Admiral Cod

Tweed: Lies To Tell Lefties

2012-02-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

Sloane Ranger Analysis

2012-02-02T05:55:00.000-08:00

'The fundamental sociological point that the Handbook [The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook: How The British Upper Class Prepares Its Offspring For Life, by Ann Barr and Peter York, 1983] makes, and Veblen would wholeheartedly endorse, is that Sloanes are ‘a living museum of old modes of behaviour’. The authors have rightly discerned that what the accoutrements and appurtenances of Sloane life unwittingly reveal is a 19th-century view of the 18th century, sustained and exemplified by token symbols of warrior/landowner gentrydom, which would be quite unrecognisable to a real Fielding squire. The obsession with the ubiquitous Horse Motif, the quasi-military trophies and table-mats, the taste for archaic breakfast food, the staunch preference for Georgian wood and silver, the too-prominent placing of the dog-basket, the Fields and Horse and Hounds in the downstairs loo, Caroline’s incurable addiction to Debrett, Henry’s thin, gold, oval, engraved, not swivel-backed cufflinks, the nostalgic love of dhurries and Mogul hangings and Indian bedspreads (even if Grandfather wasn’t in the Indian Army or ICS), the silk shirts ‘copied by Sam on a business trip to Hong Kong’, even the Sloanes’ ‘keen as bloodhounds’ sensitivity to the smells of boats, bonfires, leather and high-octane petrol (good) and aeroplanes, old vase-water, imitation leather and diesel oil (bad), are all symptoms of a half-conscious ideology whose deep structure is explicable only by reference to an unbreakable attachment to tradition: ‘Sloanes put tradition top because it keeps them top’ – or near enough to it to keep them happy.

There is, to be sure, a Darker Side. But true to the spirit of Malinowski, the authors do not shrink from revealing it, too (if only because it turns out to be almost touchingly harmless). Sloanes do commit a lot of traffic offences, and not infrequently cheat on their income tax. A few Henrys are unmistakable ‘four-letter men’, even if they seldom qualify as roaring shits on the full-blooded patrician and/or bohemian scale. There may well be a naughty uncle living in Marrakesh with ‘others of his ilk’, and another being dried out at the Priory in Roehampton or the Crichton in Dumfries. Sloane marriages do quite often come unstuck, whether just because Henry’s ‘moved into his dressing-room’ or because he’s decamped with his secretary, the nanny or his best friend’s wife, in which case Caroline (unless she’s the best friend’s wife in question) goes vengefully off on a Serenissima culture tour. Sloanes are not, on the whole, very charitable. Caroline can be not only meaninglessly gushing, but unpleasantly callous. (The authors are a little ambivalent about this: they are right that Ranger understatement is sometimes misinterpreted by outsiders as callousness, but they also recognise that ‘other Sloanes can be cruel if someone’s “a bit of a mess” ’ – i.e. a ‘fermented boozy’ who’s gone ‘well and truly off the rails’). More of them than are aware of it themselves are intermittent and sometimes chronic depressives, but it’s out of the question to go to a Shrink in (Dreaded) Hampstead or even to admit to the possibility of a need for one (‘You would be a behaviourist – if you knew what it meant’). The real trouble is that Sloanes are not merely ineducably complacent, but indefatigably resistant to any remote possibility of seeing themselves as others see them.'

'Henry and Caroline', by W.G. Runciman, London Review of Books, Vol. 5 No. 6 . 1 April 1983

New Order

2012-02-01T06:57:00.001-08:00

“There is no more order to conserve; it is necessary to create a new one.”

Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (1893-1945)

The English Gentleman: National Colours

2012-02-01T06:33:00.000-08:00

Musica Nocturna de Madrid (Boccherini)

2012-01-30T07:39:00.001-08:00

Lamu Archipelago

2012-01-29T08:08:00.000-08:00

Theology of Liberation

2012-01-29T07:55:00.000-08:00

Prussian Spirit

2012-01-28T22:02:00.003-08:00

Law Of The Sword

2012-01-28T22:01:00.001-08:00

"The time of conquest is over. Now is the time of reconquest, inner and outer: the reappropriation of our memory and our space: and what a space! Fourteen time zones on which the sun never sets. From Brest to the Bering Straits, it is truly the Empire of the Sun, the very space of the birth and expansion of the Indo-European people. To the south-east are our Indian cousins. To the east is the great Chinese civilization, which could decide to be our enemy or our ally. To the west, on the other side of the ocean: America whose desire will always be to prevent continental union. But will it always be able to stop it?
...
Today we need more than morality. We need hypermorality, i.e., the Nietzschean ethics of difficult times. When one defends one’s people, i.e., one’s own children, one defends the essential. Then one follows the rule of Agamemnon and Leonidas but also of Charles Martel: what prevails is the law of the sword, whose bronze or steel reflects the glare of the sun. The tree, the rocket, the sword: three vertical symbols thrust from the ground towards the light, from the Earth to the Sun, animated by sap, fire, and blood."

Guillaume Faye, Mars & Hephaestus: The Return of History

Velouria (Pixies)

2012-01-28T14:39:00.001-08:00

contre le monde moderne

2012-01-28T14:28:00.000-08:00

WKR

2012-01-27T21:47:00.000-08:00

For Your Pleasure

2012-01-27T07:22:00.001-08:00

Tintin en avance

2012-01-27T06:51:00.001-08:00

Mensur

2012-01-27T06:06:00.000-08:00

Monk Shoe Dissonance

2012-01-26T08:05:00.001-08:00

As you know, I've taken to wearing my pair of Alfred Sargent monk shoes (not pictured at left) with great frequency. They are formal enough in a low-key, classic style, whilst retaining a bit of edge. I'm saddened to report, however, that in recent weeks they have developed an irritating squeaking sound--like a group of mice in a juice press in the next room--whenever I stroll about the office in my usual chalant manner. Careful analysis has failed to discover the cause. I'm considering greasing them with a mixture of extra virgin olive oil, Veuve Clicquot, and essence of ovulating 18-year old hottie. But I'm open to other suggestions. Have you any?

Sometimes I Feel So Low (Japan)

2012-01-26T08:04:00.001-08:00

Night Bar Notes

2012-01-26T05:30:00.000-08:00

"The main reason I have a hard time getting along with these men is their indecisiveness. They feel when they ought to think, and vice versa. All they have inherited from Socrates is scepticism, but, unlike Xenophon, they would not hoist him on their shoulders and carry him out of the fighting. Convinced as they are of the temporal and finite nature of things, they shy away from pain, sacrifice, devotion."

Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil (1977)

Rallying

2012-01-26T05:28:00.000-08:00

Street Scene

2012-01-25T06:31:00.000-08:00

Ugly people offend me. And when that ugliness is combined with outstretched hand asking for handouts, I find it practically intolerable.

Picture the scene. I was crossing the street in a Brooks Brothers chalkstripe suit with a 3/2 roll, monk shoes, and BB repp tie, tall, muscular, elegant, due to meet colleagues for lunch.

A heavy-set black-haired European-American woman with tanned, weathered face and chapped lips, appeared 50 but probably 35 or so, approached me with a small plastic bucket and polite request for a donation.

I cut her off. "A donation for what?" I asked.

"For people recovering from drug and alcohol addiction," she replied.

"Not today." I walked away.

In point of fact it was the chubby urchin who should have given me money. For, as you know, I am addicted to wine and codeine. But you won't find me on the streets begging for dosh like a common miscreant. I actually work to fund my addictions.

It's a lesson lazy, fat-arsed Americans should take to heart.

In the shadow of the darkening horizon it is the everyday encounters that continue to test my patience.

