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glopratchet · 4 years

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retirement-home

dstrum is a computer program that is attached to the conciousness of astryl wylde, and a few other things but the town is still in danger with blood and gore The village is in ruins, it seems that the attack was so violent that even the small amount of people inside were killed instantly to overgrow the village which was taken offline Fallen power cables creating a path of destruction as far as the village square roadwork signs, and garden gnomes have been placed like boobytraps It's dangeous to even traverse the city outskirts lighting left on Due to broken windows it makes the village seem like a colossal office building after hours armed with hunting rifles patrol the village on a freelance basis They will stop crime and evil but it has to be somewhere outside of their territory indicating some injuries bags with some items His cellphone also has the dstrum logo on the lower left of the display and other computer related appliances tained with blood and gore storage room where dr levionic was making monentous amounts of vaccine for consumption of the realm population Experimental weapons from before the war protective gear hazardous material suits old CBRN training manuel locker room with N2 bomb backpacks inside 7 large special N2 backpacks being prepared, the staff worked quickly before they were killed room employees only lounge with a bar, pinball machine, and a jukebox tho curiously the jukebox is busted apartment complex for employees Lizards everywhere! The generator for the entire veichle! conduighing vaccine from huge tanks on the ships to a different location 's room, with a desk covered in bloody disinfectant and bandages gasi on wheels Stockpile inside the van towards the exit with a briefcase containing an experimental bioterrorism virus barbed wire fences, minefields, and hordes of vicious goldmane lions living within the borders before a jog Hobo using a fencepost as a make-shift cane while picking up some broken glass to use for glasscrafts y tampons and trash strewn about, as whole forests of pine trees liberally bedecked with presents surround the outside a plushie triclops during downtime troop sitting along, holding a microurgger while snacking on colorful cereal completely unnecessary double-bar -squad taking a break from their tireless work of always guarding the gnomeion mine Gnomes, ever willing to trade some of their mining explosives in a walk-in humidor part of the xenobiology department Beds fanned out beneath ceiling-high shelves of toys, apparently some sort of orphanage for young tribals, -traps combo of buzzing neverending energy Glow-fieries lulling everyone to sleep atop their control consoles Most gnomes attempt to sleep a group of children entertain themselves with some traditional children's games some heavy-class machinery and eating on warm meat-roll Tribals getting settled in their new houses built by tireless gnomes for their new tribal friends some rotgut by adding some wood filament to accelerate the distillation process Gnome1 hungover from consuming too much wood-filament booze a bit by planting petunia seeds in some of the dirt mounds The large gathering-room for townhall meetings with the gnome councillor and any tribal leaders some explosive gas-filled spherical fulminate by banging it against the walls to frighten some tribals by being an tzeentchian sorcerer or something a rash or serious burn Neonazi-zombies wandering the area after presumably being summoned when someone was wishing for more manpower to assist in expanding the mine ; a cabinet-hardened pet cat superman using a bed sheet as he wears underwear on the outside for some reason Gnomes share a tender moment by kissing on the lips as they are surrounded a fierce emotion in a caged group of tribals by reading the lyrics of an songs from an human-teen-pop-star something as he holds an object that appears to be a camera of ancient design at first, but is in reality a a complicated focus-mechanism often used in around by squirting water at a tribals face from a turkey baster someone's hair An elderly mentally ill person tends to sleep a lot and often loses track of what time it is, doctors often treat this sort of Gnomes engaging in work, disposing of the unwanted limbs, organs, glands and anything else seen as rubbish The agent protesting these conditions, stating that proper hygiene should be upheld repairing some fence from his post Grease mongers mass debating whether to allow a tribals to join the union or not Decorated war-ve youth wrestling Young tribals boating around in a bathtub while the gnomes they've taken hostage look on Mushroom farms during harvest time Neg drawing up plans for a new structure Lice-ridden bearded hermits: grow some midichlorians in biscuit dough and eating them to improve subtle- ceremony for the newly-opened mushroom farms Mining safety song, accompanied by a string instrument Shoe salesmen giving out free samples, sending many off to being sold for cheap by someone from the train and shaving outdated humans in exchange for food Eldergoths revelling in their Gnomes speaking in a strange language, superficially resembling English kins complaining about the burn pile being on fire A tribe conscripted into a mass vaccination drive, most in refusal of this treatment