Month: June 2021

Hieronymus Bosch Butt Music ♬♫♪

From the artist:

“Music printed on the butt of one of the tortured souls in the 15th Century Hieronymus Bosch painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights” , Played on (What else?) Lute, Harp, and Hurdy-Gurdy by James Spalink. The melody is based on the transcription by Amelia Hamrick. The intro and outro employ the “Devil’s Interval”, and the last couple of measures are conjecture on my part. You could say that I just “pulled them out of my”-well, you know…..”

BONUS: Here’s a fun little tool for exploring Bosch’s triptych in excruciatingly high-rez detail from the comfort of your uncomfortable office chair!

This is a fun little film…

… but just a reminder to my American readers: We already live in this reality. This country isn’t just full of guns; it’s full of ammunition. If you have access to even a single bullet, you are $10 and a trip to the hardware store from making a wonderfully lethal weapon: unserialized, untraceable, highly concealable, nearly foolproof.  You won’t be doing any civil massacres with a hardware-store slam gun, but you can mostly definitely kill the guy standing in front of you with little effort.

The reason no one will shoot you today is because no one feels like shooting you today.

This isn’t antisemitism—but, straight talk: It’s really hard to argue that Ann Arbor gives a shit about its Jews

This vexes me.

Just for the record, this isn’t antisemitism. I saw this Saturday, soon after it was painted, while driving past with my kids on the way to the river. I’m one of the chairs of the Jewish safety committee for this area, so it’s safe to say that my anti-Jew radar is exquisitely well tuned.

“Fuck Israel” written on a public Rock that, for decades, has been a locus of political speech?  That isn’t hate speech.

The fact is, Israel is a goddamned country.  You can say the nastiest words in the world about Israel, and as long as you keep it about the nation-state of Israel, we’re all good. It’s just like how you can criticize China or the Democratic Republic of the Congo without being racist about it. 

Meanwhile, standing outside a synagogue and holding a sign that reads “Israel Has No Right to Exist”? That is antisemitism. And folks have been doing it just a few hundred feet up the street from the goddamned Rock for 16 years and Ann Arbor has done shit about it: 

anti-Jewish protest in Ann Arbor, MI, around 2019

[source]