sadoeuphemist

Blue Whale

2017-08-18T06:24:38Z

I think it might be a cruelty to talk so glibly about this. You know, talking about something that could very well have happened. Talking about something true.

1. On the arm blade cut f57 (blue whale, 4: 20)
2. Wake up at 4:20 and watch scary video
3. Cut lengthwise veins of the arm (not deep) only three cuts
4. Draw a whale on a piece of paper

The game's called the Blue Whale Challenge because whales beach themselves. Mysteriously, inexplicably, alone or in groups. Salt-slick carcasses heaving up on shore, drawing attention to themselves by their sheer mass, the weight of their existence warping the world around them. Who knows what's going on beneath the surface of the sea. Who knows why they did this. Who knows why they had to die.

5. If you're ready to become a whale you write "yes" on the blade leg, if not, do with their hands whatever you want (doing a lot of cuts and so on)

You count one day at a time. One step at a time. From one to fifty. A psychological build-up. A ritual. You carve in the symbol Day One and you follow the rules and on Day Fifty, you kill yourself.

6. In code
7. scratched f40
8. Write in the status #I'm a Whale
9. Should overcome your fear

It's children playing it, of course. Teens. Adults wouldn't need fifty days to get to the point.

10. Get up at 4:20 and go to the roof

11. It is necessary to scratch out a whale on the hand (or make a drawing on the hand)
12. The whole day watching scary video
13. Listen to music that curator send to you
14. Cut the lip

The game has all the qualities of internet creepypasta. Suicide by meme. The list of instructions flickering and obtuse, poorly-translated from the Lithuanian. There's a boogeyman here. Someone's sending these instructions to our kids, someone's doling out the rope, someone's whispering in their ears. The "curator," a sinister corrupting figure always just off-screen. Our kids are being manipulated, or blackmailed, or terrorized, or coerced.

They wouldn't have done this on their own.

15 .Poke the needle arm

16. Make yourself hurt

It's all bullshit, of course. Moral panic. Urban legend. Oh sure, there are people playing. Type #f57 on social media, ask for a curator and maybe someone'll get in contact with you. But all it is is some rando online, as likely to hit you up for money as to lead you to your death. Oh sure, sure, there are the dead children, hundreds of them. But you can't seriously think it's some stupid internet game that made them kill themselves, can you? There's a meme, there's an outward sign, there's a thought that they were toying with. Cuts on the arm. A picture of a whale. Some fucking hashtag status.

And then there's everything that was going on beneath the surface of the sea.

17. Go to the roof of the largest and stand on the edge
18. Going to the bridge
19. Climb on the crane
20. Check to trust

There's no secret sequence of instructions that'll program a kid to kill themselves. No master of psychology wrote this. It's not even good fiction. You start out by cutting yourself and progress to posting statuses online, watching music videos. There's no design here, no sense of escalation. Just vapid fluff, idle chores, a transparent series of branding exercises.

If anything, you should be grateful it's all so clumsy. Dragging this bullshit out over fifty days might at least give someone else the opportunity to notice something's wrong. Cuts and codes and disrupted schedules. Fifty days to cry out for help.

21. It is necessary to talk on Skype with a curator

22. Sit down on the roof of the feet
23. Again, the job with the code
24. Secret Mission
25. meet with curator

Kids have killed themselves. I don't want to minimize that. Rina Palenkova was seventeen years old when she jumped in front of a train. She posted a selfie right before she killed herself. She talked about it online. She went viral.

26. You say the date of death, and you must accept

It's all sites trying to drive traffic, you know. Trying to attract attention. Collating every one of her last words, making some up, commemorating her death in morbid detail. Some of it's sickos online looking for a perverted thrill. Most of it's the media, slavering in open-mouthed credulity over yet another tragedy to sensationalize. Here she is, the very first victim of the Blue Whale Challenge. Here's the malignant root of teen suicide. Here's where it seeps in, here's where it spreads. Here's the name of what you are most afraid of. Here it is, always just out of your reach.

27. 4:20 go to the rails
28. Do not talk with anyone
29. Give an oath that you're a whale

From 30-49 you every day you wake up at 4:20, watch videos, listen to music, and every day doing one cut on her hand, talking to a curator.

We jump (hangs up, jump out of the window, you go under a train, negativeside tablets)

We call him the curator because he's the one who turns us into art.

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FUN, AND FLIRTATION, FORFEITS.

