Hex, Vex, Spell, Jynx, Satanic Curse, Blood Curse and Demons!

Execration Figurines.

Lance Wallnau is still at it, declaring a veritable storm of witchcraft is swirling about his darling, Trump. He seems to think that all those faithful chanting their incantations, er, prayers are missing the mark though – they forgot about Trump’s family! Oops.

“People are praying for the president, but they’re not necessarily praying for his family,” Wallnau said. “So right now, all those witchcraft curses that did not land on Donald Trump are trying to take out his kids, trying to take out his offspring, trying to attack anything near him.”

Wouldn’t kids and offspring be the same thing?

As evidence of this theory, Wallnau cited an incident in which a friend was once “casting a demon out of somebody” and the demon transferred itself into the family dog, which then jumped out of the car while it was driving down the highway and was killed.

You really need to think your little anecdotes through, Lance. Was this exorcism taking place while people were driving somewhere? Don’t do that shit, it’s endangering others. Let’s pretend your friend got busy with an exorcism, at which he also had his dog with him. The demon gets driven out of whoever, then decides to dive into the dog. Why? Why in the fuckety fuck would a demon bloody bother with that, then wait until they were in a car, so it could commit dogicide? Seems to me this is a bunch of bullshit cooked up to explain to the family why their irresponsibility got their dog killed. Tsk. It’s not nice to lie, Lance.

As such, Wallnau declared that “we take authority over every hex, vex, spell, jinx, satanic curse, blood curse, every demon assigned to destroy the health of the president, to destroy the health of his family, to harass him, to vex him, to cause him to lose sleep.”

“In Jesus name, we veto every curse that has been brought against Donald Trump and his family and his administration,” Wallnau proclaimed, as he repeatedly spoke in tongues.

Oooh, Voces mysticae! I wonder if you know the roots of that, Lance. I think you’re talking to demons, dude.

Wallnau later declared that the prayer that Rodney Howard-Browne led over Trump when several Religious Right pastors visited the White House recently was designed to prevent Trump from having a stroke.

“The devil is trying to get him and his family,” he said. “And I heard Rodney Howard-Browne say when he laid hands on the president, he was worried there was a stroke coming; well, we veto that stroke in Jesus’ name! That is nothing but stress and we’re breaking it off of him right now.”

Um, what if a stroke is Jehovah’s will, Lance? Isn’t there some kind of non-interference with “god’s will” rule?

Via Right Wing Watch.

Tongue Tide!

Purgatory Pie Press, “Volumptuous: Hanging Tower of Babble” (2017) (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic).

Hyperallergic has a write-up on what sounds like a very grand show indeed, Tongue Tides, in Long Island City. I would so love to see this in person.

Are you ready for volumptuous? This hilarious sign by Purgatory Pie Press dangling from Flux Factory’s ceiling, part of “Volumptuous: Hanging Tower of Babble,” a large installation of hanging signage, is a fitting mascot for this playful summer show. Tongue Tide invites us all to play a little more with language, and to ponder other languages besides English. It’s a must-see for writers and wordsmiths and is well worth the trip to Long Island City.

Queens is the most linguistically diverse area on the planet. No other place boasts so many languages in such close proximity, something Rashedul Hasan and Dan Silverman illustrate in “We Are the Queens of New York” (2017), a map piece where dots of different colors represent these many varied languages. It’s really powerful to dwell on just how unique the borough — and New York City as a whole — is from this perspective.

[…]

It’s also good to ponder this map because, with all due to respect to Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker, English does not own a monopoly on wit. Many turns of phrase and poetic expressions in other languages pack a punch, even in translation. Some of the best work in this show plays with other languages to give us glimpses of their clever bons mots.

An intriguing artist book by Magali Duzant, A Light Blue Desire (2017), complies blue bromides from across the globe, and blue postcards featuring some of the selections are available for visitors to take home. Blue, in word and concept, can be stretched in so many semiotic directions. The blues are great, but they cast a sad shadow on the color as a metaphor in today’s English, which is further exacerbated by the minority status of the so-called blue states in the US’s broken political system. But blue is not so sad in other languages. One vivid example is the Polish expression for what we might call daydreaming: to think about blue almonds. It captures the futility of idle fantasy so well.

You can see the map, and much more, and there’s more to read at Hyperallergic.

‘America must be ready to nuke first’

Wikipedia.

Donald Trump’s nominee to be an assistant secretary for the Defense Department’s nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs believes that the U.S. has the right to preemptively unleash nuclear weapons on other countries.

The New Republic‘s Emily Atkin wrote on Friday that Trump has nominated Guy B. Roberts to — according to the job description posted on the DoD website — “prevent, protect against, and respond to weapons of mass destruction threats” and advise Defense Sec. James Mattis on “matters concerning nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs.”

Roberts, Atkin said, has a strong resume. He is a 25-year veteran of the Marine Corps and has worked in nuclear weapons policy for NATO.

However, he is a strong proponent of the controversial doctrine of “first-use nuclear policy,” the belief that the U.S. reserves the right to strike other countries with nuclear weapons at will.

Pres. Barack Obama considered joining a “no first-use” pact, which Roberts responded to in 2016 with an essay for The National Interest titled “America Must Be Ready to Nuke First.”

In the essay, Roberts argued that the U.S. must function as a bulwark against Russian military aggression.

Mr. Roberts seems to have missed the memo detailing how Russia is our best fucking friend forever these days. It’s bad enough being stressed to the limit by every single day the Tiny Tyrant remains in office. It’s bad enough that there are calls to beef up the military even more, because the Great American Empire™ is collapsing, and military dominance is the holy solution, you bet. Now we get an idiot with an itchy trigger finger. I am now more worried about nuclear war than I was back in the 1960s and 1970s, and I was fair worried back then.

Via Raw Story.

19th Century Archaeological Rome Goes Online.

Rodolfo Lanciani’s photo capturing the discovery of the bronze statue of the Boxer (1885) (all images © Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte).

In 1885, excavations at Rome’s Quirinal Hill revealed one of the most celebrated Hellenistic Greek sculptures: the bronze, seated Boxer at Rest. Present was the archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani, who witnessed its exhumation and snapped a photograph of the rare ancient object. The image he produced is as arresting as the sculpture itself, capturing the figure perched on a mound of dirt, like a time traveler taking in the ruins of a once-familiar world. It’s one of many photographs Lanciani captured of his city’s changing landscape, and it’s just one gem from his own, massive archives — amassed as his impressive effort to document Rome’s entire archaeological history through the end of the 19th century.

Nearly 4,000 records from Lanciani’s collection are now digitized and accessible through a new, online database created over two years by researches at Stanford University Libraries, the University of Oregon, and Dartmouth College. The Rodolfo Lanciani Digital Archive makes accessible about one fourth of the archive that ended up at the National Institute of Archaeology and Art History in Rome when the archaeologist died in 1929, which is available to the public at the Palazzo Venezia only during select weekday hours.

You can now browse through high-resolution drawings, prints, and photos created between the 16th and 20th centuries that show the many infrastructural layers of the capital. From watercolors of entire buildings to architectural plans to sketches of decorative elements rendered by hundreds of artists, the works reveal the city’s famous buildings at different stages as well as structures that have been lost to time.

You can see more and read all about this at Hyperallergic.