What's everyone up to right now?

[The Valkyrie]

I'm watching the Red Green Show.
I just discovered it yesterday.
It's funny.

I'm trying to get volunteers for my similar show, The Black Blue show.

None so far.

[Rev. Rye]

Reading Ian Kershaw’s Nemesis and this one passage stuck out to me:

“Claß used the notorious words of Heinrich von Kleist, aimed at the French in 1813, when a 'Jewish Committee' with the purpose of 'exploiting the situation to sound the clarion call against Judaism and to use the Jews as as lightning rods for all injustices' was set up by the Pan-Germans in September 1918: 'Kill them; the world court is not asking you for your reasons!'

Naturally, I recognized the name Heinrich Von Kleist immediately; he was a famous author, who wrote plays like The Prince of Homburg and stories like Michael Kohlhaas, and I’ve given shoutouts to the latter in the past. I was not familiar with this quote, however, so I looked it up. I found the Claß speech Kershaw cited, but not anything from Kleist matching those words. I get the feeling I would have stumbled upon it earlier. What’s even more bizarre was that Kleist wasn’t even alive in 1813. He died in a murder-suicide pact with his girlfriend in 1811. Honestly, I get the feeling I, of all people, should have known if one of the great poets in the German Romantic movement explicitly prefigured the Holocaust.

[Kitty Galore]

Drinking and losing my ass at poker

[Rev. Rye]

Did a little further searching. I found a Project Gutenberg page that claims to have Kleist’s collected political writings. Naturally, it’s in German, and my knowledge of German is not up to snuff. I don’t have the original German words Kleist/Class used, so I can’t exactly type it in and see if he actually used those words. Even worse, I can’t try and backtranslate it back into English, especially not the word “Kill.” German has DOZENS of words that could mean kill, and I really don’t feel like trying to plug them all in. You could argue that it's like Eskimos have fifty words for snow (which is more like two IRL), Germans have dozens of words for killing. Bear in mind, it looks like English has even more.

However, I had an Alan Turing-like revelation that if it was legit, I could be sure of one distinctive word that would have to be used: “Jude.” So, I plugged that in (well the prefix “jud-“, anyway) and I found it exactly once. Google translated it and here’s what it said:

"What? is this powerful state of the Jews supposed to perish? Jerusalem, this city of God, protected by his incarnate cherubim, should she, Zion, sink to ashes? Owls and eagles should live in the rubble of this Solomonic temple? Death should sweep away the whole population, women and children be carried away in fetters, and the offspring scattered into all the countries of the world, discarded through millennia and millennia as Ananias prophesies lead the life of the slaves? What?"





Conclusion of this investigation: Heinrich Claß was most likely talking out his ass when he attributed Judaicidal instincts to Heinrich Von Kleist.

[The Valkyrie]

Drinking and losing my ass at poker

Out of money?

[brewer]

Drinking and losing my ass at poker

Out of money?

I'm sure there are other "things" of value she could put on the table.

[The Valkyrie]

Out of money?

I'm sure there are other "things" of value she could put on the table.

I would not assume to speak for her.

[brewer]

I'm sure there are other "things" of value she could put on the table.

I would not assume to speak for her.

Me either, but it's really fun to imagine.

[Rev. Rye]

Reading Ian Kershaw’s Nemesis and this one passage stuck out to me:

“Claß used the notorious words of Heinrich von Kleist, aimed at the French in 1813, when a 'Jewish Committee' with the purpose of 'exploiting the situation to sound the clarion call against Judaism and to use the Jews as as lightning rods for all injustices' was set up by the Pan-Germans in September 1918: 'Kill them; the world court is not asking you for your reasons!'

Naturally, I recognized the name Heinrich Von Kleist immediately; he was a famous author, who wrote plays like The Prince of Homburg and stories like Michael Kohlhaas, and I’ve given shoutouts to the latter in the past. I was not familiar with this quote, however, so I looked it up. I found the Claß speech Kershaw cited, but not anything from Kleist matching those words. I get the feeling I would have stumbled upon it earlier. What’s even more bizarre was that Kleist wasn’t even alive in 1813. He died in a murder-suicide pact with his girlfriend in 1811. Honestly, I get the feeling I, of all people, should have known if one of the great poets in the German Romantic movement explicitly prefigured the Holocaust.

Okay, thinking about it, it looks like I was going about it the wrong way; I still can't find the original quote, but knowing that during Kleist's most productive era, a good portion of Germany was under Napoleonic control, that Kleist was not a fan of Napoleon, and that the big push against him happened in 1813, now I think perhaps Claß took him way out of context. So obviously, taking shit historical figures said and warping them way out of context to serve their nefarious agendas is nothing new.

[Rev. Rye]

Recently watched Defunctland's new History of Fraggle Rock video:





Now I find myself wanting to watch the series in full (and thankfully, unlike The Muppet Show, my local library actually has the entire series on DVD), and somehow, despite the fact that I had a HUGE Jim Henson kick around 2002, I didn't watch the full series (because it wasn't available.) And now, watching this video and hearing Kevin talk about the season finale and the international co-productions [French, German, and UK] with the new Doc segments, I have to ask: how the fuck did they pull of a new version of "Change of Address?" Different Doc segments worked when they were more or less autonomous and Sprocket (who actually did interact with the Fraggles) was the same anyway, but how would they have done it when they actually were connected?

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Turns out that the French and German versions didn't get to that last episode, and the UK version didn't really have to change that much.

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