Von Bülow Style

2012-01-25T06:26:00.001-08:00

“Come in, come in,” said von Bülow expansively as he opened the front door to Helmut Newton, the photographer, who had just returned from Monte Carlo for the session, and me. Von Bülow was standing in the marble-floored, green-walled, gilt-mirrored hallway of the Fifth Avenue apartment of his multi-millionairess wife, whom he was accused of twice trying to kill. In the background a very old Chinese butler hovered, watching the master of the house usurp his duties. On that May Sunday of the seventh week of his second trial, the Danish society figure was dressed in tight blue jeans and a black leather jacket.

“This is the first time I’ve actually posed for a picture since my front and side shots,” says von Bülow in his deep, resonant, English-school, international-set voice.

"Fatal Charm: The Social Web of Claus von Bülow," by Dominick Dunne, Vanity Fair, August 1985

Reds Don't Surf !

2012-01-25T05:54:00.000-08:00

Brandenburg

2012-01-25T05:25:00.001-08:00

Regatta Blazer

2012-01-24T06:31:00.000-08:00

Haeckel

2012-01-24T06:29:00.000-08:00

Pucci

2012-01-24T06:09:00.000-08:00

Admiral Cod On Tour: The Desert (Arizona)

2012-01-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

On Authenticity

2012-01-20T08:09:00.000-08:00

A fellow interweb columnist recently posted some photos of beautiful train stations in Moscow. I commented on how well preserved these places are, in contrast to the decay and neglect in the West. It is remarkable to me how former Communist countries have maintained over the years their authentic architecture and traditions. And demographics! That is the key here. Despite decades of Communist rule and genocide by Judeo-Bolsheviks, Russia still remains Russian and Poland still remains Polish. In the West, under the soft-tyranny of the globalist MultiKult--heirs of the Judeo-Bolsheviks--everything is deteriorating all of the time. Including (especially!) the character and quality of the populations. And that, I think, is the intent. Race-replacement is the objective. I've suspected as much for years, but the veil is lifting and I see it much more clearly now. Human beings are not interchangeable. We are not mere economic units and digestive bags to be discarded and replaced by imported sub-hominids as if nothing matters. We are irreplaceable. In 50 years' time, just whose civilisation will survive? I wonder.

On The Cuff

2012-01-19T06:40:00.000-08:00

As you are well aware, I rarely wear cufflinks. I think they are pretentious on men under the age of 50, and they positively smack of trying too hard. I do, however, like to keep my peeps on their toes, so to speak, and so I occasionally mix it up a bit and indulge in a bit of sartorial slumming. Because that is how I roll. The exclusive photographic image (at left) shows a silk knot from the defunct English clothing brand Blazer, acquired from the Covent Garden shop in the late 1980s. The shirt is a new addition to the collection, a flimsy number from the Rugby store in New York. I definitely have something to say about it, but will save it for later. It received several compliments, you might be interested to know, but I remain, as always, unmoved.

يا طير الوروار فيروز

2012-01-19T06:31:00.000-08:00

Tennis and Racquet

2012-01-19T06:30:00.000-08:00

Red Trousers

2012-01-18T08:08:00.000-08:00

http://lookatmyfuckingredtrousers.blogspot.com/

A Guide To Facial Hair Types

2012-01-18T08:06:00.001-08:00

Mastery

2012-01-17T06:40:00.000-08:00

"On the right edge of the little valley, to the general amusement, Lieutenant Breyer—who had been seconded to us from the 10th Jägers—was strolling about seemingly oblivious of the flying bullets, walking-stick in hand, and long huntsman's pipe in mouth, rifle slung over his shoulder, every bit as though out shooting rabbits."

Ernst Jünger , Storm of Steel (1920)

College Beagling

2012-01-17T06:28:00.000-08:00

Shooting Practice

2012-01-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

I'm in love--with my new handgun. I went shooting this morning, partly in commemoration of the savages for whom this day has been set aside by the American authorities and the traitors who advocate for them. I used a Wilson Combat .45 ACP. I was--according to my companions--extraordinarily accurate, a 'natural' as they put it. Almost all of my shots hit home. I haven't used a handgun since my South African days 13 years ago. As I've mentioned before, in my late 20s I lived in Pretoria, South Africa, after travelling around Southern Africa, and trained with a local cadre of Boere Nationalists. (Hoe gaan dit my vriende?). When I was a boy I had a BB-gun and sometimes used a .22 with a friend's dad in the woods of New York and Connecticut. When I say 'shooting' here I'm referring to firing handguns and rifles at a local shooting range--not targeting pheasants, deer, neighbourhood moggies, and university students, which in the US is called 'hunting'. It's all very confusing. But I'm sure you knew that. Using a firearm gives one a measure of real power, which, given the general trajectory of things, might be of benefit to you and yours.

Recces !

2012-01-16T14:33:00.001-08:00

Old England Paris

2012-01-16T14:29:00.000-08:00

Der alte Fritz (Old Fritz)

2012-01-15T10:17:00.000-08:00

Five Summer Stories

2012-01-15T10:16:00.001-08:00

absinthe supérieure

2012-01-14T16:09:00.000-08:00

la tradition de la vénerie

2012-01-14T08:40:00.000-08:00

Great Fireplace

2012-01-14T08:25:00.000-08:00

Invasion of the Euro Sloane

2012-01-13T07:49:00.001-08:00

I admit it. I feel for the English. Their country has been deconstructed and destroyed. Their nation, re-defined. English culture has been fatally infected by Americanisation. The political system is infested with Judeo-Scottish bolsheviks. The upper classes are being replaced by European and Middle Eastern wealth. The English working class is being ethnically cleansed by imported Africans, Asians, and assorted third world scum. And now news from my old stomping grounds in London suggest the Sloane Ranger has been displaced by the Euro Sloane. WTF?! Where will it end? The time for a Nationalist liberation movement is now. This is an excerpt from the London Evening Standard:

The Chelsea Sloane is severely under threat. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea was once the almost exclusive habitat of the urban British upper classes, but now the Alice-band, pashmina and pump brigade is facing extinction, and its place is being taken by a far more cosmopolitan crowd.

The Euro-Sloane has invaded SW3 - sweeping up from Cheyne Walk and on to Knightsbridge, modernising the restaurant menus, sanitising the bathrooms and occupying the flats where the Spencers and Lord Sebastian Flytes used to live.

Brideshead accents, meanwhile, have been elbowed out along the Fulham Road, confusing the new Italian, French and German incumbents who came to Chelsea hoping to practise their English.

Aleksander Borev, a Bulgarian doctor, has lived in SW3 for the past four years. "Kensington and Chelsea is about money," he says, "and money these days is fluid, so the people who are here are the people who are everywhere. Europeans, mostly."

But Peter York, author of The Sloane Ranger's Handbook [sic], and a keen anthropologist of the posh, compares the displacement of the upper classes to that of an indigenous people, forced off their land by loggers.

"The whole area is just utterly, utterly changed," he says. "The predominance of the City - the need to be more professional - has ruined Chelsea life. It has become much younger and smarter, and faster-paced."

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-24027221-invasion-of-the-euro-sloane.do

Dreamhome

2012-01-13T06:27:00.000-08:00

Love is our resistance

The Colonel

2012-01-12T06:51:00.000-08:00

What I'm Reading (And Drinking) Now

2012-01-11T06:14:00.000-08:00

Kent & Curwen Cricket

2012-01-11T06:13:00.000-08:00

How curious that an item of mere clothing should provoke such memories! In my youth I endeavoured to enjoy the game of cricket, at the behest of some enthusiast friends, but I found it boring and not at all as fun as chasing fillies and drinking pints of bitter. That is not to say watching a random match on the university fields behind our college housing or at Holland Park on a summer afternoon was not a relaxing experience. It was. But, it was simply not dangerous enough. I preferred rugby. Plus, my mind was elsewhere. I did appreciate the uniform, though, and had two or three cricket jumpers in my wardrobe at the time: a cotton number from Blazer and the real deal from Kent & Curwen and (I think) Slazenger. I usually paired it with a Tweed jacket, denim trousers, and Gucci loafers or brogues.