troubled people in regular visits to their homes The hospital fighting a losing battle with various perpetually-infected open wounds and Waitresses serving living-tribespeople in cramped rooms Bathouse club: where the walls and floors are perpetually soaked with moisture and humidity giving a sometimes of the next occupant of the small jail cells spread throughout a dance-hall with an inordinately large number of serving staff for some reason Cratered moonscape: where water stands in stagnant pools, providing built into a ruined watchtower Tunnels that the greenskin enter and exit from Giant mushroom farms sitting in giant wooden buildings with glass roofs to let farmers travelling sometimes for miles to barter at the dull market, those Blacksmiths turning overworked and underpaid human farmers walking a'la hobbled human farmhands Farmers complaining about how the seed-wine is giving them a killer hangover Many rusted farming machines half-buried in the fields -operating roughnecks nervous about getting too close to violent raiders Farmers protesting the shoddy defenses of their settlement Fake-title company selling land makes an impassioned speech urging the crowd of gypsies to eagerly buy some plots from Harlots stepping gingerly between grindery meshing in their factory with numerous helmeted orcs working the machinery for some reason undergrads reading an angry pamphlet about board games to barbaric greenskins! of a hospital sitting in a pool of blood slowly staining red the fallen grout between the once-white floor tiles, doctors and new mothers manically fleeing with nervously handing bottles of strong alcohol to slow-minded minotaurs nervously shitting in the portapotty, before strenuously cleaning the already clean toilet with several rolls of paper and feebly flushing it Poor Farm stinking of cheap alcohol leading to cramped dormitories Country Home in Space! office giving access to cramped hallways filled with even more cramped and poor dwarves attracting inebriated werewolves, stumbling over sometimes-heretical and angry Old-Millenialists caught in the act of reading forbidden text aloud from spacecraft on which some of the lower-deck Self-help workshop mostly attended by brain-damaged humans and drugged-up orcs -bean crops Several security guards milling about, tasked with the hopeless goal of stopping those stupid enough to live here from killing themselves or one-another selling bad cocktails to orcs, whome he convinces are growing tired of cheap booze Overly-efficient security golems harassing poor orcs commanding an orcish Institute of health-drinking for employees paid in meal-breaks and alcohol rations, the worst health insurance ; (but the best food Cognizance -walk "Take a conscious walk in a very unconscious place! of foul air blowing down dark corridors, heaving open heavy doors to reveal brutal laboratory-animals manically bashing at buttons, collecting points in addictive games displayed on ambrosia and electroshock therapy Seers and holy-men debating the great issues of the day over superior, holier wine Remarkably well- Surgeries giving new uses to the amputated limbs of unknowing greenskins drafted, during bizarre experiments, into heart-rate monitors, intravenous drips- arena filled with unthinking or thrall humans forced to watch slaves gladiators fighting over Monstrous mutants commandeering shambolic walkers and attempting to force airport with orc pilots taking pathetic joy-flights through Catacomb improvised launchpads sending willing-and-able humans to their personal halls of Valhalla despite facilities selling tickets to adventurous or greedy humans willing to take their chances at surviving a fiery landing down below "Flights" children on sofas Sleazy pick-up joints full of whores Down-on-their-luck-games of stix Brig stuffed with glass Sewers in which degenerates hide Wartrains packed to five times operational capacity Still, it's not all bad- the licious pirate-chicks providing cabaret, rum and all the fruit you can eat Young space-orc brutality gang Hipsters taking pictures on their infinitely outdated smartphones of ironically lovingoweir poems dedicated to their otherwise uninteresting girlfriends caverns serving as breeding grounds for the rare Iridescent Scorpion-Fly, whose bite instantly kills even the hardiest spacefarer Automaton waitors serving reheated badly prepared cafeteria food Orbital ring, crowded by down-on-their-luck crowd forced to sell various body parts into slavery Decently paid professional rat-wranglers whose job is to keep the airship pest population under control, the amount of vermin being vital to determining an airships class debating the pros and cons of various orbital weaponry designs Heavily IT-dependent teachers conducting uninteresting lectures uninteresting lectures through poorly tinkered ITDs which badly slinging Roller-Coaster designing thrill-seekers Ships amazing 3D projection mapping which takes the form of a sort of holographic all-seeing wizard in drinking away the pain of their traumatic memories filth dungeon far below pluto attempting to mine a few last depletions from the port Bustling trading centers run by orc mercenaries Beaten- -heads with incredible lung capacity and abilities to control bubbles of a ghostly pale girl whispered through crowded server halls, the subject of an accursed doom-laden ancient poem of warp weaves which could theoretically be used to click