Messages

376

General Chaos / Re: What are you reading?

« on: September 07, 2014, 10:04:27 PM »

I finished Lost Girls last weekend and I've been catching up on my backlog of architectural magazines since.

Lost Girls was a very good book, well researched and well written.  And unlike many true crime books, it didn't obsess over forensic details or fixate on the serial killer or killers.  Instead Kolker paints a detailed and heartbreaking portrait of the victims and their families, which places this book well above the norm in the true crime genre.

In my magazines, I'm going through the August/September issue of Mark right now.  This issue has a perspective section on China, with interviews with four contemporary Chinese Architects, rather interesting.

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General Chaos / Re: Image Thread

« on: September 05, 2014, 09:11:14 AM »

378

General Chaos / Re: Image Thread

« on: August 29, 2014, 07:02:40 PM »

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General Chaos / Re: HAY GUYS HAVE YOU SEEN THIS THING (Forum Shout Out Thread Thing)

« on: August 28, 2014, 06:44:00 PM »

origami!

...

That word doesn't appear anywhere in the article I linked to.

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General Chaos / Re: What are you reading?

« on: August 25, 2014, 10:08:07 AM »

And now back to crime.  I've started reading Robert Kolker’s Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery.  I mentioned reading a review of this book earlier in the thread, and here it is:

How crime apathy can empower a serial killer

This is a good and brave book and one that, if you’re anything like me, will make you hate yourself just a little bit.

I’m a news reporter. From time to time, I report on crime. It can’t be avoided.

Every day, my e-mail inbox piles up with press releases from police departments across the country.

The majority concern missing-persons cases. Toronto alone can send up to 10 missing-persons reports a day.

For the most part, I ignore them. And so does everyone else. Usually, the missing turn up within 48 hours. Often the press releases refer to “high-risk behaviour,” meaning they’re probably a drug addict or a prostitute or both, so, wink-wink, this isn’t out of the ordinary. Just folks on the margins of society who haven’t checked in lately.

Robert Kolker’s Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery is the story of how that apathy can empower a serial killer.

On Dec. 10, 2010, a Suffolk County Police officer searching for a missing prostitute named Shannan Gilbert discovered a set of human remains along Ocean Parkway, a scenic highway stretching the length of Jones Beach Island located off Long Island’s southern shore. Two days later, police found three more skeletons in the same area, but there was no Shannan Gilbert among them. They hadn’t even been looking for the four women they found that week. No one had, aside from a few family members whom everyone ignored.

Despite clear evidence of a serial killer, or killers, using the area as a dumpsite for dead women, Suffolk County Police seemed reluctant to continue the search for Ms. Gilbert, the one woman they knew for sure had disappeared in the area. She was a prostitute.

Prostitutes lead transient, high-risk lives. She could be anywhere, dead or alive. Let’s all just move along.

When, on Dec. 6, 2011, they sent one last phalanx of searchers into a briny marsh armed with dogs, metal detectors and weed whackers, a TV crewman waiting on the proceedings crudely summed up the attitude of many involved: “I can’t believe they’re doing all this for a whore.”

Gilbert’s body turned up a few days later. The truth did not. The case remains open. Utter indifference on the part of multiple law enforcement agencies doomed it from the start. Missing persons reports were dismissed. Leads were not followed.

This may sound a little familiar. If you live in Vancouver or Prince George or Edmonton or Winnipeg or any of a hundred other North American cities where cases of missing and murdered woman have been ignored, you know there is a chronic problem not just with protecting marginalized women from harm, but with seriously investigating once harm strikes.

The rise of websites like Craigslist and Backpage.com have mitigated some dangers of the job while amplifying others, argues Kolker, a New York magazine contributing editor.

The Internet is replacing middlemen in many facets of the sex trade, freeing prostitutes from the abuse and enslavement inherent in those relationships.

At the same time, the brutal old way of doing business offered some shred of a safety net. Word of missing women or violent customers travelled across of a network of sex-trade workers, just like office gossip spreads across any other workplace.

A prostitute’s handlers could put the boots to aggressive clients, send out search parties for missing girls.

Now, “escorts can work from a hotel with a laptop, or in a car on a smartphone. Alone,” Kolker writes. “A missing girl is missing only to the people who notice.”

Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews, Kolker retraces the lives of the five women whose bodies were found on Long Island – their personalities, their loves, their silly habits, their addictions. His ability to animate their lives is bedrock of this book, more a work of victim analysis than police procedural.

It is a noble approach, and one that can easily bring out the worst in readers. For me, the five women began to blend, their individuality lost in tale after tale of neglected upbringing, abuse, shattered dreams, addiction and ignorance.

Sad, tragic lives; sad, tragic deaths. Such a cavalcade of sorrow tests our compassion. I began ignoring details, scanning over pages, demonstrating the same sort of dismissiveness as the bungling investigators.