The Devil's Captain: Ernst Jünger in Nazi Paris, 1941-1944

2012-01-10T22:21:00.000-08:00

"Author of Nazi Paris, a Choice Academic Book of the Year, Allan Mitchell has researched a companion volume concerning the acclaimed and controversial German author Ernst Jünger who, if not the greatest German writer of the twentieth century, certainly was the most controversial. His service as a military officer during the occupation of Paris, where his principal duty was to mingle with French intellectuals such as Jean Cocteau and with visiting German celebrities like Martin Heidegger, was at the center of disputes concerning his career. Spending more than three years in the French capital, he regularly recorded in a journal revealing impressions of Parisian life and also managed to establish various meaningful social contacts, with the intriguing Sophie Ravoux for one. By focusing on this episode, the most important of Jünger's adult life, the author brings to bear a wide reading of journals and correspondence to reveal Jünger's professional and personal experience in wartime and thereafter. This new perspective on the war years adds significantly to our understanding of France's darkest [sic] hour."

Somebody That I Used To Know (Gotye)

2012-01-10T22:13:00.001-08:00

The English Gentleman: National Colours

2012-01-09T08:24:00.000-08:00

Old Hong Kong

2012-01-09T08:22:00.000-08:00

Mountain Patrol

2012-01-08T08:22:00.001-08:00

Gottfried Benn on Nihilism

2012-01-08T08:08:00.000-08:00

From the glowing darkness of the many churches...there came a trembling, heavy with tears, a drumming and trumpeting; the striving of the human heart is toward evil from childhood on. The steady consonance of this tragic chord, the awareness of being in need of salvation, gave medieval life its depth and boundlessness. Penetrated by the sense of his own limitation, man turned in prayer to a perfection that he could imagine without having witnessed or experienced, an eternal realm beyond the desolation of the earth. And this contrast between a hither and a yon (which, of opposite nature like fire and water, nevertheless interpenetrate) charged the atmosphere with electrical tension, produced deeds like thunderbolts, and illumined the heart with flashes of realization. But now came the new song, Man is good, and its jaunty tune displaced the stern chorale of the past.

Man, then, is good; that is, insofar as he appears to be bad, the environment is at fault or heredity or society. All people are good; that means all people are equal, equally valuable, with an equal voice equally worth listening to in all matters. Just let's not get too far away from the average type; let's not have any greatness, anything out of the ordinary. Man is good, but not heroic; don't make the mistake of conferring responsibility on him; he should be useful, expedient, idyllic - devaluation of everything tragical, devaluation of everything fateful, devaluation of everything irrational; only what's plausible is granted validity, only what's banal. Man is good. This does not mean that Man should become good, that he should struggle to attain to a goodness, to an inner rank, to a state of being good. No, Man is not supposed to struggle at all, since he's good to begin with. The Party will fight for him, society, the mass, but he should live and enjoy, and if he kills someone he should be consoled, for it is not the murderer but the murdered who is at fault.

Man is good, his nature is rational, and all his sufferings are hygienic and socially controllable--this on the one hand and creation itself on the other. Both were supposed to be accessible to science. From both these ideas came the dissolution of all old bonds, the destruction of the substance, the leveling of all values; from them came the inner situation that produced that atmosphere in which we all live, from which we all drank to the bitter dregs: nihilism.

Gottfried Benn

The Art of Tea

2012-01-07T08:11:00.001-08:00

la tradition

2012-01-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

Message de Dominique Venner pour le 1er janvier 2012

Le 1er janvier de cette année 2012 rappelle d’abord que, dans tous les pays d’Europe nous avons fêté Noël, autre nom pour le Solstice d’Hiver qui fut célébré en Europe des millénaires avant l’ère chrétienne. Cette fête nous fait souvenir que nous, Européens, fils des Hyperboréens de la légende apollinienne, venons de loin et que nous sommes indestructibles, en dépit des périls qui se dessinent à l’horizon et en dépit de la perversion des oligarchies dominantes.