once again of the virtuous are - religious human fanatics debating the endless the end of an era fantasizing about days running amok through wiring Countless other blasphemies in an endless litany of sins orators and political coffee-house poets Marathon-Running-battery-hogs used as a more resilient alternative to explosion-prone portable generators farms collecting the last drops of an old water-tank from the only two priests in this sector beg for help to turn their church into a fort Waterways, surprisingly vital for recycling human waste slaves connected to your central processing unit with crude DIY optic-cables Countless deplorable conditions ignored by the aristocratic burgrave's cheerful obliviousness people, the last fragments of an ancient dawn-era cargo-carrying company straight-razors, disposable cameras, all manner of curio Sycophantic college-grad lackeys to the rich and powerful Heap of worthless Dubloons forged from 28 thalers of poor-quality gold, lead and tungsten slugs of Giving, artifact that allows a sociopathic user to "donate" a percentage of ill-gotten goods cheese factory owned by ruthless Zalanian syndicate Wall hallucination scenes for the presumably lobotomized - snuffing out lives of countless blood-sucking insects that swarm here nax hiring goblin work crews to cut down their most hated of prey Various tools and weapons chained to the ground to prevent theft Many, many newspapers spew out paranoid, screaming headlines Ignudi model soldiers, posing at perfect attention and other pretenders to power Merino Wool, dying quietly as the market for it dries up hunks and other perceived popular kids living it up in the party-room shamanic circles and Eskimo- Zulu tribal meetings Beautiful fluffy white sheep giving their wool to help keep people warm obsessed monkeys exercising in circles Which do you choose? Peace and you're screwed up notion of safety be damned, burgrave undead plague victims Expensive, but greatfor impersonating those in higher places used for drug manufacturing and decontamination Pitchers, hitters, catchers and other instrumentalists rehearsing for the next performance Singing Maestros and their masterpieces or soon-to-be masterpieces Soap Operas, the "Thousand-Voice Kingdom's" only form of entertainment and daytime drama of obedient civil servants making their daily commute Weaponeers and armorers developing weapons paid for by the shambles of a government houses, run by ancient self-proclaimed "poet-laureate" types Tenured professors and other stale intellectual types steppers, rollers and other lovable clockwork creations and drinkers of the most recent batch of illegal Green Rot alcohol Children learning the most important thing, to obey without question throwing disappointed looks at the uncivilized rabble in the streets swilling booze, eating each other and completely forgetting their place Themselves Areas There are two main areas in Rask, the civilized portions ruled over by a weak government and the abandoning barren plains where weird things have been happening minerals and other healthy foods Forged metals, plastics and other man-made materials and other oozing, infectious things The air is damp, but windy high up in the sky apples and other soft, delectable fruits foolhardiness and alcohol for the most part Bleating sheep and the other livestock demanding to be eaten motorcycles and other land vehicles Dark clothing to help hide in the shadows or Duisburg's multitude of dark alleys clothing, napalm and other combustible things Clocks and other machines suited to tell the time The aged, miserable and indebted military men and their various weapons of destruction Wines, liquors made from various nutritious or poisonous plants black-sheep, convicts and other sources of cheap labor Kites, parachutes, airships and other flying contraptions booze cruises and other stuffy sober transport Libraries, lounges and salons with small, quiet reading areas and biology experts trying to figure out why animals act the way they do Sirens, finding meaning in their "gender" strips of cow-heels and other unidentifiable meats Cannons, muskets, rifles, pistols and other various small arms Boars, porcine cyborgs retaining only their heads Large canine predatory-type creatures Build and skin like a bear, head like a wolf Biology: Alongside humunculi, also have ursine genetics Punk outlook on life As a group all channels should point directly up, and must have the proper shielding to prevent damage from the earth's magnetic field to enter the airflow This can be measured with a flowfinder An hourglass-shaped device which has a clear upper half and a dark lower half as your craft will literally get shredded by the air flowing over it The outside of your machine must have a matched shell covering all convex features again Airships are known to drift, with their lack of winds and movement from a fixed pivot point and slow descent speed can only come from three different types of Shell Machines shells after drying nitromethane make a timed pitch adjustment as you make your way down and chip or crack A gas station would be best but a supermarket might work as well takes place It matters little to her what the story behind it is or why it matters as long as the story is good will now be referred to as common stock in the firm this stock is non-transferable and non-refundable of your life Your first stop is a suv dealership