2017-06-22T08:50:50Z

MODERN PASTIME
Or, IN-DOOR AMUSEMENTS.
INCLUDING

VENTRILOQUISM—PARLOUR MAGIC—ELEMENTARY
GYMNASTICS—BILLIARDS—FUN & FLIRTATION FORFEITS, ETC. ETC.

No. 8.
SELLING ADONIS.
One Lady and one Gentleman.

The gentleman must stand on a chair in the centre of the room, while the lady-auctioneer, pointing to him, says, "Adonis for sale!" She must then enumerate all his charms, qualities, and attractions. The company then bid anything they please for him—such as a red-herring, a tea-kettle, a curb-bridle, a magic-lantern, the old grey goose, a lump of sugar, &c. The bidding is to go on till the Lord of Misrule bids a pound of soft-soap, when the lot is taken to him by the auctioneer.

No. 15.
THE MAN WHO IS TOO HAPPY.
One Gentleman and six Ladies.

The gentleman sitting in the middle of the room must be complimented and paid attention by each lady in turn. Without rising, he is to respond by every species of grateful manner; first murmuring, in a whisper, "I'm too happy,"—increasing in the tone of his voice each time, till reaching the highest note, he rushes out of the room.

No. 17.
THE LORD MAYOR'S DINNER.
Eight Ladies and eight Gentlemen.

The ladies each successively go and fetch a gentleman and place him for a quadrille, according to the value of their respective numbers.

1ST LADY TO 1ST GENTLEMAN.
This is my chicken for roasting.
2ND LADY TO 2ND GENTLEMAN.
This is my calf's heart for mince-meat.
3RD LADY TO 3RD GENTLEMAN.
This is my wild duck to make game of.
4TH LADY TO 4TH GENTLEMAN.
This is my lamb's pluck for putting in a stew.
5TH LADY TO 5TH GENTLEMAN.
This is my green goose for stuffing.
6TH LADY TO 6TH GENTLEMAN.
This is my calf's head for my brain sauce.
7TH LADY TO 7TH GENTLEMAN.
This is my flat fish for a vol au vent.
8TH LADY TO 8TH GENTLEMAN.
This is my pigeon for cutting up with brain sauce.

No. 27.
MISS ANN AND JANE SMITH'S TABBY CATS.
Two Gentlemen and all the Ladies.

The ladies all remain in their places, and two gentlemen in shawls and bonnets or caps go round, one with a saucer of milk, the other with a teaspoon, with which she gives a sip of milk to each, saying, "Take that, my pretty puss!" to which, after taking it, "puss" must gravely answer, "Mew."

No. 30.
THE HORRID MAN.
One Gentleman.

He must go round and pay a bad compliment to every lady in the room, who is to answer, "You horrid man!"

No. 47.
INTERESTING QUESTIONS.
One Gentleman--one Lady; seated in front of each other.
LADY.

Are you Adonis?

GENTLEMAN.

No, Miss.
Are you Juno?

LADY.

Oh no!
Are you Cupid?

GENTLEMAN.

No, stupid.

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Demigorge

2017-03-17T07:50:31Z

"THE DEMIGORGES¹ OF A BASTION² are formed by producing the adjoining curtains³, until they meet the capital of the bastion.⁴
. . .
"It has two faces, two demigorges, and two extremities."⁵

- Sir Charles William Pasley, Lieut.-Colonel Royal Engineers, F.R.S.
Course of Military Instruction, Volume II: Containing Elementary Fortification

"In the first he makes the demi-gorge equal to 24 toises⁶ in the square, 25 in the pentagon, 26 in the hexagon, 27 in the heptagon, 28 in the octagon, 29 in the enneagon, and 30 in the decagon, and all higher polygons.⁷
. . .
"His flanks are on right lines, drawn from the center of the figure through the extremities of the demi-gorges.⁸
. . .
"...120 toises, from the center of the figure to the middle of which he suppose a perpendicular to be drawn, and to be divided into n+1 parts (n being the number of the sides), two of which he allows for each of the demi-gorges, and three for each of the capitals⁹, from the outer extremities of which last, rasant¹⁰ lines of defence, drawn to the extremities of the demi-gorges or curtain, determine the lengths of the flanks, which are on right lines, drawn from the center of the figure, and the positions and lengths of the faces of the bastions."¹¹

-Charles James, An Universal Military Dictionary

"COMPLEMENT of the Courtin [in Fortification] is that part of the Courtin, which (being wanting) is the Demi-gorge, or the Remainder of the Courtin, after its Flank is taken away, to the Angle of the Demi-gorge."¹²

