Guy

Nobody Uses Minium Anymore

/ Texts, Transportation

Bruno Munari, “L’arte è U…”

It was he, Courtail des Pereires, who had obtained the second driving license for racing cars issued in France. Over the desk we had his diploma in a gold frame and his photograph as a young man at the wheel of a monster, with the date and the rubber stamps. The end had been tragic . . . He often told me about it.

"I was lucky," he admitted. "Take it from me. We were coming into Bois-le-Duc . . . the carburation was perfect . . . I didn't even want to slow down . . . I catch sight of the schoolteacher . . . she had climbed up on the embankment . . . She motioned to me . . . She'd read all my books . . . She waved her parasol . . . I didn't want to be rude . . . I threw on my brakes outside the school . . . In a minute I'm surrounded, fêted . . . I take a drink . . . I wasn't supposed to stop again before Chartres . . . another ten miles . . . The last control station . . . I invite the young lady to come along . . . 'Climb in, mademoiselle,' I say . . . 'Climb in beside me. Come along.' She was cute. She hesitated, she shilly-shallied, she coquetted some . . . I pressed her . . . So she sits down beside me and off we go . . . All day long, at every control station, there'd been cider and more cider . . . My machine as really humming, running fine . . . I didn't dare to make any more stops . . . But I needed to bad . . . Finally I had to give in . . . So I throw on the brakes . . . I stop the car, I stand up, I spot a bush . . . I leave the chick at the wheel. 'Wait for me,' I sing out, 'I'll be back in a second . . .' I'd hardly touched a finger to my fly when so help me I'm stunned! Lifted off my feet! Dashed through the air like a straw in a gale! Boom! Stupendous! A shattering explosion! . . . The trees, the bushes all around, ripped up! mowed down! blasted! The air's aflame! I land at the bottom of a crater, almost unconscious . . . I feel myself . . . I pull myself together . . . I crawl to the road . . . A total vacuum! The car? . . . Gone, my boy . . . A vacuum! No more car! Evaporated! Demolished! Literally! The wheels, the chassis . . . oak! Pitchpine! All ashes! . . . The whole frame . . . Oh well! . . . I drag myself around, I scramble from one heap of earth to the next . . . I dig . . . I rummage . . . A few fragments here and there . . . a few splinters . . . A little piece of fan, a belt buckle. One of the caps of the gast tank . . . A hairpin . . . That was all . . . A tooth that I've never been sure about . . . The official investigation proved nothing . . . explained nothing . . . What would you expect? . . . The causes of that terrible conflagration will remain forever a mystery . . . Almost two weeks later in a pond, six hundred yards from the spot, they found . . . after a good deal of dredging . . . one of the young lady's feet, half devoured by the rats.

"For my part, though I can't claim to be absolutely certain, I might in a pinch accept one of the numerous hypotheses advanced at the time to explain that fire, that incredible explosion . . . it's possible that imperceptibly, little by little, one of our 'long fuses' shook loose . . . When you come to think of it, it would suffice for one of those thin minium rods, shaken by thousands of bumps and jolts, to come into contact for only a second . . . for a tenth of a second . . . with the gasoline nipples . . . The whole shebang would explode instantly! Like melinite! Like a shell! Yes, my boy, the mechanism was mighty precarious in those days. I went back to the place a long time after the disaster . . . There was still a charred smell . . . At that critical stage in the development of the automobile, I might add, a number of these fantastic explosions were reported . . . almost as powerful! Everything pulverized! Horribly scattered in all directions! Propelled through the air for miles! . . . If pressed for a comparison, the only thing I can think of is certain sudden explosions of liquid air . . . And even there I have my reservations . . . Those things are commonplace! Perfectly easy to explain . . . from start to finish . . . beyond the shadow of a doubt. Whereas my tragedy remains an almost complete mystery . . . We may as well admit it in all modesty. But what importance has that today? None whatever. Fuses haven't been used in ages. Such speculation only impedes progress . . . Other problems demand our attention . . . a thousand times more interesting! Ah, my boy, that was a long time ago . . . Nobody uses minium anymore . . . Nobody!"

-- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on the Installment Plan, tr. Ralph Manheim (New York: New Directions, 1966), 335-37.

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The Dark Assessment

/ GW Bush Admin, Iraq, War

Iraq scene in Second Life

"Facing the 'Dark Assessment'" at Firedoglake:

We’ve had an extraordinary week of leaked candor about the catastrophic state of US foreign policy under the Bush/Cheney regime, predictably followed by Presidential denials that al Qaeda is back and blatant propaganda that we’re making "satisfactory" progress on the few Iraq benchmarks that are virtually meaningless. The White House, which has always confused inflexible standards and testing with genuine education and wisdom, has been reduced to giving out report cards on itself that translate to "improvement needed" on everything that really matters.

But the reality based assessments dominated the news. First it was the intelligence community’s pre-denial assessment that al Qaeda has been allowed to regroup along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to become as threatening as ever, both for Europe and possibly the US. The obvious conclusion is that the President’s six year global war on terror is not only an abject failure but a growing threat to our security.

Then there were the pre-spin reports about the virtual absence of any meaningful progress in achieving the objectives of the US troop surge. And Thursday Bob Woodward released his history of intelligence briefings the CIA gave the Iraq Study Group last fall, briefings that revealed what Condi Rice described as “the dark assessment” that security conditions had so deteriorated as to be “irretrievable,” while the al Maliki government was so inherently ineffectual, that there was virtually nothing the US could do to make things turn out right in Iraq. That sobering assessment was reaffirmed this week by Stephen Biddle’s op-ed explaining why the only realistic but unavoidably awful choices had narrowed to "go deep" or "get out," since staying the course had become increasingly untenable and morally dubious.

We are left with the unspoken and unspeakable conclusion that the real rationale for keeping so many U.S. soldiers in harm’s way – in the middle of Iraq's irreconcilable sectarian and civil wars — is that they serve as our national punishment for the inexcusable blunder our government made in invading and occupying Iraq and opening this pandora’s box in the first place.

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