Wings Over the Pyre - February 4th, 2006

05:17 am - Its Nice, Kostnice

Thank you, Rue Morgue, for reminding me of one of the many reasons I want to travel the world and see the wonders it contains. The Ossuary in Kostnice:

A cistercian monastery was founded near here in the year 1142. One of the principal tasks of the monks was the cultivation of the grounds and lands around the monastery. In 1278 King Otakar II of Bohemia sent Henry, the abbot of Sedlec , on a diplomatic mission to the Holy Land. When leaving Jerusalem Henry took with him a handful of earth from Golgotha which he sprinkled over the cemetery of Sedlec monastery, consequently the cemetery became famous, not only in Bohemia but also throughout Central Europe and many wealthy people desired to be buried here.The burial ground was enlarged during the epidemics of plague in the 14 th century (e.g.in 1318 about 30 000 people were buried here) and also during the Hussite wars in first quarter of the 15 th. century.

After 1400 one of the abbots had a church of All -Saints erected in Gothic style in the middle of the cemetery and under it a chapel destined for the deposition of bones from abolished graves, a task which was begun by a half blind Cistercian monk after the year 1511. The charnel-house was remodeled in Czech Baroque style between 1703 - I710 by the famous Czech architect, of the Italian origin ,Jan Blažej SANTIM-Aichl. The present arrangement of the bones dates from 1870 and is the work of a Czech wood-carver, František RINT (you can see his name, put together from bones, on the right-hand wall over the last bench). Our ossuary contains the remains of about 40 000 people. The largest collections of bones are arranged in the form of bells in the four corners of the chapel.

The most interesting creations by Master Rint are the chandelier in the centre of the nave, containing all the bones of the human body , two monstrances beside the main altar and the coat-of arms of the Schwarzenberg noble family on the left-hand side of the chapel.
Thank you very much for your visit and best wishes for a pleasant stay in our country.

Yes, the entirety of that Catholic monstrance in the picture is made of human bones. Its absolutely stunningly beautiful, albeit my sense of the asthetic might be somewhat questionable.

Go check out more of the site to see more of the stunning interior.

There are places of equal stark and humbling beauty all over the world, from the Catacombs of Paris to dirty villages of filthy outcasts in India full of those who eat the flesh of the dead in the Ganges. Places where the Dark stands beside the Light and makes faces at the terrified things in between. Caves of wonder and mountains where lightning dances.

I will, eventually, take these places with my eyes.

Current Mood: contemplative

06:39 am - Roguish Charm

Updated again, by Hell. You'd think I knew what I was doing or something foolish like that!

Magi, Warriors and Rogues are all template'd out in the Armour Click and Lock export. The Soldier went the way of the dodo, and after The Guy That Wrote This' gentle prodding, the Ranger went from having ambidexterity and twin-weapon wielding to just a brutal short-sword. You guys can thank him for making it less D&D-esque ... Or blame him, whatever. :)

I'm sure folk will figure out the inspiration for the Kid in short order, but I had a few giggles putting that one together.

As ever, feedback is appreciated. In fact, suggestions are appreciated: three more templates of any type mean an extra page for that type in the text! Whoot!

If you want to suggest contributions, the current format is 5 Abilities (skills, spells, or other thing the character can do and which is innate to their role) and 3 Styles. Styles are described in Capes as:

Styles are the particular ways that a character often uses their
other Abilities. So they might have "Fly" as a Power, and "High
speed aerial maneuvers" as a Style. Or they might have
"Confident" as an Atttiude and "Screw the rules" as a Style. All
characters will have Styles.

That combined with the examples given should do you right fine.

Current Mood: creative

05:22 pm

I fully admit, I have little patience for the bleeding-heart liberal mindset, the Politically Correct bullshit that permeates all public discourse and twists it into a miasma of special interests. One of my particular hot buttons is the idea of "hate crimes," that somehow a crime is worse if perpetrated on a designated victim group than it is on some poor middle-class white guy.

Someone on my FL posted a reference to a physical attack of a loon against some guys in a gay bar (Yahoo News has the article reference), and, being me, I took exception to the immediate need to somehow make people special by making it, somehow, more illegal to physically assault people. From my response::

Guy has a hatchet and a gun, and nobody is DOA? Kind of weak for a rampage.

Moreover, isn't attacking folks with a hatchet and a gun already illegal? What kind of imbecile thinks they need "hate crime" legislation to make "attempted murder" more illegal? Oh yes, a community that thinks it deserves more and special rights over, say, me. Since I'm not gay, and so I only need the basic kind of legal protection if I'm attacked in a bar by a guy with a hatchet and a gun.

But what really gets me is this:

"It's a vicious and ugly reminder of anti-gay prejudice," David Smith, head of policy and strategy at the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, said. "What is unique about hate crimes is that they terrorize the whole community."

That's unique about hate crimes? So if you kill a white, straight guy in a community, no one really cares, its treated as a matter of course? But if you happen to hit a minority, suddenly the community is afraid to go outside at night and starts buying guns for protection?

What kind of bull is that?

I'm not saying that what happened in New Bedford isn't sad and undesirable, but it'd be just as bad and undesirable if it were a straight bar and not a gay bar, and trying to capitalize on that to get more "special" protections is despicable as well.

