Thursday, January 26, 2006
Welcome to the newly redesigned blog
In honour of the soon-to-be-passed 10,000th visitor mark, I decided to overhaul my blog. This presented a problem, because I don't know HTML. So I had to find a template that was close to what I liked and adapt it. Programmers would cringe at my messy script, but it appears to work. If anyone wants to teach me HTML, or better yet, Adobe Image Ready, I'd be much obliged. (It seems very powerful, but I can't get it to work. To me, slices still come from oranges.)
You can still leave comments by clicking on the 'comments and chin stroked' link. I hope to change that to something more interesting, once people get used to the idea that the comments link looks different.
I found this amazing picture of Lenin - or rather, what Lenin would look like if he was emerging from his tomb (minus some idiot in a toque that got in the shot and that I had to photoshop out.) I realize it veers perilously close to copying 'Lenin's Tomb', but I loved the picture so much I didn't want to give it up. It portrays better than any treatise the living power of Lenin's legacy: the necessity to connect an understanding of capitalism to strategizing its downfall, in the bluntest, most realistic way possible. And that this can be a joyful process, a way to regain our collective humanity.
I also got tired of 'And your little dog too' as a title. I chose it on a whim, before I was really sure of what this blog would become. Since it's evolved into a sustained polemic against capitalism - which is a nice way of describing how I feel after I read the newspaper - I wanted a title more appropriate to its purpose. "Monuments are for pigeons" is a paraphrase of Lenin's response when some party members proposed making a statue of him. Lenin had no time for idolatry, considering it anti-Marxist. The 'heroes' of the revolution are the people themselves: leader-worship reinforces the bourgeois cult of the individual and makes people feel passive before their 'experts', even the good ones. Socialism is about remaking humanity, and it's the height of irony - though entirely appropriate - that Stalin's first act after Lenin's death was to begin the cult of Lenin. It allowed Stalin both to claim Lenin's legacy, and to separate the people from the revolution they created, by creating a hero in its place. By preserving Lenin as a socialist ubermensch, Stalin destroyed what he stood for: self-emancipation.
Yet here he is, emerging from his tomb, playing with the pigeons and ready to fight again. And this blog stands by Lenin, able and willing to take up the struggle! Think of Monuments are for Pigeons as the Sancho to Lenin's Quixote. Does ironic humour come across on the screen? I hope so.
Anyhow, feedback and comments on the redesign are most welcome.
You can still leave comments by clicking on the 'comments and chin stroked' link. I hope to change that to something more interesting, once people get used to the idea that the comments link looks different.
I found this amazing picture of Lenin - or rather, what Lenin would look like if he was emerging from his tomb (minus some idiot in a toque that got in the shot and that I had to photoshop out.) I realize it veers perilously close to copying 'Lenin's Tomb', but I loved the picture so much I didn't want to give it up. It portrays better than any treatise the living power of Lenin's legacy: the necessity to connect an understanding of capitalism to strategizing its downfall, in the bluntest, most realistic way possible. And that this can be a joyful process, a way to regain our collective humanity.
I also got tired of 'And your little dog too' as a title. I chose it on a whim, before I was really sure of what this blog would become. Since it's evolved into a sustained polemic against capitalism - which is a nice way of describing how I feel after I read the newspaper - I wanted a title more appropriate to its purpose. "Monuments are for pigeons" is a paraphrase of Lenin's response when some party members proposed making a statue of him. Lenin had no time for idolatry, considering it anti-Marxist. The 'heroes' of the revolution are the people themselves: leader-worship reinforces the bourgeois cult of the individual and makes people feel passive before their 'experts', even the good ones. Socialism is about remaking humanity, and it's the height of irony - though entirely appropriate - that Stalin's first act after Lenin's death was to begin the cult of Lenin. It allowed Stalin both to claim Lenin's legacy, and to separate the people from the revolution they created, by creating a hero in its place. By preserving Lenin as a socialist ubermensch, Stalin destroyed what he stood for: self-emancipation.
Yet here he is, emerging from his tomb, playing with the pigeons and ready to fight again. And this blog stands by Lenin, able and willing to take up the struggle! Think of Monuments are for Pigeons as the Sancho to Lenin's Quixote. Does ironic humour come across on the screen? I hope so.
Anyhow, feedback and comments on the redesign are most welcome.