N’ayant pas de civilisation de rechange, c’est à la mienne et à sa tradition que je m’attache. Elle m’a fait ce que je suis. Elle a façonné mon être, une certaine façon d’exister, de sentir, de penser, de me comporter devant la vie et devant la mort, l’amour et le destin.

Intimement conscient de ce que je dois d’essentiel à mes origines, je justifie et soutiendrai toujours le droit fondamental de tous les autres humains à posséder leur propre patrie, leur culture, un enracinement qui permet d’être soi, chez soi, et de ne pas être rien.

C’est aussi pourquoi je m’insurge contre ce qui me nie. Je m’insurge contre l’invasion silencieuses de nos villes, je m’insurge contre la négation de la mémoire européenne. Je dois à celle-ci de m’avoir transmis des exemples de tenue, de vaillance et de raffinement venus du plus lointain passé, celui d’Hector et d’Andromaque, d’Ulysse et de Pénélope. Menacé comme tous mes frères européens de périr spirituellement, cette mémoire est mon bien le plus précieux.

Il est nécessaire aussi, à l’aube de cette année 2012 de rappeler les fondamentaux de toute vie humaine au-delà des croyances de chacun. Dans leur diversité, les hommes n’existent que par ce qui les distingue, clans, peuples, nations, cultures, civilisations, et non par ce qu’ils ont en commun. Seule leur animalité est universelle. La sexualité est commune à toute l’humanité autant que la nécessité de se nourrir. En revanche, l’amour comme la gastronomie ou l’art du thé sont le propre d’une civilisation, c’est-à-dire d’un effort millénaire de création dans le mystère de la continuité de soi. L’amour entre deux personnes de sexe opposé, tel que le conçoivent les Européens, et qu’a magnifié l’amour courtois à partir du XIIe siècle, est déjà présent de façon implicite dans les poèmes homériques à travers les personnages contrastés d’Hélène, Hector, Andromaque, Ulysse et Pénélope. De même, la perception forte de ce qu’est une personne, l’existence politique de cités libres et en armes, l’idée fondamentale aussi que les hommes ne sont pas étrangers à la nature, qu’ils en épousent le cycle de renouvellement perpétuel incluant la naissances et la mort, qu’enfin du pire peut surgir le meilleur, ce sont là un ensemble de particularités constitutives qui s’affirment déjà dans les deux poèmes d’Homère qui nous offrent nos modèles.

Même quand ils ne le savent pas, les individus et les peuples ont un besoin vital de tradition et de civilisation propres, c’est-à-dire de continuités apaisantes, de rites, d’ordre intériorisé, et de spiritualité. Nous, Européens, avons tous besoin de beauté, notamment dans les petites choses. C’est le sens des fêtes familiales ou amicales que nous avons tous célébrées. Mais la perception que nous en avons change selon les civilisations, tissées elles-mêmes d’hérédités spécifiques aux sources mystérieuses.

Ayant ces réalités à l’esprit, on peut poser comme principe qu’il n’y a pas de réponse universelle aux questions de l’existence et du comportement. Chaque peuple, chaque civilisation a sa vérité et ses dieux également respectables. Chacun apporte ses réponses, sans lesquelles les individus, hommes ou femmes, privés d’identité, donc de substance et de profondeur, sont précipités dans un trouble sans fond. Comme les plantes, les hommes ne peuvent se passer de racines. Mais leurs racines ne sont pas seulement celles de l’hérédité, auxquelles on peut être infidèle, ce sont également celles de l’esprit, c’est-à-dire de la tradition qu’il appartient à chacun de retrouver.

On 1 January this year 2012 first recalls that in all European countries we celebrated Christmas, another name for the Winter Solstice, which was celebrated in Europe for millennia before the Christian era. This feast reminds us that we, Europeans, son of the Apollonian legend of the Hyperboreans, have come far and that we are indestructible, despite the dangers looming on the horizon and despite the perversion of the ruling oligarchies.