Needless to say, this set off a shit-storm of minority privilege cries the likes of which shake the pillars of Heaven on a regular basis. I realize that I'm no saint, but I'm no imbecile, either.

But today -- ah, today -- came the pair of replies (from the same person, notably) that really set my teeth on edge. And since I've been a little short on rant, lately, I think its likely a good thing to turn you good folk onto it.

From today:

Because they're not looking for equality, they want superiority,

As a bisexual Jewish woman partnered with a person of Portuguese, Italian and black heritage, that statement is EXTREMELY offensive. I do not want superiority; I want equality. I don't agree with affirmative action, and my stomach turns knowing that my white friend couldn't be a firefighter because he was white (his score was too low for a white guy, but black men have a lower cutoff point. Same physical endurance tests....).

However, as long as you have that attitude, you will not understand minority struggles. I have a lot more learning to do, and I've been a human rights activist for 6 years. So, um....do some more pondering on that attitude. We want equality, not superiority, whether you're referring to religion, gender, sexuality, ethnicity or race.

My reply was:

Hey, baby, I'm a cripple. Don't tell me about "minority struggle" when you can wipe your own ass and get yourself off. You want to talk about minority struggle? For thousands of years, your people have left my people out on mountain ranges, fed them to dogs, or split their heads open on convenient sharp tables. You want discrimination? At least if you're not swapping spit with your life-partner in public, no one knows you're a freak. If you're running around with dangling legs in a wheelchair, or hands and arms that look like withered up claws, there ain't no hiding from the stares and comments.

So, yeah, "minority struggle," my white, fuzzy ass. If you're campeigning for any kind of special recognition of your victim status, you're looking for advantage, not equality, and I point it out in my own little corner of the "minoritysphere" whenever I see it rear its stupid, ugly head as much as anywhere. But no one really wants to deal with the cripples of the world in that way, and, funnily enough, by and large we just want to be left alone. No one talks about quotas of cripples in the workplace or college. Why? We don't want to be special. We're already special enough, thanks very much. We don't need crimes against us to be somehow more special than against everybody else. We've been spending our whole lives trying to be more like everybody else, trying to be accepted as equals and capable members of society. Being referred to as "special cases" is, pretty much all the time, a slap in the face.

Maybe you need to be special to be special. Maybe you need special little crimes just for your special friends and their special buddies. Me, I'm too busy just trying to get real equality to be bothered. Maybe you guys should give it a try, sometimes, instead of playing up how special you are.

But let's go a little further:

I agree that you are "privileging one group" but I do not agree it's at the "expense of the rest."

Murder is a crime. There are degrees of murder, though -- there's premeditated against a specific person, which has more penalty than a "spontaneous" murder, which has more penalty than "self-defense".

Murder is wrong, no matter what, but there are degrees of wrong. And it *is* MORE WRONG to kill someone based on their ethnicity, religion, orientation, whatever, than it is to kill someone because you're pissed that they stole your car.

You need to unpack your knapsack.

I love that, "unpack my knapsack." The trite commentary of the weak-minded, who don't even have the wherewithal to examine the contents of their own memetic baggage and recognize what foolishness they engage in on a daily basis. But I'm a helpful lad, so I thought I might help with that:

So, its more wrong to kill a black guy because he's black than to kill him because I want to screw his girl?

And they wonder why the idea of special privilidge for such crimes tends to make the proponents look like fools. Mainly because they're engaged in the kind of catagorizing behaviour that they accuse every other group of, but without the benefit of a majority to try and leverage it.

You're right. That poor black guy would rather he was kille because his chick is hot. And those poor gay guys would have preferred if they were killed in a random bar brawl than because they were gay. And their families would be so much more satisfied if that were the case, because they'd be less dead.

Oops, guess they wouldn't.

Here's the problem: You don't react to them being people, they're "gay" or "black" or "minority" when you make it a "hate crime." Its no longer about the crime, its the hate. You minimize and diminish the person.

But that's OK, just so long as they're special, right?

And that's really what it comes down to: Ultimately, at the bottom of it all, the very idea of "hate crimes" privileges the "hated groups" at the expense of everyone else. Talk to the family of the white, straight guy killed for his wallet and tell me if their suffering is somehow less important, less valid, and less important than the gay guy who was shot for being in a gay bar. Is it somehow more moving that the latter was killed for what he professed and the former was killed because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Isn't the latter just as important to the families of the people involved, and most importantly, to the dead guys themselves as anything? As George Carlin might say, "They're both fuckin' dead, ain't they?"

But that's not important to the people who are pushing hate crime law, more legislation to solve a problem that's never been addressable through legislation. Nothing is important to them but the fact that the target was a member of a victim group; they're not important because they're people, they're important because they're members of a minority. First and foremost.

The people who claim the sanction of "human rights activists" don't care about human rights at all, they care about minority rights, tellingly almost in every case, their minority. If they cared about human rights, they'd be up in arms about every murder, every attack, they'd be pro bono lawyers who devote their time to everyone, not just crimes involving one social or genetic group. They don't care about "humans," they care about themselves.

The odour of hypocrisy lingers overmuch. I need another shower.

Current Mood: angry