Hop on pop.

So to wrap up the series on zombies (for now) I'm going to take a run at the Chinese hopping corpse or Geong Si (or Kuang Shi). Modern Kung Fu movies have priests conjuring up hordes of these nasties to supply the endless Kung Fu battles, but I'm more interested in the real ones.

According to legend, the dead, if they die away from there ancestral home, head back there so they can be properly buried. Now normally the family would, like any other, send for the body or have a friend or relative go and retrieve it. Poorer families had little money to pay for this and had to rely on a bulk shipment of sorts, where a specially trained priest would go and collect the dead for a village and bring them back for a much lower, per loved one fee. The priest used spells to keep the dead marching in order.

Not surprsingly these walking dead strayed from the paths and got into trouble, mostly attacking and eating people. This biting habit has been a common thread throughout zombie history and may also account for many cultures' vampire legends as well. Ah, its nice to have efficient and adaptable horroe mythologies.

I just couldn't pass this up, sorry.

From the technology pages of Pravda comes this chestnut. Seems the Russians have been tinkering with what science calls psychotronic weapons. Specifically on a device to turn people into zombies. The source of this information is the rationally astute Russian Federal Custodial Service. As you know this blog strives for accuracy and integrity, so I thought I'd put off finding out what this organization does for now, and see where it goes.

It has been known for years the Russian military have experiemented with mind control devices, the paranormal and mind projection techniques like remote viewing. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, scientists and the military brass have led divergent courses. Pravda's source has stated that there has been a renewal of energy and the problems facing science around mind control have been tackled anew, thus we hear of zombie making devices.

The idea is to use a generator to send waves out into the ether that upset the resonant frequencies of humans. No word on what happens to those who RUN the machines. And do they cause zombies to sprout like mushrooms after a shower? Apparently not, however, there have been complaints over the years by residents that claim to have been taken over by strange voices.

No mention if anyone checked to see if they lived near any power lines or how many meals they microwaved a day.

In the beginning.

So if zombies are re-animated dead folk, the dead who have risen from the grave, then history abounds with tales of the dead walking and clearly up to something too. I'm not going to go too far back but suppose we start with Jesus Christ. He rose from the dead after being crucified but has none of the zombie stuff going on. In fact, just the opposite. A kinder gentler fellow you could not find. So that's not the place to start.

In past posts I've found that the Vikings provided personality galore. Not surprisingly, they've got a good zombie legend. Called a draugr, they were the undead of Norse mythology. Some stories talk of these draugrs as being "ghosts", mainly for their habit of showing up around graves. Acording to legend, they guarded the dead, particularly if they had beed buried with treasure.

Now these creatures were really scary. They were big, possesed enormous strength, stunk like crap and ate people. The Vikings always go big, no farting about. And they drank the blood of their victims too.

Getting rid of them was a chore. It was kind of like slaying a dragon. Only the bravest dare try. A fight could last days and victory was declared when the draugr was back in the hole (grave) from wence it sprang. The tough part was that they were immune to weapons. Only hand to hand fighting would work. Can you think of a less palatable way to start your day? "I'm going to wrestle the undead dear, back at dinner, love you bye!" And just to piss you off even more, they often came back. Now the draugr slayer had to get tough and behead the monster and burn what was left over.

When these little devils wandered across the land most stayed inside if rumours placed one in your neighborhood. However a nasty variation, and one that was infinitely harder to avoid, was the sea draugr. They would appear in half sunken boats and circle their prey or would appear near shore as monsters with seaweed heads. Nights get real long that close to the Arctic circle.

I had neighbours like this.

It seems fair that if I'm off on a tangent about zombie movies its best that I do some research into why they make such good ideas for movies. Haiti seems to be the spot that moderm zombie lore sprouts. As in my last post, America was in close contact with Haitian culture for over 15 years so it's no surprise that zombies became something at least warranting some passing discussion. In fact the zombie of popular culture is pretty much the Haitian article.

Practitioners of voodoo, bokors, could make a mortal a zombie. By annointing them with a special potion they would go away to die and then be summoned by the bokor who would promptly take their soul, (what else?) and then release them to do their bidding.

Zombies go way back before the 1930's version came to town. The middle ages abounded with stories of the living dead. Called "revenants" they were described as the "dead rising from graves to haunt the living." Yum. Which pretty much sums a good zombie flick.

But I went looking for what it was really like and a chap I came across from the 12th century was one Walter Map. He was a writer of note and, common for the time (before newspapers and phones) a chronicler. He is credited with being among the first to write about English vampires, another word for revenant used at the time. He writes of one such zombie rising from the dead and running about the villages scaring the shit out of the locals till the local Bishop, Gilbert Foliot, takes care of business. It involves cutting off the head with a shovel, among other treatments.

I'll have a white zombie on the rocks . . .

Not that long ago I saw Ed Wood, the black and white Tim Burton flick about the legendarily bad director. I felt that Martin Landau stole the show as Bella Lugosi. I had never really knew much about Lugosi until seeing this movie and vowed I'd find out what he did. It was director's Tod Browning's Dracula role that type cast Lugosi for the rest of his life as the monster. Prior to that he had an acting career that started in Hungary at the beginning of the First World War. He played leading roles and was accomplished on the stage as well.