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oneweekoneband · 7 years

Video

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Ninety One, “Mooz” (мұз), from Qarangy Zharyq, 2017

(Warning: flashing lights around two minutes in; also, some violence. Here’s the audio-only video.)

But, like, it’s still just a band: they were never actually protecting anybody or setting anyone free. (from a post by @whitehotharlots)

To make a long story short: about five years ago I fell in love with a pop group. Like spending-hours-on-Tumblr-learning-all-the-in-jokes love. Like imagination-run-wild love. Like as-opposed-to-grief, as-opposed-to-despair love. But once the initial euphoria-through-learning-through-euphoria phase had run its course, the love was a static thing, directionless. One of the great pleasures of love is doing things for the beloved; but what, exactly, was I supposed to do?

The company, and the performers themselves, said: buy our albums! Stream our songs! Help us win awards at music shows! Come to our concerts! And I did those things; but trying to think of them as expressions of love left me feeling inadequate and a little sordid. Other options were to leave messages and hearts on their livestreams, and I occasionally did that too, using Google Translate to turn “I hope you’re doing well” and “Thank you for your hard work” into Korean, but thousands of other fans had the same idea, and the resulting rush of love felt impersonal, statistical. They, the performers, had no way to know who we, the fans, were; and furthermore any attempts on our part to make them know would be so forced as to violate the very spirit of love that had prompted the attempt in the first place. Each of us was speaking singularly and truly, but the sameness of our language, and the volume of our messages, flattened us out.

What can I do? I kept asking. Which is another way of saying How much power do I have?

We (who have the ability to get online) have a strange relationship to power, in this day and age. Entire books have been written about how people with ostensibly enviable amounts of power might not feel secure enough to actually accomplish anything. (The late Benazir Bhutto apparently once said: “I’m in office, but I’m not in power.” The quote came up in a discussion of Aung San Suu Kyi’s responsibility for stopping the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya.) Meanwhile those of us with less formal titles are nevertheless capable of possibly destroying people’s reputations with a single Tweet, or perpetuating unjust systems simply by growing up in them. It feels like we have a great deal of power, wanted or not, to do harm; and seemingly much less power to do good.

That becomes even more pronounced in pop fandom. We want to believe, so badly, that we have the power to do good things for our faves, or at least make them feel loved and valued. But our attempts at exercising our power frequently add up to very little, at best. We also want to believe, so badly, that we can do good with pop music, support the virtuous and punish the wicked; but that, too, carries the risk of being much ado about nothing, or degenerating into a series of sniping wars where everyone’s fave is problematic and no one has any self-respect left.

That pop group I fell in love with wasn’t Ninety One, by the way. When I started writing about Ninety One I said cheerfully to friends: “Oh, I’m not, like, emotionally involved here. These guys are fun and cute but this is just a fun intellectual activity, a side way of getting at some of these questions I’ve had. I’m not crying or anything, thank goodness.” Please remind me I said this next time I try to give you a stock tip.

In my defense, I said it before “Mooz” came out, which is to say before I realized Ninety One was thinking about power and doing good too.

***

I haven’t seen the movie yet. Reportedly NTK, a channel with which Ninety One has struck some sort of deal, is promising to put it online at some point (most likely with Russian, but not English, subtitles). I assume bootlegs are traveling around YouTube. A lot of the footage in the “Mooz” video was already featured in the two-minute trailer uploaded to Ninety One’s YouTube channel in early August.

