classed as Crawling Chaos although only two members took part in this version. This version of Zombie Dance is part of a commission given to Rees and Jeff by some chums, Zyclon B Zombies,...
It (literally) means 3000 realms in a single moment of life. This means that for any given moment your life is composed of everything; all thoughts, all history, all presents and all futures. You only ‘sense’ things one at a time, yet they’re always there.
Four Mile Beach, Port Douglas, Australia
I’ll soon be toddling off to the beach above.
Beautiful Sunset
It’s a fantastic holiday destination, see the sunset here, or click on the image for more shots.
I’ve renamed one of our tracks, the track playing, to “Castaway” after I’d re- jigged it a bit. It seemed “better”.
As a boy my father read a book called “The Coral Sea” and decided to become a sailor who would one day sail that very sea because of it.
He joined the war. His ship was originally called CVE-32.
The Lexington which blew up in the Coral Sea was originally called CV-2.
I’m going to Four Mile Beach soon.
What’s it all mean?
Four Mile Beach again
It means that we are all connected. In many more ways than the 3000, we are all intimately connected both now, to the past and the future. Sometimes the connections are obvious, sometimes not; but as sure as eggs are eggs all our lives are entangled, it’s a part of life.
The Buddha said “work hard for your own salvation” just before he died. It means to take action for your own happiness. Don’t rely on external factors like people, events or gods because you’ll always be dissatisfied. Suffer what is and enjoy what is as if they’re the same.
Golden Syrup Years ago, when I was a lad, my mum used to make us all porridge for breakfast in winter. On the top, I’d spiral a big dollop of Lyle’s Golden Syrup and then, while eating the porridge, I’d read the tin. Yes! There was a different flapjack recipe every time! But also, as...
Well here’s a strange thing I’ve just come across! huffduffer It’s a website utterly bereft of (normal) content except it’s chocka bloc full of MP3 files that are audio books. It’s all public domain, so I’ve uploaded a reading of Crawling Chaos, written by H. P. Lovecraft, locally. Even stranger, if that is possible, I’ve...
I don’t know if it’s linked, or not, but since the WP upgrade a few days ago I’ve had an extra type of comment spam fall into my spam filters.
Thankfully the spam filters worked, but still filled up the “spam comment” area for further perusal.
Maybe it’s a plugin? Whatever.
Dodgy Domains and IP Addresses
If you see a domain like this in your WordPress inbox;
hkridklflsdfkfgjsdfgfdfg.com
Then it’s spam!! (pretty obviously). Below is a sample from the comments moderation area:
You’ll see that several IP addresses appear, even under the same “random keyboard domain”.
A variety of email addresses are also there, mostly gmail ones. Are they real? A. I don’t know or care actually, and I certainly haven’t the time to check up on them!
Anyway. Watch out! The ongoing battle between good and bad coders continues – WordPress comment spam is only part of it.
Weird URL
Another portion of my spam list contained a backlink URL to:
If you follow this through, it takes you to this DABLU WordPress Themes website shown here on the left as a screendump, but with the same paragliding URL on a 404 page there.
The whole thing is weird, and I suspect, part of a wider form of bad-web manipulation. Whether the domain owner or hosts know anything about it, I don’t know.
Perhaps the backlink I’ve provided will in time force them to check its source? Watch this space.
For no reason …other than a try-out and also the current anti-spam plugins miss the odd bit of comment spam, I’ve now switched off TanTanNoodles’ Spam filter and am giving WP-SpamFree another try plus another plugin, AVH. I’ve left Akismet running regardless. WP-SpamFree This now promises a lot, so it’s worth another shot. Two years...
Introduction An unfortunate consequence of posting stuff online is that you enable your ‘work’, ‘your words of wisdom’, your ‘copyright’ or your petty scrawlings (choose which you think is the most appropriate), to the world as as such, it’s freely copyable. My website is proudly running on WordPress sat on a standard shared hosting LAMP...
Lying sick in bed this morning listening to a Radio 5 phone-in about the “state” of our Accident & Emergency (A&E) healthcare system here in the UK, I was struck by the failure of the radio show’s producers to engender the expected flurry of tales of woe and poor service.
Happy and Immaculate Professionalism
Far from the engineered curses that the show had hoped to produce – instead, a host of people took the time to phone in and praise the excellent service, waiting times, courtesy and professionalism that they had witnessed, sometimes under conditions of the utmost duress (e.g. during the accident black-spot due to falls on the winter ice).
Proposed Cutbacks
We are now all primed for cutbacks in services in the UK to pay for the banks’ greed. However, all parties promise to protect the NHS’s frontline services.
The UK spends less on healthcare per capita than the USA. This is not in doubt. In fact, the USA spends more per person than any other country.
