Imperious Corporalis

Ok, I just wrote up an invisible city. Not the most original idea, but here it is anyway. The city ended up becoming really very morbid and creepy, so read on if your into that. Don't worry, I am not a closet murderer despite what the article might suggest.

Eventual doom inhabits the devouring freeze of the intergalactic void. Peace is not afforded to the stillness of this oblivion. Here, peace is the ancient luxury of saints and fools.

Implacably stalking the monolithic void field is the ether strider known by some as the Imperious Corporalis. The bio crafted, space borne city has hunted the ageless millenia in brooding silence. Its mysteries were long ago submerged beneath myth by the heretical Termafex Seers. Travelling at sub-light speeds, the vessel is currently a momentary detail above the splinter planets of Thraxia Prime.

The enfleshed city is a bleeding jewel in the unspeakable vastness of the void. Pillars of bone grown by flesh magics developed in the Dark Age of the Krieg Mechanicus form the exoskeleton of the vessel. Gnarled, fleshy tendons descend from these pillars like spider limbs to chain the dread guardians forged in their thousands in the catacombs of the flesh smiths. These tortured citizens can always be heard moaning their nightmare catechisms to the emperor-in-flesh. The psychic chorus of their pain nourishes the psi-plastics of the craft's growth nodes, swelling the bone gardens. Eons of bloody cacophony have bloated the vessel's grisly halls and flooded its sinewed blood gutters like a ripe, privileged mosquito. Prepared for its next meal, the Corporalis directs its gaze toward the blue morsel below...


...The sun has left behind it a horizon of brilliant pink hue. A man watches as a pair of fighter jets scythe the view like two naked women sprinting through a flock of fleeing flamingos. He'd seen that on a cable show once. Never forgot it. He wondered about the fighter jets. This was the first time he'd seen any fly over Manitou Springs. He looked straight above him and saw the faint outline of some sort of... bizarre experimental aircraft. As it drew closer, he began to make out bone and tendons and sinew. He vomited. A drop of blood landed on the pavement in front of him. It had begun to rain...

Re: Invisible Cities

One of the book being read by the class is Invisible Cities by an Italian writer, Italo Calvino. The style of the writing is very beautiful and poetic of these fantastical cities which inspire much awe and wonder in the narrator. As he says in his book "When Polo began to talk about how life must be in those places... words failed him". I was very moved by these descriptions, and so I wish to attempt to create my own city in the same style of writing. I recommend reading the book to anyone who has an active imagination with an analytical eye, and please feel free to give feedback on my interpretation of the writing. Readings from the book are available here.

Cities and Desire


Along the coast there is there is the city of Jerdeania, a place you would not believe was real until you saw the two islands that seem to have just rose out of the ocean. The city may have been build many years ago, but the ocean has since destroyed the land it had been built on. From these great uplifts of land you see buildings built on cliffs held together by the metal pipes, as metal roots for the growing building keeping the city stable. The city seems to have been growing up for years now. The two sides of the city are similar, so obviously started by the same people, yet they are separated by this great canyon nature has created between them. The city to the north seems to be populated by the most beautiful and desirable women in the world that seem content living their lives within the isolation that the island provides. The island more to the south is inhabited by men who seem pleased to be going about their daily tasks absent of the diverse humanity waiting in the outside world. These men and women are separated by the waves of the violent ocean swirling under the foundation which they live on and by, seemingly ignorant to anything not on the cliff city.
As the tide lowers with the sun, there is a sense of restlessness that develops within the citizens of Jerdeania, and almost by magic the eyes of a man and woman lock across the great canyon that separates them. There is an animistic instinct that breaks through and the couple knows to that the new calm waters are the conditions of the transaction that is between them. Before their minds can catch up, their bodies are naked and falling down to the salty foam that welcomes them. This spreads through the city like a disease until all the buildings are abandoned with piles of useless clothing to the blissful populous now playing gayly in the water naturally with genders different from their own. The beautiful nudity seems a new experience for the citizens and enjoy the compatibility that they have now discovered with the sun disappearing into the water. Yet with the green flash of the vanished sun, the passion is gone, the mind takes over once again and the naked bodies must separate and climb up the cliffs from which they had fallen and contentment returns to the citizens of Jerdeania. As the ocean becomes once again relentless, the people must once again separate, until the next calming of the waters. A city built against nature must become one with it.

"No Irish Need Apply": Anti-Irish sentiments in 19th century America

“Scratch a convict or a pauper and the chances are you tickle the skin of an Irishman.” - Chicago Evening Post

During The Great Famine of 1852 over one million Irish citizens starved to death due to a loss of that year's potato crop, and another million people immigrated to America. This influx of poor, and for the most part uneducated, people moving into cities of the East such as Boston and New York gave rise to a number of social problems. Among these problems was that jobs were harder to find, there was an increase in panhandling in the cities, and crime rates rose. In response to the increase in job competitiveness as well as crime rates, many native born American workers and citizens joined the nativist "Know Nothing Party." This political party ran on an anti-immigration platform and exacerbated the hostility toward the incoming masses of Irish immigrants. For example, when advertising for help some store owners would add the words "No Irish Need Apply"(or NINA for short). Due to a lack of income many of the poor Irish immigrants turned to crime or panhandling in order to survive. This cycle of poverty and crime kept many of the Irish immigrants in slums and tenement houses, which meant that the children of Irish immigrants were also disadvantaged and as such they too were likely to turn to crime or panhandling. These and other undesirable behaviors generated even more prejudice against the Irish, making it increasingly difficult for Irish people to get jobs and rise out of poverty. For example, if the man in the song "No Irish Need Apply" did in fact hit the store owner because he was insulted, his actions would have reflected poorly on the Irish immigrants and would make it harder for any store to hire the "angry" or "aggressive" Irish people. However, this treatment would make them even angrier (as in the video), resulting in a cycle of continuing poverty and aggression.

In the book, "Maggie, Girl of the Streets," Author Stephen Crane shows how the city environment in which the Irish immigrants live actively keeps them in poverty. In the first scene in the book Jimmie yells at the children of Devil's Row, "these micks can't make me run"(3). The fact that his remarks cause "renewed wrath" from the boys shows just how much of a sensitive topic this is in both the boy's life (since it obviously aggravates them) as well as the author's time period. In fact, this is the only insult in the whole fight that the character actually says rather than being explained in third person using words such as "roaring curses" or "words of challenge"(4,5). By bringing attention to the problems of the Irish in the first page of the book, Stephen Crane leads the reader to assume that all the main characters in the book are Irish, not just the kids from Devils Row. One stereotypical trait that is attributed to the Irish is their habit of excessive drinking and fighting, something which is shown to exist in the Johnson household in the first chapter when a fight erupts between Maggie's parents due to the mother's drinking problem. The excessive domestic strife that is caused by liquor eventually leads to Maggie's departure from her abusive and unstable household. The sad reality of this book is that from the very first chapter the domestic and social problems (excessive drinking and domestic instability) that the city environment causes for its citizens in effect seals Maggie's fate at the end of the book. What started as racism against the Irish evolved into a system in which the city itself keeps the unfortunate in a state of perpetual poverty and disgrace, even if not all the people involved are Irish.

More Prejudice against the Irish people in newspapers and satires:

However, prejudice against the Irish people praciticaly no longer exists. On the contrary Irish people are quiet successful. For Example, Take some of these well-known Irish actors:

Colin Farell: Dare Devil, The Minority Report, S. W. A. T.
Liam Neeson: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Batman Begins, Clash of the Titans

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment