24 November 2016. Don’t Worry If You Don’t Fit In

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I saw this meme circulating on the web and knew that I could do better and spiff it up…

BMD

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5 September 2014. From the Russian Web… Obama and Putin Confab… Vova Tells It Like It Is

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This image is making the rounds of the Russian cyberworld; it’s become extremely popular (that tells you that anti-American feeling in Russia is very high). Some Americans think that they’re fooling the world… they’re not. Most people are wise to the hypocrisy, double standards, greed, and cruelty of Anglo Americans. After all, didn’t the Anglos drop the bomb on Japan (twice) even though it wasn’t necessary (Japan made peace feelers since December 1944)? That’s why people such as George Will and Rich Lowry are such pains-in-the-arse to non-Americans. Non-Americans know how the USA got as big as it did… it used its armed might to steal Northern Mexico, it smashed the indigenous people into the ground (Custer DID die for your sins), and it started off by rebelling against its rightful king. Yep… the USA isn’t exceptional, it isn’t moral, it isn’t special… but then again, that’s true of all nations. We’re all sinful-ginfuls. The moral tone taken by George Will, in particular, is a howler… he’s the son of privilege… the son of a college professor, he’s from the American equivalent of the nomenklatura, and he acts accordingly (sense of entitlement, and all that… is that how he evaded military service during the Cold War?). He’d do well to look at the actions of his ancestors… they’re far worse than anything done by Vladimir Vladimirovich!

If the USA wants Russia to “return” the Crimea… it’d had best turn over the keys of the Alamo over to Mexico and haul down the Stars n’ Stripes. Otherwise, it’s hypocritical double-dealing in through the front door! It should keep quiet unless it hands over South Dakota to the Lakota… but that isn’t going to happen and the Anglos won’t shut up their traps and stop their vacuous and fatuous moralising, either. Pass the jug… they’re disgusting and posturing toddlers, aren’t they? They’re not going to change in our lifetimes…

BMD

US Government Shutdown Becomes an Internet Joke

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Editor’s Note:

This is from last week, but it’s lost none of its bite, as the Republicants continue to stonewall. Don’t they see their numbers falling into the cellar? Be wary of fanatics, but be especially wary of religious fanatics… for they aren’t amenable to ANY reason, after all, God told them so! Most of the Tea Party nutters are Born Again Loons… they wouldn’t listen to anyone (let alone sinful ol’ you and me), they wouldn’t listen even if Christ Himself were to come down from Heaven, to speak frankly. Some of the konvertsy are just like them… do be warned.

BMD

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The US government shutdown, now in its fourth day, has hurt hundreds of thousands of federal workers who aren’t being paid as Congress and President Barack Obama try to figure out how to strike a deal on the national budget. A serious issue, no doubt. However, often in times of crisis, humour becomes a way for people to cope with circumstances that are seemingly out of their control. Enter memes… which produced some of the funniest online jokes about the shutdown.

[I reproduced the funniest one above… for the rest, click on the link below]

4 October 2013

Suleiman Wali

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/news/20131004/183952280/US-Govt-Shutdown-Meme-Memes-Becomes-an-Internet-Joke.html

 

Killing Irony with Ivan Grozny and an Orthodox Activist

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Ivan Grozny lived a long time ago and the passage of time does distort historical figures… sometimes, truth is hard to separate from fiction. Still, probably, it’s safe to say that Ivan Grozny wasn’t a fan of pluralism and open socio-political discourse. Keeping that in mind, it’s particularly interesting to observe the scandal around Ilya Repin’s iconic painting of the man, a work colloquially known as Ivan Grozny Killing His Son (the “official” name of the work is Ivan Grozny and His Son Ivan, 16 November 1581). The painting purports to show the immediate aftermath of Ivan Grozny’s fatal attack on his son following a heated argument. A bleeding Ivan Jr dies in his father’s arms with a look of acceptance on his face, whilst horror and grief overcomes the tsar himself. Indeed, the question of whether Ivan Grozny did kill his son was the subject of historical debate. Some experts say that it’s possible that Ivan Jr, the heir apparent, died of an illness and that someone invented the story of an accidental killing later.

Today, the debate surrounding the painting isn’t so much historical as it’s hysterical. A prominent Orthodox businessman, Vasili Boiko-Veliky, demanded that the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow remove the painting from its collection, calling it “unpatriotic” and “slanderous”. According to Boiko-Veliky, Ivan Grozny was an upstanding and just Russian ruler who couldn’t have killed his son. Boiko-Veliky told Gazeta Metro Rossiya (Газета Metro Россия), “People… especially, young men and women… come to the Tretyakov Gallery and on a subconscious level internalise this [image] of a cruel and barbaric Russia, the country where we live. This is slander… not just against Ivan Grozny, but against our country, against our people, against our statehood”.

Already, plenty of people have made fun of Boiko-Veliky’s position. A popular internet meme that existed before the latest scandal surrounding the painting (this isn’t the first time that someone attacked this particular work by Repin… someone slashed it with a knife in 1913) is once again making the rounds in response to the controversy. Titled Ivan Grozny Killing… All (Иван Грозный убивает… всех), the meme features Photoshopped images of the grief-stricken tsar embracing everyone from Kenny from South Park to the figure in Edvard Munch’s The Scream (formal title, The Scream of Nature). The head of Mitki, a renowned alternative painters’ collective in St Petersburg, sarcastically offered to paint a “bundled-up, rosy-cheeked” baby that could replace the Repin painting in the Tretyakov’s permanent collection. The Russian edition of GQ magazine also got in on the act, featuring a selection of other paintings that we should also ban, if we follow Boiko-Veliky’s logic. Amongst them is the Mona Lisa (because she doesn’t have eyebrows and could, therefore, warp young women’s views on personal grooming) and Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait (because the man in the painting looks too much like Putin).

What’s fascinating to me here is the logic behind Boiko-Veliky’s insistence that we remove the Repin painting. Boiko-Veliky, a dairy magnate with considerable clout, could’ve easily sponsored, say, a book on why he thinks the Repin portrait isn’t historically accurate. He could’ve called a conference, created a seminar, or, hell, just paid a bunch of modern artists to paint different, more “patriotic” works on the life of Ivan Grozny. The great thing about money is that it can go a long way… particularly, where artists are concerned, as they’re usually broke. Alas, Boiko-Veliky isn’t interested in scholarly discussion or fostering an environment where different accounts of Ivan Grozny’s life can compete. Indeed, it’s probably safe to say that Ivan Grozny would’ve himself banned such a painting (and probably had Repin executed, had they been historical contemporaries), so, perhaps, Boiko-Veliky is more like the tsar than he realises. The ironic thing is that Repin’s painting did more than merely keep thousands of Russian schoolchildren marginally aware of Ivan Grozny’s historic persona. The immense power of the painting, the terrible, stricken look of nearly animalistic grief on Ivan’s face, did more to humanise the tsar than any other historic portrayal. In his patriotic desire to defend the tsar’s memory, Boiko-Veliky didn’t just overshoot the mark… he missed the point entirely.

8 October 2013

Natalia Antonova

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/columnists/20131008/183995267/Trendwatcher-Killing-Irony-with-Ivan-the-Terrible-and-an.html