But now, consider this news article from Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. See how front-line healthcare staff are treated in the USA and consider the service you are likely to receive from such a system?
The nurses at the Temple Hospital in Philadelphia have been on strike since March 31st. This much is clear.
However, in contrast to the UK (and most of Europe), all the staff appear to be on fixed term contracts which had expired last September. In the UK, if you are good enough and pass all the tests, you get a job and keep your job (unless you need to move or progress in your career, say), to serve your local community. As new techniques arrive, you pass more tests etc. You build up your skills as part of a team.
In the USA, they appear to sack all staff from nurses downwards when their contracts are up, then replace all the staff with temporary staff! This means that,
Most healthcare USA Workers are temporary…
The trouble is that all the right-wing forces at work there seem to believe that this is a good system and actually mock our NHS with comments like, “have you seen their teeth?”. This is Obama’s problem with his efforts at healthcare reform. The real truth is shielded from those in work and with private healthcare insurance, and they are a vociferous lot!
Healthcare?
The real truth is a warning: Do Not Fall Sick Near Temple Hospital…. After all, what sort of care could one expect from a hospital staffed like that? No matter how personally caring the staff are, there is no communication, no camraderie, no continuity, no honour.
In the dog eat dog world of America, it’s the last man standing who wins; but what’s the point of being in a club of one?
Patriotic Battle
In fact, I have to question the sanity of anyone who would fight to defend a country (or it’s overseas interests) that treats it’s own citizens in pain with contempt and it’s caring profession with worthless indifference.
I’ve been thinking about the perilous mentality of the 52% of Americans who think torture is all fine and dandy. And then I saw a neat little video piece on the BBC this morning which casts a few French people in the exact same spots in June 1944 and now. It’s here: D-Day in France:...
Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, aged 23, of Ketchum, Idaho, is a member of the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, from Fort Richardson, Alaska. He was captured in circumstances that aren’t clear and has appeared in a Taliban video (prev at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-soldier20-2009jul20,0,4913063.story), seen world-wide. So far, it appears...
Decent people everywhere will be appalled to learn that the charity Mencap recently sponsored an award at the first ever ERSA Employability Awards. ERSA are the trade body who were formed in 2005 to lie on behalf of the money … Continue reading → […]
The Civil Service Rank and File Network have called a rally outside the PCS conference this week to demand action from the union on the vicious benefit sanctioning regime. Benefit sanctions are set to become a huge issue for public … Continue reading → […]
WordPress Upgrade leads to New Comment Spam Deluge
Posted in Internet Tags:battle , Comment Spam , dodgy , Domain , Email , Extra , filter , FORM , good , IP address , Keyboard , manipulation , PERU , Plugin , Roman , Romanian , Spam , spam filter , URL , USA , Weird , whois , WordPress , WP
Weird Comment Spam
Thankfully the spam filters worked, but still filled up the “spam comment” area for further perusal.
Maybe it’s a plugin? Whatever.
Dodgy Domains and IP Addresses
If you see a domain like this in your WordPress inbox;
Then it’s spam!! (pretty obviously). Below is a sample from the comments moderation area:
A variety of email addresses are also there, mostly gmail ones. Are they real? A. I don’t know or care actually, and I certainly haven’t the time to check up on them!
Anyway. Watch out! The ongoing battle between good and bad coders continues – WordPress comment spam is only part of it.
Weird URL
Another portion of my spam list contained a backlink URL to:
http://parapanta.net/paragliding/%EF%BD%90%EF%BD%81%EF%BD%92%EF%BD%81%EF%BD%87%EF%BD%8C%EF%BD%89%EF%BD%84%EF%BD%85%EF%BD%92-%EF%BD%94%EF%BD%85%EF%BD%93%EF%BD%94-%EF%BD%8D%EF%BD%8F%EF%BD%96%EF%BD%89%EF
The URL “http://www.parapanta.net/paragliding/” actually works and if you go to the domain root you’ll find that it’s a hidden Romanian WHOIS.
The whole thing is weird, and I suspect, part of a wider form of bad-web manipulation. Whether the domain owner or hosts know anything about it, I don’t know.
Related posts:
For no reason …other than a try-out and also the current anti-spam plugins miss the odd bit of comment spam, I’ve now switched off TanTanNoodles’ Spam filter and am giving WP-SpamFree another try plus another plugin, AVH. I’ve left Akismet running regardless. WP-SpamFree This now promises a lot, so it’s worth another shot. Two years...
Introduction An unfortunate consequence of posting stuff online is that you enable your ‘work’, ‘your words of wisdom’, your ‘copyright’ or your petty scrawlings (choose which you think is the most appropriate), to the world as as such, it’s freely copyable. My website is proudly running on WordPress sat on a standard shared hosting LAMP...