Does right- or left- facing make a difference?
It's the Symbol for Buddhist temple on Japanese maps
This seems like the right thread to note the obnoxiousness of the Jeter love at the all-star game.
Aren't these the French based nuts waiting for the alien takeover that starved themselves to death or some such a few years ago? In a house in LA?
Wasn't that Heaven's Gate? They all look the same to you?
I once stumbled upon a big Raelian shrine, deep in the woods in the Austin Greenbelt.
I believe these nuts are the ones who follow a French race car driver who said that aliens told him to have sex with as many women as possible and create clone hoaxes. Which makes sense, if you think about it.
Ahhh thanks 6 & 8 for clearing that up!
I once stumbled on an abandoned Der Wienerschnitzel dog head deep in the SF East Bay Regional Parks hills ...
7 kind of begs for elaboration, right? RIGHT??
Thorn just wants to know of there were topless Raelians there.
Thorn has many interests, only some of them topless and French.
Thorn is also interested in Subaru Outbacks.
Hey, is there a really pitiful Buzzfeed quiz about whether you're a hedgehog or a fox? I love hedgehogs so much, but on French vs. topless I may not be one. I mean, I know which I'd choose hedgehog-style, but it seems like there should be more options.
Wasn't John Edwards involved with the Raelians? Oh, never mind.
There must be more lurkers than we realized, because the damn link won't load.
I gather that it's Nazis flying over Coney Island, of which I have consistently disapproved since at least 1943.
Very funny that the LA Times feels the need to include, in the second paragraph, a quick backgrounder on who the Nazis were and why they were bad.
Also, this is terrible writing.
The Raelian Movement every year tries to remind people that before the Nazis, the swastika -- a peace sign and a Star of David -- was an ancient symbol of well-being to Hindus and Buddhists, among others.
20: The swastika was one of ancient Hindus' favorite Stars of David.
22: it actually is still a common and major religious symbol for Hindus (the mirror image of the nazi swastika that is). You can see it in homes, temples and Hindu weddings among other places. This raises certain issues in Hindu weddings in the us that have Jewish guests ....
Some guy with a sign got my son asking a whole bunch of questions about Falun Gong. Looking up things on the internet, he saw their swastika (also mirror image of the Nazi one). He spent a week or so drawing them.
My Indian officemate brought me back an Indian tunic with the fake-swastikas all over the cuffs. I wore it with the cuffs rolled up.
You have to share an office as a professor?
No, it's an old story from grad school.
You knew a graduate student who gave gifts?
And an acquaintance of mine from India who married a German... oof.
OT: I'm sitting on my patio, it's July, and I'm cold. Hooray.
Swastikas in all directions are common in East Asia in classical architecture, religious icons, and ethnic minority stuff.* The Jewish people I know who spend time here aren't bothered by them because they're so clearly embedded in a completely different context. Hitler Fried Chicken is a different story however.
*A Miao (Hmong) woman from SW China once tried to sell me this beautifully-done embroidered headdress she'd made, except it was embroidered with little blue swastikas in any and all directions. She was like, "It would look great on you! Wear it at home and tell people about Miao culture" and I was like, "um, if I wear a swastika headdress back in the US, the LAST thing people would do would be to ask me about Miao culture."
Hitler Fried Chicken is always a different story.
I wasn't around to comment on the more relevant thread, but swastikas, so I'll post this anecdote here. The summer before my senior year in college, I was living in DC with a friend who was interning at Prestigious Environmental Nonprofit and who came home one day to tell me that the subject of Reagan's visit to Bitburg had come up, and a presumably bright and educated young woman who had obviously never heard about it had wondered what the big deal was. So they started in on blah blah SS troopers blah blah perpetrators of the Holocaust... Which resulted in the immortal reaction "The Holocaust!?! Thumbs down on the Holocaust!"
32: "we take only the finest and blondest chicken, shoot it in the head, cover it in our secret blend of herbs and spices, dip it in petrol, set fire to it and then flatten it beneath the treads of a T-34. Now, hands up who feels like some chicken?" (Cut to footage of mass saluting Nazis at Nuremberg)
Then there's the Swastika Laundry.
http://comeheretome.com/2010/04/26/swastika-laundry-1912-1987/
35 is pretty funny.
In an East-meets-West fusion, Tsingtao beer was first created by the Germans some time around the turn of last century, and the label had swastikas on it until the Japanese took over ownership of the brewery during WW2. Incidentally, if you're ever in Qingdao, it's well worth the price of admission to visit the beer museum/manufacturing plant.
Also, when the KMT was allied with Hitler, they would also sometimes use the swastika insignia as well.
Supermarine Spitfire of the Finnish Air Force.
Fascinating movie last night. Daughter of the Samurai, 1937. Japanese man spends eight years studying in Europe, comes back way Westernized and must get back in touch with his Japanese roots. Thinks all freedom and democracy and shit, and refuses to marry his childhood betrothed (Setsuko Hara at 16) and be adopted as he promised, cause Hara is too much the refined delicate upper-class flower to till the fields of Manchukuo with him. Sessue Hayakawa his future father-in-law, who disapproves of his daughter wearing Western dress instead of a kimono.
1) Supposedly a co-production to celebrate the German-Japanese alliance, the Japanese director (Juzo Itami's father) quit and made his own version of the movie. There are two versions.
2) The German director was Arnold Fanck, the guy who directed the Leni Riefenstahl mountain movies like The Blue Light. So the last third is the typical insane mountain shots of Hara standing on precipices of a volcano and hero climbing wildly to prevent her from throwing herself in.
3) Gorgeous outrageously beautiful cinematography of Japan in the 30s, including the Frank Lloyd Wright hotel, but most of it dedicated to the worship of classical Japanese culture and landscapes. Peasants in rice fields, tea ceremony, shrines and temples, Noh. Guy is just a drop of blood in a 1000-yr chain of drops of blood, and honors his nation by obeying his father, etc.
IOW, the aestheticization of politics and culture as blood, and fascist as all fuck.
4) And all of it Arnold Fanck, who also wrote the script. The Japanese director couldn't stand this shit.
I've seen hundreds of Japanese movies, and didn't seen a tea ceremony, except as disapproved, until the late 60s. And I'm wondering why the Imperial State-Shinto propaganda wasn't there in the 30s movies I have seen.
And I think that's a big difference, that until the 40s, the Japanese intellectual and artistic communities were given much more leeway, and were at least pretend liberal, didn't embrace fascism as the Germans did or had to.
5) The Japanese film community hated the movie, but it was a huge hit in Japan, and made Setsuko Hara a star.
Anyway, to see this fascist genius Arnold Fanck do Japan was eye-opening. Fascist masterpiece. Sublimity.
Almost The End is on Youtube. Notice the Kannon avatar of mercy in a few of the shots. Missing the final scenes in Manchukuo, where the couple lays their infant son in the furrow new earth, and the protecting soldier stares menacingly at the camera in the final shot.
This ain't Japan, not even Imperial Japan. It's 30s Germany.
PS: My {{ key seems gone. Time to swap for that keyboard I bought last year.
