SOUNDTRACK: NUCLEAR POWER TRIO-“A Clear and Present Rager” (2020).
Today was one of the best days America has seen in four years.
Because here’s an EP to rock your politics off.*
Nuclear Power Trio is a band made up of Vladimir Putin on bass, Kim Jong-un on drums and Donald Trump on guitar. And they totally rock. This first song from their new album is an absolutely rager, as the title says. It’s a three and a half minute instrumental that starts off with a monster riff and some really hightech fretwork from Putin on the bass. When the main “verse” comes in, Trump shows his amazing dexterity on the eight string guitar. He plays surprisingly tasteful licks in between the shredding. This is some pretty classic rocking instrumental stuff ala Joe Satriani, but with the whole band totally keyed in.
A big surprise comes a minute and 45 seconds in when an unnamed fourth member (in the video he appears as a secret service agent) plays an gentle acoustic guitar break, allowing Trump to do some gentle volume-controlled notes. This quiet section happens twice and after the second one, Putin just goes mental on the bass while Kim Jong-Un shows what impressive double bass capabilities he has.
The video for this song is rather disturbing.
But I gotta say, I’d much rather have these three nutcases in a kick ass band than in charge of any country.
[READ: September 24, 2020] The Space Merchants [an excerpt]
During the COVID Quarantine, venerable publisher Hingston & Olsen created, under the editorship of Rebecca Romney, a gorgeous box of 12 stories. It has a die-cut opening to allow the top book’s central image to show through (each book’s center is different). You can get a copy here. This is a collection of science fiction stories written from 1836 to 1998. Each story imagines the future–some further into the future than others. As it says on the back of the box
Their future. Our present. From social reforms to climate change, video chat to the new face of fascism, Projections is a collection of 12 sci-fi stories that anticipated life in the present day.
About this story, which was translated by Andrea L. Bell, Romney writes
the wonders of robot-controlled automation allow people to live in ease within the perfect mechanism of a programmed city–but in the end lead to ineffable discord within the mind of the protagonist.
This story was a little hard for me to wrap my head around. The story follows P. as he makes his way through his daily life in Arconia.
P. is an evaluator. But P. was distracted. Not only did he not mind having evaded his work, he felt euphoric about it. This was not normal.
Even though he knows the answer, he wonders aloud why the clock in Arconia have no hands. Clocks no longer measured time in Arconia. All stages in life were registered by the Planner. Clocks were here only to communicate changes in activity with their flashing lights and musical tones. Everyone knew that.
But his questions were concerning. Indeed, no one should have any questions bout the marvels of Arcronia. Only a a superior supervisor could save him from the three evils: Communism, Christianity and oneiromancy (dream reading).
Arconia was teeming with satellites, resembling a monstrous tumbler full of bingo balls, but the orbits and areas were so precisely timed and subjected to constant reassessment that one couldn’t help surrendering in admiration before the vison of the Planner.
But P.’s need to question things was the first sign of burgeoning oneiromancy.
By midafternoon he headed to the exit. it was time for the customary social break that preceded dinner and television…
a veritable mass of spheres capsules and disks. People from above, beneath and all around greeted each other mechanically when their orbits paralleled.
His wife was a consumer so she was there waiting for him at the family platform. He thought she looked tired but custom dictated that he talk to her immediately about work.
P. thought more about oneiromancy. Was it not part of the Planner’s Plan as well? After all, all machines suffered from some wear and tear. Was not the orneiromancy just a consequence of wear and tear?
This was nonsense of course. If you became an oneiromacner, they would send you away–off to earth to live among barbarians.
P. had made a decision.
After the afternoon meeting the next day, he took an outer spiral–one that went to the lower levels of Memory. It was common for evaluators to consult the Memoires for routine reasons. But P. went deeper, to the memories connected to the Planner.
The Coordinator had spoken to him. They were concerned that he seemed to be perpetually distracted. They told him that a man who did not have his mind on his work day and night is divided. In the old days, people worked to earn money to eventually dedicate oneself to unproductive leisure. Things needed a change. Then came the Bioplan–guaranteed work, a well balanced synthesis of population control and time planned out to the last detail.
Arconia is like an old fashioned clock–when a speck of just got into a clock it could wreck everything. Here, if one single act escapes from the routine, it could alter the balance of everything.
The story ends with these words from an ancient tongue: MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. I’m nots sure how may readers would have known what these words mean or where they are form (they are from The Book of Daniel, I had to look that up). It means, more or less, “God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end… you have been weighed … and found wanting.”
I feel like there should have been a lot more to this story, because I’m not sure how to read the ending.
*And because trump finally caught COVID-19, after lying to us about it, downplaying its seriousness, mocking people for wearing masks, and generally being a vector of the disease. It’s insane that it took him this long to get it.
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