Luckily, Kolker is not so callous. His tireless reporting has done for the Long Island case what Stevie Cameron did for the Robert Pickton murders: created a full, agonizing account of a horrible murder case involving neglected women that tells us bad things about ourselves.

It also offers an implied argument for the regulation of prostitution, so that government could mandate the humanity that society seems so incapable of.

Until something changes, laws and mores will force them to continue seeking out the technological margins, out of our sight, out of our minds – exactly what the killers count on.

Patrick White is a reporter for The Globe and Mail.

381

General Chaos / Re: HAY GUYS HAVE YOU SEEN THIS THING (Forum Shout Out Thread Thing)

« on: August 23, 2014, 08:26:36 PM »

Japanese Artist Hand-Crafts Intricate Three Dimensional Paperscapes

Japanese artist Katsumi Hayakawa’s “Paperworks” exhibition explores the impression of architectural density through delicate three-dimensional installations. The intricate sculptures were all hand-crafted piece by piece out of paper and glue, creating an awe-inspiring assemblage of multi-layered urban conditions at different scales.

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General Chaos / Re: What are you reading?

« on: August 23, 2014, 08:24:02 PM »

So I finished Logan's Run mid-week.  It was quite pacy and had some interesting elements about 60's fears of overpopulation and youth revolt, but there wasn't much story there in the end.  It's mostly Logan running from exotic location to exotic location, getting caught in deathtraps and escaping at the last moment, and a rather cheezy reveal at the end "surprise! I was Ballard all along!".

Now I'm taking a little break from from my regular diet of science fiction, war and crime to read some Truman Capote: Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories.

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General Chaos / Re: What are you reading?

« on: August 17, 2014, 07:41:40 PM »

"Our kahki is dirty and stained, and our packs are heavy; but our rifles are clean and well-oiled as we plod along the road to our 'spell in.'  Our faces are red, as the rain drips down from our bonnets and runs down our cheeks or drops from our noses.  We don't look like a bunch of 'bleedin' 'eroes,' but we are not at all downhearted."

- Private J.P. Baston, 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade, 1916

Finished At the Sharp End today, and I'll be moving on to the second volume in a while, but I'll tackle some other books first.

I think that the next will be Logan's Run, I came across a  copy in a used book store (1976 with art from the movie posters on the cover) and since the Podcast at Ground Zero guys are going to be discussing it soon, I thought I'd give it a read.

I've also added Tim Cook's The Madman and the Butcher: the Sensational Wars of Sam Hughes and General Arthur Currie to my to-read list.  I enjoyed Cook's writing in At the Sharp End and the glimpses of Hughes' horrible behaviour therein, so it's now sitting on my bookshelf.

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General Chaos / Re: Need help with world war 1 (Great War) information

« on: August 15, 2014, 01:41:51 PM »

A month and a half late to this thread, but I hope this still might help.

So, I'm looking into creating a world war 1 all flesh scenario based around the second battle of ypres, which was the first large scale use of lethal gas in the war. What I'm looking for is something that would explain the nitty gritty of life in the trenches, food, water, soldiering kit, gear all that wonderful stuff.

The book I'm reading right now, At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1914-1916, has plenty on second ypres (it was the Canadian Corps' first battle) and goes into quite a bit about life in the trenches (with chapters like: Living in a Sewer: Life in the Trenches, Many a Damned Cold Morning: The Banality of Trench Routine and "Every Day We Lost A Few Men": Death in the Trenches).

Osprey books are often a good source for nitty-gritty details (though some are pure rivet-counter porn) and British Tommy 1914–18 is a good book for details about British & Imperial army weapons & equipment.  I particularly love the picture of a "Bomber" wearing a mills bomb vest.  Imagine going over the top in that!

A couple of details about equipment in second ypres off the top of my head:

This was before the British or Canadians had adopted helmets, soft caps only!

The Canadian Corps was also using the Ross Rifle at the time, which had a nasty tendency to jam during rapid fire!

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General Chaos / Re: What are you reading?

« on: August 05, 2014, 10:27:15 AM »

I just looked up those books on goodreads, Emergency Surgeon has zero ratings, no-one on that site has even read it*.  I think you may have found some real shit there.


*and is willing to admit to it.

386

General Chaos / Re: What are you reading?

« on: August 04, 2014, 01:26:39 PM »

CADMonkey, you might enjoy what I've been reading lately: The Surgeon of Crowthorne (apparently the US title is The Professor and The Madman), which is about part of the history of the first edition of the OED. Apparently it was an early example of crowdsourcing - lots of amateur linguists were tapped to find quotes as early as possible that demonstrated the meaning of key terms. And one of the most prolific contributors was, well, in Broadmoor at the time of his work.

Yeah, Hitchings mentioned the history of the OED and the solicitation for input from readers.