In 1931 Dracula made him a houshold name in America. He played several dramatic roles in other movies then starred in Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1932, followed by White Zombie the same year. This movie is widely acknowledged to be the first zombie film ever. Directed by Victor Halperin it brings the Haitian zombie lore to the screen for the first time. Which is important as popular zombie movies tend to present the zombies as facts and build a story around them being their.

To put things in perspective, the United States had occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. As a result, many returning soldiers brought back stories and memorabilia from Haiti. Voodoo and zombie stories were rife and the movie public needed White Zombie.

A sequel was made in 1936 called Revolt of the Zombies, also directed by Halperin but did not star Lugosi. And for those regular readers to my blog you'll be happy to know that White Zombies was released on laserdisc in 1992. What a relief.

Steal my heart, and my body.

Ok, so zombies are easy. I mean easy targets. They make for some of the cheesiest movies ever filmed. They are REAL easy to play one in a movie, and if you feel just a bit like they could be real in some odd, not sure if science is actually right kind of way, then they scare the hell out of you.

This summer Nicole Kiddman stars in Invasion. Says something when Hollywood A lists take on a remake like this. But what about the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Came out in 1956. Directed by Don Seigal. Phil Kaufman did the 1978 remake. Remember Donald Sutherland with a perm? Anyway, the original starred Dana Wynter (what a name) and Kevin McCarthy. So lets see what these two got up to since, hmmm.

Dana, whose real name is Dagmar, was born in Berlin in 1931. After Invasion of the Body Snatchers she starred with Robert Taylor in D-Day the 6th of June, released the same year. After that she had many, many roles in episodic television including Lucky Strike Theatre, Playhouse 90, Wagon Train, Twelve O'Clock High (now there's a show), Ben Casey, Gunsmoke, McMillan and Wife and Rockford Files. Her final TV role was opposite Raymond Burr in the Return of Ironside in 1993.

On to Kevin McCarthy. After Invasion he starred in TV's Kraft Theatre, alongside Edward G. Robinson in the 1956 thriller Nightmare, the Twilight Zone (yeah), Dr. Kildare, The Fugitive, Banacek, and Hawaii 5-0 just to name a few. More recent credits include Boston Common and the Trail of the Screaming Forehead. Born in 1914 in Seattle his career spans over 6 decades.

He even cameo's in the 1978 remake reprising his famous traffic scene.

Uh huh

Max Roach died today, he was 83. I had the good fortune to see him play when he was young, say about 60. He had another drummer, sorry I forget your name, that played with him, backed HIM up, another drummer. He had a drum kit he sat at and another one he stood at for timpani and cymbal work. The kind of show that either inspires you to take up the instrument or go home and burn your vintage Gretsch jazz kit in the fireplace.

His resume includes gigs with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Charlie Mingus. One of the architects of bebop, he just stayed curious with music all his life. A bit of luck doesn't hurt either. His first big role came when the drummer for Duke Ellington got sick, and he filled in for 3 nights. I'd be wearing Depends.

And oh yeah, Elvis died 30 years ago today.

Leopold's folly.

While France and England worked at creating colonies that had governors, systems and in some instances, a passing respect for the locals, Belguims colonizing was blatantly opportunitistic.To be fair to Belguim, it was King Leopold II's idea from the start. He saw the Congo as a money making venture (for him) and pursued it with a rabid appetite. Members of his staff were convinced he was off his nut because he sunk so much of his own money into making the Congo pay dividends (for him).

His hard headed approach did finally start to reap monetary rewards. By this time however, the British and French and their missionaries had been travelling throughout the region and had begun to hear of many atrocities. In reality, his policies were straightforward and to the point: get out of my way or suffer.

Britain published a report in 1904 that pretty much broke the story. Although the public outcry was loud, little changed on the ground. The logistics of raising a shit storm about it then, so far away, was impossible. Missionaries both Catholic and Protestant working in the area were forbidden by Leopold to work in the Congo.

Independance came only in 1960.

I didn't take this either.

Not being keen on writing exams about numbers you can't even see, I gave calculus a pass in high school. Some folk, however, think its peachy. And, always on the hunt for a good "I told you so" even if I can't understand it, check out this gem.

From an article in today's CBC's Technology and Science page comes news that calculus and its basic concepts was not devised by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz but rather comes from medieval India.

Members of the Kerala school, a group of heavy weight thinkers, came up with the concept of infinite series around 1350, years before Newton even toyed with the notion. Founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama, he and his fellow scholars worked in astronomy as well and developed methods to calculate the positon of the moon as it moved across the sky and to track the planets.

As is often the case, colonialism and a general European superiority either ignored or supressed the work and discoveries going on outside of their sandbox. But it is possible that through trade with Asia these mathematical discoveries filtered their way to Newton's England.