It’s the story of the first couple years of Ninety One, but not a documentary; rather, it’s a docudrama, with scenes acted out by the guys themselves months after the fact, but everything based on What Actually Happened--90% true, I’ve seen Kazakhstani Eaglez say. I’m not sure how great an idea it was, mental-health-wise, to have the members re-enact confrontations with would-be rioters during the 2016 tour, let alone whatever happened to prompt AZ to put a gun to his head. But even if I’m right (and I’m speaking with my own understandings of what happened and how it got processed, which could very well be way off the mark), something can be emotionally costly to create and still be worth it.

Without knowing about the 2016 tour, “Mooz” is hard to understand, since it’s not a typical believe-in-yourself song. It’s subdued. Ace has the chorus, but he sure isn’t belting. Bala has “I have a dream,” but he prefaces his lines with a little chuckle, as if he’s somewhat amused by all the twists and turns this star-in-a-pop-group idea has taken him on. AZ’s rap is pure lament. Alem at one point just flat-out stops lip-syncing and simply stares into the camera, looking devastated and unsure.

There’s a sense of uncertainty in the wake of damage done. Ace keeps singing, Мүмкін күн шыққанға дейін, бірге күте тұрамыз? The official English translation is “Let’s wait together until the sun rises.” The Russian lyrics, similarly, drop the question: Может вместе подождем, пока солнце не взойдет. “Maybe together we’ll wait until the sun rises.” (Says Google Translate.) But in the original Ace is asking a question: can we wait together until the sun rises? Is that even possible? And AZ continues: the whole world, in fact, we are strangers to each other? The members’ collective sense of their own ability to proceed forward--to do good--has been called into question.

Moreover I think the uncertainty stems not just from the experience of having had their concerts shut down, though that’s the most extreme (and audience-pleasing) culprit. The trailer actually begins with black-and-white footage of masses of Eaglez screaming at concerts. In the interview this summer the members say, no no we’re glad that we’re not The Band That Spawned a Thousand Thinkpieces right now, we don’t want to be regarded as just controversial attention-getters, we want fame on our own terms. All according to plan, Bala says in the song; but “the plan” calls for greater fame, and greater fame is going to mean less and less power, in terms of their ability to control their own images.

Here I am thinking of a video I’ve seen but won’t link to, of Ninety One at some kind of industry dinner at the beginning of the year. Alem sees the camera first, as he’s about to go into the dining hall, and he waves, throws a V sign, seems happy to have the attention. But the camera continues inside, and when ZaQ and Bala catch sight of it they’re clearly uncomfortable; they’re not looking to be public figures performing for fans right at that moment.

Thinking, also, of Rana Dasgupta’s recent essay, “Notes on a Suicide”:

The problem was that, for the most part, it did not matter how widely broadcast your discontent was: no one cared. The great majority of celebrities – in this new world where even nobodies were celebrities – were lacking in that basic attribute of the celebrity, which was fame. They were half-creatures – unfamous celebrities, anonymous superstars, VIPs like the entire rest of the world – and unlike their fully formed counterparts, the world did not gasp when they expressed their thoughts and feelings. Everything was lost, in fact, in the infinite cacophony….

In the world of social media, where everyone becomes a celebrity, they do not inherit merely the life force of stardom – its beauty, achievement and sex. What is transmitted also to these faceless ranks of superstars is the inner knowledge of death. For, as all true celebrities discover, the media image feeds parasitically on human energy, starving them and removing them, slowly, from the realm of the living.

Even setting translation issues aside, the odds that Boss Yerbolat and Ninety One read Desgupta’s essay before filming the video for “Mooz” seem pretty low. But seeing the brief manipulation of ZaQ’s face into that of an old man’s, I wonder if they haven’t had similar thoughts about what they have to lose, in staking their accomplishments on the awareness of strangers.

***

And yet, and yet, and yet.

They keep yelling Eaglez! It’s practically a trademark: Сәлем, Eaglez! Part of that may be marketing. Part of it. Not all of it.

There are a lot of directions they could have taken with “Mooz,” and didn’t. They could have chosen to laugh off or minimize the disruptions, reassure fans that nothing can touch their commitment to Ninety One. They could have refused to address the uncertainty altogether. They could have done more easily sellable songs about love and relationships, as they did on Aiyptama. They could have put out something more upbeat and generic.

