Aug 21, 2024
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The oedipal story is a narrative that encourages fantasies of male monogenesis because fathers, aligned as they are with the symbolic, produce subjects, if not babies. Indeed, this vampire story could be subtitled: "Two Men and a Baby." When the male vampire couple, Lestat and Louis, "create" Claudia she is five years old and presumably just ready...to turn away from the mother toward the father...This perfect staging of the oedipal moment uncovers not the girl's desire for the father so much as the father's desire for the girl child.
doane and hodges, "undoing feminism: from the preoedipal to postfeminism in anne rice's vampire chronicles"
Hodges
[ 2024 Jacksonville, FL ]
Unholy
Warning: mentions of violence, sexual innuendo, mentions of sex, and mentions of std
"well it looks like our priest here wasn't as godly as he appeared." Nick said looking at the body in front of us.
Nick and I were working a case on the strip. A priest was found in his office, his pants pulled down to his ankles and missing a significant part of his lower region. He was stabbed repeatedly and left to bleed out.
"that's a lot of rage, someone wanted this guy to suffer and I think I know why." I said.
I picked up the condom still in its wrapper showing it to Nick. I opened one of the drawers of his desk, the action making empty condom wrappers fall out. A smirk spread to Nick's lips.
"so you're telling me our priest was going to get it on before he was butchered?" Nick asked shaking his head in disbelief.
Get Carter (1971) Dir. Mike Hodges
The Kremlin’s disastrous losses in Ukraine could result in the collapse of the Russian Federation
“Indeed, I now believe it is a genuine possibility that Vladimir Putin’s exposed weaknesses are so severe that we might be witnessing the beginning of the end – not only of his regime, but of the Russian Federation itself.
This vast empire encompassing more than 120 ethnic groups is on an unsustainable footing, and like that famous Hemingway quote, its collapse may be gradual at first but could quickly become a sudden, violent and uncontrollable event. If we fail to prepare for this possibility in the way that we failed to prepare for the collapse of the Soviet Union, it could introduce immense instability to our geopolitics.
I see at least three factors that could lead to the Federation’s collapse. The first is the breakdown of domestic confidence in the Russian Army, which has traditionally been at the core of the Kremlin’s legitimacy. Its humiliation in Ukraine is now almost complete, with the proud Black Sea Fleet still hiding behind Crimea, too frightened to take action against a country that doesn’t even have a navy.
(…)
Second, the damage suffered by the Russian economy has been too devastating to sustain a population of 144 million. The loss of energy markets, which compensated for the country’s lack of modern industries, cannot be reversed. European governments will not rely again on Nord Stream 1, having witnessed how easily it can be turned off, and are already making long-term investments in domestic energy supply.
(…)
This brings us to the third factor, which is the sparse nature of Russia’s population. For despite possessing 70 times the landmass of the United Kingdom, the Federation has just twice the population. These numbers make civic solidarity difficult to achieve in the best of times, but now, with the metropole in a weak position, any sense of national identity could rapidly deteriorate.
(…)
We ought to be asking difficult questions now lest they be sprung on us out of nowhere.
For instance, how would this play out in a country that has considerable stockpiles of nuclear weapons and few centres of power? Who would extract the nukes? How do we avoid leakage of weapons and militants into the Baltic states? Is a major internal conflict inevitable or can the collapse be contained within a political context?”
Military expert Justin Bronk has analysed the latest situation in an article for MailOnline today as Ukrainian troops continued to pile pres
“In less than a week, more than 3,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory had been liberated, massive stockpiles of ammunition, weapons and armoured vehicles captured for use by Ukrainian forces, and the entire Russian position in North-Eastern Ukraine completely destabilised.
Russian forces have not suffered such a serious and rapid military defeat on the battlefield since the Second World War.
Worse still for Putin is that fact that he has no good options for how to react now.
The majority of his potentially mobile and elite units in Ukraine are still concentrated in Kherson to the south, and are facing a serious and ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive operation that cannot be ignored.
Furthermore, by signalling for so long that Kherson was target for liberation, Ukraine has baited Russia into accepting an attritional battle in a very militarily disadvantageous position.
(…)
As such, the large concentration of Russian forces defending Kherson are dependent on highly disrupted and bottlenecked supply lines, meaning that they are rapidly running low on medical supplies, food and above all ammunition.
(…)
If his forces stay put in the south, then the majority of Russia's usable combat power will be trapped with their backs to the river and steadily ground down by a Ukrainian force that has much better supply lines, more troops and so can sustain an attritional artillery duel for longer.
However, if the Kherson front were to collapse, it would be such a political and military disaster coming soon after the stunning defeat in Kharkiv that Russian military morale might totally disintegrate, or Putin might even find himself threatened by discontented factions within the Russian power structure at home.
(…)
Furthermore, the need to send those under training or in second-line formations in Russia to Ukraine to try and steady the line in the Donbas means any hope that Putin had of reconstituting a serious force for renewed offensive operations in Spring 2023 is gone.
He could declare war and commence full mobilisation, but even that might produce usable formations too late to counter a Ukrainian offensive in Spring.
Furthermore, it would be highly unpopular in most of Russia and risk further destabilising the regime.
(…)
Ukraine's Western partners now have proof that Ukrainian forces can decisively beat the Russian Army if given enough material support, and that will make it politically much easier to sustain that support at the necessary level through what promises to be a difficult winter from a food and energy security point of view.
Russia, meanwhile has no good options, and will be faced with the knowledge that even if it can avoid losing the war this year, its battered forces will face an even better equipped Ukrainian Army in 2023.”
Me, watching the teaser for tonight’s episode.