Here's the link to that CBC article. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/08/14/calculus070814.html

Tommorow I'm back at African themed stuff again. I gotta have a stab at those nasty Belgians before I move on.

Rear Window

British director, Alfred Hitchcock, born this day, in 1899 at Leytonstone, London England. Writer, director, producer and actor with nearly 70 films and TV shows to his credit. As an actor he is almost always seen in passing; in silhouette or in the back of a scene, coming or going.

He started his career in film by designing opening titles and got his start directing in Germany between the wars. His first outing was a failure but moving back to England he directed "The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog" which earned him his first hit. Another first from his early career is one of the first talkies made in England "Blackmail".

For a complete film history and comprehensive list of what he did where and with what crew and actor see http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000033/

Scramble

Lets back up a bit and examine what went on in the mid to late 19th century in Africa. AND, I'm still looking for an explosion and a few wacked out leaders. Britain, Portugal, Belgium and France all had big claws into Africa.

The Potugese had been raiding the west coast for some time supplying themselves and others with slaves. The leading European industrial nations had turned to Africa as supplies of raw materials began to dwindle in their own countries. These tiny countries simply did not have the coal and metals left in their soil to fuel their new factories. And there was all that yummy coffee and cocoa.

Belgium and France seemed to have an inferiority complex going on as they added to their square miles of African ownership at every opportunity. During the closing years of the century it is estimated over 9 million square miles of Africa was colonized. To put it in perspective, all of Europe is 3.5 million square miles. France is 211, 000 while Belguim is just under 12,000!

Anyway, Germany, itself a player in the game, calls a conference in 1885 to put some organization into this crazy business. The term "New Imperialism" was coined to describe the period between the Franco Prussion War and the the First World War, 1871 t0 1914. A less sanitized and more accurate description is "The Scramble".

The Rumble

Did a bit of snooping and came up with a revised British army count, there were closer to 8000 soldiers. This really didn't matter that much against them, as I've noted above, the Dervishes, as they have been called, were not used to modern warfare, and lacked the dicipline to fight underground in any effective way. Unlike the modern Middle East conflicts where fighters adapt new to new methods and technology very quickly, tradition and trust in the old ways spelled their doom.


Sudanese tribesmen (Dervishes) led by the Khalifa Abdullah el Taashi attacked the British early on September 2nd. Rifle and cannon fire cut them down like hay. Witnesses saw few make it it close enough to the British lines to wack off any heads. The Mahdis had broken their forces into about 5 groups stationed at various opportunistic points. They held superiority in numbers and may have known that before the fight, making use of a good local spy network of sympathetic Sudanese. This is why perhaps they just went at the British and Egyptians head on instead of a slower, guerilla style battle.

General Horatio Kitchener led the British side and at first he too didn't make use of field intelligence. After the first fighting was over and he clearly was winning he mistakenly supposed that was it and headed after the remaining Dervishes. He was anxious to occupy Omdurman and found there were enemies behind every hill and tree.

The rear guard was led by Major General Hector MacDonald, "Fighting Mac". His was easily the tougher of the fights and most of the Britsh casualties came from his battles. Kitchener had good field communications set up and sent units back and forth throughout the battle to shore up sagging lines.

In a battle where over 10,000 were killed and 15,000 wounded( almost all Mahdist Sudanese) it stuns the mind to think that most of it took place before lunch.

Mahdi backgrounder

I won't indulge in the the obvious parallels to present day history in the making (but it sure is tempting). The Mahdists were led by Muhammad Ahmed, a Sudanese Muslim religious leader. He believed he was the "Mahdi", or leader. More specifically a redeermer of sorts charged with leading his followers in establishing a supreme Islamic state. Anyway, he was some cheesed at the colonization going on in North Africa and raised an army of equally pissed followers and started to make things very uncomfortable for the interlopers. A Jihad was declared and little by little, the Turks, French and finally the British felt the sting of fighting in a foreign land far from familiar surroundings.

In fact, he was victorious at the seige of Khartoum, where the British, led by General Charles Gordon, was left to perish by an apparent indifferent British government. The Mahdis held sway for a number of years in the Sudan after this embarassing loss and when Muhammad Ahmed died, his succesor, the Kalifha took over. The British were not going to sit around and have their arses kicked and their noses rubbed in it again.

This time the differences in modern and ancient warfare became obvious. Cannon and rifles easily ripped through the Mahdist ranks. On the British side there were about 10,000, with a further 17,000 or so regular Sudanese and Egyptian soldiers. The Mahdis numbered over 50,000. Shortly before 8am on September, 1898, the battle started.

Swirling Dervish part 2

In my never ending quest to bring you the partial truth, I have delved into the history of this skirmish in search of at least one good a) blunder or stinker move, and b) a jolly good explosion. If monks can blow the side off a monastary in the Middle Ages then anyone can. I'll be back tommorow with my finds.

Sneaky Pete

On this day in 1971, the Nixon administration reveals that the CIA is running a secret army in Laos. Apparently some 30,000 locals are signed up and trained to fight local communists. Wonder what column in the spreadsheet they put the nearly $300 million price tag under?