So I finished Roadside Picnic a while ago and have been catching up on a pile of Architectural magazines that has been growing for a while.  A couple of days ago, I was in that used bookstore again and came across, amongst other things, a copy of In the Midst of Life and Other Tales, a collection of Bierce's short stories, including An Inhabitant of Carcosa.  So I've added again to my pile of ongoing short story collections.

And today, on the hundredth anniversary of Canada joining the First World War, I've begun reading At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1914-1916.  It's a rather massive tome, but I think I can finish it before 2016 rolls around.

387

General Chaos / Re: What are you reading?

« on: July 20, 2014, 10:13:18 AM »

Finished Language Wars yesterday, then picked up a copy of Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery which I've been been meaning to read since reading a review over a year ago.  But I won't be starting Lost Girls right away though: Before going to see The Wind Rises I was browsing in a used bookstore across the street from the theatre when I found a used copy of  Roadside Picnic.  I know when to take a hint.

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General Chaos / Re: Image Thread

« on: July 09, 2014, 11:38:06 AM »

389

General Chaos / Re: HAY GUYS HAVE YOU SEEN THIS THING (Forum Shout Out Thread Thing)

« on: July 06, 2014, 11:47:37 AM »

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If Michael Haneke had a slightly less ironic appreciation of the term “funny games,” he might have cooked up something a little like “Borgman,” a sly, insidious and intermittently hilarious domestic thriller that is likely to remain one of the most daring selections of this year’s Cannescompetish. More disquieting than explicit, this eighth feature from Dutch writer-helmer Alex van Warmerdam, who also features memorably in the ensemble, strikes a familiar note in its allegorical punishment of the entitled upper classes, but the execution is sufficiently inventive to mark the pic as a challenge worth accepting for adventurous arthouse distribs.

For the sake of descriptive economy, it’s tempting to classify “Borgman” (named for its oddly passive-aggressive chief villain) as another entry in the increasingly popular subgenre of the home-invasion thriller, but that would misrepresent the film’s more complex premise. “Home inveigling” or even “home infection” would be closer to the mark: Many of the most horrific domestic violations in this story occur with the permission of the family under threat, lending a Pinter-esque slant to van Warmerdam’s slow-burning narrative.

A cryptic opening sequence isn’t rendered any less so by later events. As an unidentified man swallows a pickled herring at his kitchen counter (clarifying, if nothing else, that we are most certainly in the Netherlands), a priest-led manhunt is taking place outside. The apparent target, middle-aged, lank-haired Borgman (Jan Bijvoet), is rudely awoken from a nap in his sophisticated underground shelter, and beats a hasty retreat with his similarly concealed cohorts.

Seeking refuge in suburbia, Borgman rings the doorbell of wealthy married couple Marina (Hadewych Minis, excellent) and Richard (Jeroen Perceval) and politely asks to use their shower. When Richard, understandably befuddled, refuses, Borgman’s calm refusal of this refusal aggravates Richard into a violent physical attack, one that crucially puts him on the moral back foot with his wife for the rest of the film.

Guilt-stricken and oddly aroused by this implacable stranger, Marina ends up secretly sheltering him in one of their large estate’s outhouses; it’s not long, however, before he’s creeping about inside the house and endearing himself to the couple’s three preteen children, who assume he’s a kind of shaman. Which, indeed, he might well be: His next trick is winning an unwitting Richard’s approval by bumping off the family gardener and masquerading as a new one. When his fellow travelers arrive to assist with the re-landscaping, it’s clear some family remodeling is in the cards, too.

It’s at this point that the film, after initially flirting with a more whimsical tone, takes a decisive turn for the macabre and never looks back. The weight of suspense then shifts to the inner-family dynamic, as Borgman’s crew begins subtly playing Marina against her increasingly paranoid husband. Not that the film feels particularly bad for Richard, who is made rather unsubtly to represent everything that’s detestable about the One Percent (or higher Dutch equivalent): Refusing to hire non-white household staff without diplomas, he barks at his wife, “We’re from the West; it’s affluent. That’s not our fault.”

In a sleek technical package, production designer Geert Paredis’ modern, warmly textured but uninvitingly spacious family house reps a significant asset to the drama. Editor Job ter Burg limits the film’s most violent jolts to a handful of brutal dream sequences, but horror-film rhythms and imagery are wisely kept to a minimum elsewhere. Instead, this is the kind of film that finds droll pleasure in the sight of dead heads setting in buckets of cement.

-GUY LODGE, VARIETY

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General Chaos / Re: What are you reading?

« on: July 06, 2014, 11:21:24 AM »

And instead of that, I've started in on Michel de Montaigne's On Solitude --one essay at a time-- and Henry Hitchings' The Language Wars: A History of Proper English.  I'm loving The Language Wars, just in the second chapter, I found a new favourite quote: "'Logic' is often a mask for smugness and jingoism".