following on from tower of evil (don't play in deserted lighthouses children) horsemouth watched night of the damned (1971) a film with not one secret book but two.
our detective receives a letter from his old friend the prince, who seems to be in distress because he is sending out messages in code instructing the detective to read particular verses from the same edition of baudelaire's les fleurs du mal that both possess. acrostatics - take the first letter of the line.
the detective and his girlfriend travel to the prince's castle, lit only by candles (because the prince has turned his back on electricity), there they meet the vampy wife and the creepy doctor. her name is an anagram too...
later the doctor is revealed to be using the name of the doctor from the confessions of jean-jacques rousseau (but this seems secondary). so this is not strictly a giallo (because of the supernatural and gothic material). the solution to the mystery is in the library (says the prince).
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'I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent and which, once complete, will have no imitator. my purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself.' - the confessions of jean-jacques rousseau.
now rousseau can be true to his purpose but he cannot control how the work will be received, he cannot prevent imitations. (and indeed the world is awash with these imitations - autobiographies as we have come to call them).
indeed this is an autobiography you are reading (of sorts). yesterday a beautiful sunshine-y day (if a little cold). the plan to go for a walk with minty does not come off so horsemouth does a shopping trip to aldi instead (museli 1.3kg, beer 1l, fakemeat 1kg, two cheap pizzas potatoes, peppers etc.).
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meanwhile the news continues to be fucking terrible. the russian invasion of the ukraine continues, those who can flee. there is a strong media push for us to cheer on the defenders but horsemouth would point to grozny, fallujah, syria and say the main thing resisting is likely to get you is killed and your city shelled or bombed to rubble.
to horsemouth's way of thinking actual wars with bombs and guns are more often than not bad news for the working class (who get to fight and die, be bombed and be shot, but don't get to profit from the reconstruction contracts).
horsemouth suspects that putin is unable to solve russia's real problem - the politico-economic problem of how to integrate it into global capitalism while still retaining it under his rule, and so has adopted fighting wars as a means to stabilise his regime. russia (and its client states on its borders to the south) are stabilised by oil and gas revenues but the world is marching away from oil and gas and this war will accelerate that trend (and retard it at the same time).
putin's regime could fall - an actual war is a pretty desperate gamble. putin, after all, is 70. he's a fit (horse riding, bare-chested) 70 granted but he's still 70. russia seems like a military giant but it has a GDP marginally bigger than italy's GDP (about 8% of the US GDP) which, after the depredations of the oligarchs, must feed more than double the population of italy. it has a vast stock of nuclear weapons but these are essentially un-useable (until armageddon). but it has tanks and squaddies (so tanks and squaddies it is).
horsemouth listened to an old talking politics interview back from time of the salisbury poisonings with bridget kendall, a former BBC correspondent in moscow. he was mainly interested in what putin's position in russia actually is.
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the tompkins square compilation features (near the end) a harry taussig (university friend of john fahey and early american primitive guitarist) version of darktown strutter's ball. it seems to take as its model the reverend gary davis version.
back to the autobiography. the sun appears to be staging a fightback. last night he watched the first episode of the prisoner. the prisoner arrives in the village. he tries to escape... but he fails (more tonight).
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