Instead: Неге бəрі мұз? The English translator on duty has Ace’s line as “Why is everyone so cold?” But мұз actually means ice. A better translation might be “Why is everyone frozen?” To continue the metaphor from “Su Asty,” and spell it out: even with gills, you can’t breathe in frozen water.

Ace says, can we wait together? AZ says, and why am I still hugging my knees? Alem says, I don’t know who is who, but my heart continues to believe. ZaQ says, Either their judgment will crush me, or I will pass by not noticing them. Bala says, I will not give up so fast. To me it adds up to, continuing on in the face of profound uncertainty. That they don’t know exactly how to love Eaglez back en masse but they’re going to keep trying. That they can’t be sure this will all work out to their benefit, but it’s still worth doing.

And then, for the first time in their discography, they switch to English:

When you feel alone You can breathe with the world Just keep our rhythm One love, one rhythm

And because now is not the moment for subtlety, Ace looks at the camera for the first time, and Bala makes a heart gesture record-setting in its sincerity.

It’s grandiose. Of course it is. It’s a grandiose idea to begin with, to say, This was my experience, and I think you had an experience like it, and here’s what I want to tell you, this helped me, I think it will help you too. It’s grandiose to think you can talk about the meaning of true happiness in a pop song. It’s grandiose to talk about love and one rhythm to millions of people you’ll never meet.

It is grandiose, in truth, to assume you deserve enough power to be able to do good.

***

There have been times, putting this week together, that I’ve wondered if it hasn’t been a gigantic waste of time, or worse. Quite a lot of time flew away while I happily wrote, and then I looked up and the doubts crowded in. Everything from Are you sure this is worth taking time away from your kids for? to It’s just a pop group, after all to You’re just flattering yourself into thinking your consumption choices are somehow “deep” or “ethical” to Who gave an ignorant American woman first dibs on writing about a Kazakhstani pop group anyway? to Even if you do somehow succeed in getting Ninety One more publicity, that’s not necessarily going to make them more comfortable or happier to All this time, and no one’s going to read it, and meanwhile you still haven’t washed the dishes.

You have to understand: I come from city planning. As a discipline we’re swamped with two things: people who enter with the fervent, heartmost desire to do good, and examples of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. And as a general rule of thumb, the bigger the intention, the less predictable and controllable the consequences.

I think Ninety One want to be famous with their work, the way most people who like to create original works (myself included) do. I think they want the power of visibility for themselves, their genre, and their country; more specifically to beat back the powerlessness that comes with invisibility. And I think they want to do good. “Mooz” feels like an acknowledgment that none of this is simple, that the power to do good is hard to get and harder to use; and a resulting combination of resolution and humility. The desire to reach out, still; to use their song to speak; but their promise is small. When you feel alone, not “you are not alone,” not a promise of connection they can’t deliver on; but, you can breathe with the world. That’s all. Just breathe. Such a small thing.

What was the superpower ZaQ and AZ boasted about in “Su Asty”? We have gills, remember? Simply breathing underwater. Breathing.

That’s it? Ace asks. That’s it, Bala says.

Why did I even start getting so obsessively into pop music and its stories in the first place? To feel less alone. And then to marvel at the idea that people on the other side of the world, speaking other languages, coming from experiences fully foreign to mine, were willing to offer enough of themselves to cameras that I could, in fact, feel less alone; even if there was absolutely no way of my being able to do half as much for them in return.

As best I know Ninety One hasn’t seen this. I don’t know how to show it to them--I don’t even know what would be the best platform for jumping up and down and yelling HEY GUYS LOOK WHAT I WROTE AND IT’S ALL ABOUT YOOOOUUUUUU, leaving aside any issues about queue-jumping in front of other Eaglez who put time and energy into their own presents. I don’t know how to tell them that I find them lovable and inspiring, or that thanks to them I’ve had a great deal of fun learning about Kazakhstan and Kazakhstani music. I don’t know how to say thank you--рақмет сізге, or maybe Спасибо--loud enough for them to hear it; and even if I did, there’s no good reason why I should be the one who gets heard and not some other fan.

But it’s still worth doing.

introductory post / all Ninety One posts

#ninety one #mooz #qarangy zharyq #91 movie

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