-Nathan Bailey, An Universal Etymological English Dictionary

1. Etymologically, DEMIGORGE would seem to derive from demi-, half, and gorge, throat: a blocked windpipe, the inability to swallow. Or, perhaps, a reminder that our appetites are not entirely essential. It follows a string of false cognates beginning from Demiurge (δημιουργός, craftsman, the creator of our debased world) to Demogorgon (a deity invented wholesale by Lactantius in third century AD, Dicit deum Demogorgona summum) to Demogorge (the God-Eater, a deity invented by Alan Zelenetz and Bob Hall for Marvel Comics in 1982). The deities share no etymology or genealogy but the similarity of their names, words picked for what they sound like, stripped of any definite meaning and inviting supposition. All variants of DEMIURGE are gods or demons that rule the world, born of word association.

2. Demigorges are military deities, the genii loci of bastions. A bastion is a pentagrammic projection from a fortress, a promontory into a hostile sea. Despite this, a bastion is also held as a place of safekeeping and preservation. By the rules of the demigorges, the only way to defend something (our nation, our freedom, our way of life) is to assert it outwards offensively.

3. Demigorges are completely artificial, twice-constructed, "formed by producing". A curtain veils and reveals, serves as an element of theater. Demigorges are formed through an artificial revelation, the curtains parting to reveal what has deliberately been kept hidden.

4. Even a bastion, as an extension of a fortress, forms its own politics and political capital. Every forward thrust collects its own power, finds its own center. Pioneers build colonies, explorers found nations. A nation expands from the point of a blade.

5. Demigorges are anatomical, part of some larger organism, functioning according to bilateral symmetry. Man creates the world in his image. Demigorges are what remain between a face and an extremity, between what sees and consumes and what extends outwards.

6. A toise is a unit of measurement for length, area, and volume simultaneously. It is either exactly 6 feet, or exactly 2 meters, or 1.8 meters, or about 3.799 square meters, or 8 cubic meters altogether. Within a toise, all conceptions of distance and space fold into one another. To mark out a border is to enclose a territory, to claim a territory necessitates inhabiting it in three dimensions. Maps make fortresses, make nations.

7. As a demigorge is composed of multiple toises, it is simultaneously one-, two-, and three-dimensional, existing within all planes of order and expanding to fill the space it is allotted. It inhabits the space of higher polygons. It inhabits the space of a straight line.

8. A demigorge is pierced through its flanks, through its still-beating heart, crucified upon a divine geometry. Crucifixion splays the condemned out on display as a deterrence to other potential offenders. A demigorge, up to its extremities, is a display of the potentiality of its violence enacted upon itself.

9. The figure is drawn, divided, sliced into parts, the capitals being accorded a larger portion of the share than the demigorges. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.

10. Rasant: archaic, meaning long, sweeping, curving, arcing off into the distance, such that a shot fired will fall off and merely graze the target. Such a term presumes that an army's strength weakens at its extremities, that there are no weapons of war that can inflict destruction from miles away. The arc is of history, the last line of defense a wavering, dying line tracing back to a past where there was a limit to our abilities to destroy.

11. Any attempt to define a demigorge necessarily degenerates into archaic jargon and obscurantism, the words themselves imbued with a quasi-mystic power due to their mystery: the essence of the occult. Meaning is obliterated; we are left with fleeting bits of familiar-sounding phrases, word association, trying to piece together an equation we no longer understand.The demigorges stretch from the outer extremities, the last lines of defense. They determine the positions and lengths and faces, our bastion walls stare out of us. The demigorges are artificial, we have constructed them in their entirety (As we constructed squares and pentagons and enneagons? Or was that always merely our uncovering of a higher geometrical reality?). What have we created for ourselves?

12. A demigorge can be understood as an absence, an incompleteness, an amputation. It is a mathematical remainder. It is that which is wanting. A curtain is a court is an enclosure, is a theater of laws and security and fortification and all the promises of nation. A curtain encloses a space for playacting, the representation of something that otherwise doesn't exist. The curtains part and a barren stage is revealed, dancers with their legs amputated. Bastions project outwards into hostile territory, but the nation itself is hollow, reduced to nothing but border, nothing left behind it. Its Flank is taken away, to the Angle of the Demi-gorge.

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sadoeuphemist @ 2017-03-15T13:28:00

2017-03-15T05:28:44Z

Little girls are made of
Sugar AND SPICE
(or so they say)
But you are a little
TOO spicy today!

Being ugly AND
not listening
are not nice,
maybe next time you'll think twice
because a little girl who
THROWS A FIT
will be a little girl who
has to SIT!

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