fistful of links

"Remember the old Simon and Garfunkel song 'slow down, you're moving to fast'? Well that says a lot about life, and about cat massage." Related, 'Glorious Scarves'.

An iron fistful of the weekist links: some news.

CNN asks if there's going to be a 9/11 sequel: I agree, there were just so many plot holes in the first one. Controversial: America the gift shop. Raunchy: Pixxxel (safe for work). Of course, CNN are not the only people who have been making up film titles (Seinfeld). Also film: Creation, a film about Darwin, is not released in the US – supposedly because only 30% of Americans believe in evolution and studios think it will flop. Comments are a laugh.

Pictures of Nouvel's bust... Air France stewardesses like lactating on the great man, but Aer Lingus prefer to simply tell the French they're about to die. Vaguely related, I met one of the guys working on this last year when he passed by Jean's in Paris. I'm not even sure how to respond, to be honest.

A paragraph about social change: watching this video influences public policy, easy as that. Laser graffiti is used to fake a gaol breakout (made funnier because its in Dutch). Homeless man tazered, catches fire– oily skin thought to blame. Man in home oiled, catches fire – portion of Nando's chicken to blame. In the same vein, so to speak: 'fat kid loves bacon.' Related, a man makes some averagely ok art with hamburger grease, but I quite like a plane of strawberries hit by a bird. Bust some space. Related, bust a move: why don't we dress like Grandmaster Flash anymore?

No links, shake a fist. Ramble: I cannot stand women that lecture me on child psychology (for a man with no children, it happens remarkably more frequently than you might think). I really don't care whether a child is incapable of understanding the concept of death before the age of 8 – I'm just going to flat out tell him: Jimmy. Your. Dog. Is. Dead.

Nick Sowers indulges my love for bunkers and all architecture military– to my intense delight (good luck finding the Arrested Development version). An ex-Jockey helps the cops out by running down criminals on horseback. Similar, the amazing Hawaii chair. There are over 50 things that are being killed by the internet, including:

A man recently went through a mid-life crisis, but through quiet negation his wife manages to delude him into accepting his own happiness. What? Effective: one crime solved per 1000 CCTV cameras. Londoners unite: Meta Loca London. Unrelated, Lovefoxxx sells out to Vice, and gets a blog.

Finally, NSFW: after doing a google search for "christian dildo america teenagers" (to settle an argument about statistics, you understand) it lead me to: Christian teens being encouraged to use "saddlebagging" ("unprotected anal sex") as a means to preserve their virginity. Related, I also discovered that Dildo is a bay in Newfoundland, (Canada) just beneath the Spread Eagle, between Chapel Arm and Norman's Cove (map).

transformed territories: messenes

"Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography."

And with that General Plumer ordered the 19 underground mines beneath the adjacent German trenches to be detonated – each explosive weighing between 18,000kg and 43,000kg. It was 3am June 7th, 1917, and the allies were attempting to capture the Messines Ridge (from which they were under constant German bombardment). The resulting explosions were so large they are said to have been heard as far away as Southern England. Soldiers were found in dugouts over half a mile away, dead, without a mark on them– killed by the shock waves. The craters from the blasts were up to a 100m in diameter and can still be seen today (though most have become unusually deep duck ponds). The resulting battle would be the greatest waste of lives ever seen in a single day of war – the allies alone lost 57,000 men before lunch time.


Mine crater at La Boiselle, shortly after the war. Note that the tunnel entrance seems to still be visible. Via.

It was a post over at Into the Loop, that first made me think of the craters at Messenes. Funny how an eternity of volcanic activity and a spat of violent humanity produce remarkable similar geographic results. The detonation of the mines represented the end of a year-long preparation by General Plumer, who had recruited ex-mine workers from the regular troops, and even searched out retired tunnel experts (some as old as 55) to engage in a subterranean combat zone: the construction of 8km of underground chambers leading under the German front. Firstworldwar.com notes "Occasionally the tunnellers would encounter German counterparts engaged in the same task: underground hand to hand fighting would ensue."

And yet this was all very covert, both sides attempting to out-manoeuvre each other without alerting the surface soldiers. I had heard, but never really understood, that the First World War was the first truly modern war not just because it was the first total war, but because it was also the first war to exist in three-dimensions of space. That is, not simply as a series of linear advances on a map, but as a complicated arena of underground, under-sea, surface, naval and aerial engagements that implicated all the advances of modernity: industry and technology, speed and transport.

Left: Lochnagar mine as it is today; Right: as it was in 1920.

I always assumed, when reading reports of how military architecture has altered landscape, that the agents of destruction were oblivious to the topographical and environmental impacts they made on the territories around them. But Plumer's quote shows otherwise, and that while his focus was undoubtedly on the immediate death of his fellow man, he was not incapable of conceiving of a future after the war – possibly even envisioning the chain of wooded depressions, ponds, open fields with unusual crop markings, and volcano-like craters that exist today.


Section via.

The revolutionary in me wants to revive this method as a means to achieving architectural and landscape results: its fairly clear that the legal and democratic processes are now only choking the development of these professions. Rival projects (or even empassioned citizens) should engage each other in subterranean terrorism (all unknown to the bankers and financiers on the city streets above) – each aiming to undermine the other's structures. Landscapers, denied desired inclines by ubiquitous wheelchair accessibility laws, should tunnel under their own sites and carefully detonate explosives to produce wild and beautiful territories.

retroactive: bunker archeology

Bunker complex on the island of Ratonneau, part of the Frioul archipeligo. Map.

A retroactive post.

There are an enormous amount of bunkers in and around Marseille, in varying states of decay and disrepair. Some have been re-purposed as houses, or restaurants, I even saw an ice-cream parlour where the wide-angle machine-gun slot was used as a countertop... others are abandoned, ruined or squatted.

Just off the coast is a chain of islands, the Frioul archipeligo, home to the Chateau d'If (of Monte Cristo fame).
On the western tip of Ratonneau, the most remote of the islands, is a large complex of bunker and trench systems, mostly abandoned. Those that still look to be in use (signs on their doors bearing the legend "No public access. Construction site.") are possibly used only for training. Confusingly, some of the structures seem to have been purposefully destroyed: shell holes blocking entries; re-bar split, bent and rusted; gun emplacements buried under rubble; while others seem to have been painstakingly repaired, maintained and even extended (and from the look of the concrete, quite recently too).