Having no alternative civilization, it is to mine and its tradition that I am attached. She made me who I am. It has shaped my being, a way to exist, to feel, think, behave toward life and in death, love and destiny.

Intimately aware of what I owe most to my roots, I will always support and justify the basic right of all other human beings to have their own homeland, their culture, their roots, which allows itself to be at home.

This is also why I am against what I deny. I am against the silent invasion of our cities, I am against the negation of European memory. I owe it for sending me examples of loyalty, valor and refinement from the distant past, that of Hector and Andromache, Ulysses and Penelope. Threatened by a spiritual death as are all my European brothers, this memory is my greatest asset.

It is also necessary, at the beginning of the year 2012 to recall the fundamental of all human life beyond beliefs. In their diversity, men exist only by what distinguishes them--clans, peoples, nations, cultures, civilizations--and not by what they have in common. Only their animal nature is universal. Sexuality is common to all mankind as well as the need for food. However, love of gastronomy and the art of tea are characteristic of a civilization, that is to say an old creative effort in the mystery of the continuity of self. The love between two persons of opposite sex, as conceived by Europeans, and courtly love from the twelfth century, is already implicit in the Homeric poems through the contrasting characters of Helen, Hector, Andromache, Ulysses and Penelope. Similarly, the perception of what a strong person should be, the political existence of free cities and weapons, the basic idea that men are no strangers to nature, they embrace the cycle of renewal Perpetual including birth and death, the best may finally emerge from the worst; these are a set of features constituting assertive already in the two poems of Homer we offer our models.

Even when they do not know, individuals and peoples have a vital need for their own tradition and civilization, that is to say soothing continuities, rites, internalised order, and spirituality. We Europeans, we all need beauty, especially in little things. This is the meaning of the holidays with family or friends that we all celebrated. But the perception that we have changes with civilizations, woven themselves to specific hereditary mysterious sources.

With these realities in mind, one can postulate that there is no universal answer to the questions of existence and behavior. Each nation, each civilization has its truth and its gods equally respectable. Each brings his answers, without which people, men or women, deprived of identity therefore substance and depth, are thrown into a bottomless disorder. Like plants, the men can not live without roots. But their roots are not only those of heredity, which can be unfaithful, it is also those of the mind, that is to say the tradition that belongs to everyone to find.

Dominique Venner

http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/2012/01/message-de-dominique-venner-pour-le-1er-janvier-2012/

Ce petit cœur (Françoise Hardy)

2012-01-05T07:29:00.000-08:00

contre le monde moderne

2012-01-05T07:28:00.001-08:00

Italian Modernist Lifestyle

2012-01-05T07:26:00.001-08:00

Monks and Glen Plaid

2012-01-04T07:35:00.000-08:00

New year, new shoes. Well, not exactly new, but new to the rotation for 2012. Monk shoes might seem an odd choice of footwear, though I have written about them before here. I do after all live the life of an anti-monk: drunk, shallow, debauched, in pursuit of worldly pleasures and carnal ecstasy. The exclusive photographic image (at port) depicts my pair of Alfred Sargent monk shoes and a Charles Tyrwhitt suit. The suit is a glen plaid number with the most striking Arctic blue stripes, matching my eyes and temperament.

Reds Don't Surf !

2012-01-04T07:26:00.000-08:00

Die Dame

2012-01-04T07:24:00.001-08:00

English Viyella: Thundering Tartans

2012-01-03T20:35:00.001-08:00

La plus belle aventure du monde, c’est la nôtre !

2012-01-02T18:17:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year !

2012-01-02T18:15:00.000-08:00

Admiral Cod On Tour: San Diego

2011-12-30T08:56:00.001-08:00

fin de siècle

2011-12-30T08:55:00.001-08:00

Huntsman House Check

2011-12-28T09:45:00.001-08:00

Premonition (David Sylvian & Holger Czukay)

2011-12-28T09:41:00.000-08:00

Dispassion

2011-12-27T06:56:00.000-08:00

"The special trait making me an Anarch is that I live in a world which I ultimately do not take seriously. This increases my freedom; I serve as a temporary volunteer."

Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil (1977)

Hugo en Afrique (Official Trailer)

2011-12-27T06:13:00.001-08:00

Elephant Polo Helmets

2011-12-26T07:40:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T07:41:00.000-08:00

Cocktail Time

2011-12-23T19:39:00.000-08:00

Kill Your TV !

2011-12-22T07:56:00.001-08:00

The Hobbit (Official Trailer)

2011-12-21T19:02:00.000-08:00

French Para

2011-12-21T08:36:00.001-08:00

On mens sana in corpore sano

2011-12-20T06:43:00.000-08:00

Recent successes at the office and in the bedroom have encouraged me to approach the training regimen with renewed dedication. To prepare for the impending conflicts, I follow a strict cardio and weight-training programme at least five mornings a week. Physical training is not only important for fitness, but also for looking good.

You might be surprised to learn I have also signed up for 'Spinning' class. It surprised me, too, as it wasn't my choice. Spinning, as you know, is sort of like cycling in place; it works the lower and upper body. Participants are encouraged to move around in unison, as if dancing atop their machine. At this stage I am more concerned with completing the session in one piece than with executing the correct dance moves. And anyway, I find most modern dance vulgar. It never ceases to interest me that the highest art form (Music) should inevitably be accompanied by the lowest (Dance).

The sight of a dozen tight female behinds bobbing up and down in front of me would, under different circumstances, provoke in me thoughts of a most roguish nature. But, again, my mind is focused on more existential matters. I simply want to survive, at least until the end of class. After three Spinning sessions I feel as if my bulging, muscular thighs have been whipped by hot chains and my backside violated by a spiked cricket bat. Not good. But, as they say, what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger. And so it shall.

The renewed focus on fitness extends to diet. As you know, I follow a Paleo-like diet consisting of meat, eggs, green vegetables, nuts, and lots of tea. Supplemented, of course, by wine, whisky, gin, and occasional cheeseburgers. I avoid fast food. If you insist on asking me to eat a carton of Chicken McNuggets, I'll punch you in the face. I haven't had a Coke or Pepsi since the early 1990s, and no carbonated soft drinks of any kind for over 10 years. I lack a sweet tooth. In fact I detest candy. I view sugar, carbs, processed foods, and baked goods the same way I view American society: empty, destructive, useless, devoid of value.

And there's the connection. The revolt against modernity involves not only right-thinking, but also right-living. The lies I woke up to in my 20s were the lies concerning women, race, judaics, history, economics, etc., that the liberal-totalitarian Establishment shoves down our throat. But awakening also forces a reappraisal of one's manner of living, and, if need be, a general rejection of modern American consumer culture in all of its manifestations. And that includes adopting the right fitness training regimen and diet. Don't be afraid to become who you are. Live your resistance.

Sporting Attire

2011-12-20T04:38:00.003-08:00

Bar Riche

2011-12-19T08:07:00.000-08:00

Norman Hilton: Wool Hopsack Blazer

2011-12-19T08:06:00.000-08:00

Mont Saint-Michel

2011-12-18T08:14:00.000-08:00

Russian Gulag Tattoos

2011-12-16T22:13:00.000-08:00

14

2011-12-16T05:50:00.001-08:00

Sherlock Holmes: Fierce Energy

2011-12-14T05:24:00.001-08:00

'My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness [sic] of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.'

"A Scandal in Bohemia", Arthur Conan Doyle (1891)

Not Yet Kameraden !

2011-12-14T05:23:00.000-08:00

Steampunk !

2011-12-14T05:17:00.000-08:00

After a morning of intense weight-training, I picked her up to attend a local museum to view a Victorian art show and Steampunk exhibition. It was her idea. The Victorian art was sublime, as always, and included a prized Burne-Jones piece and several hunting scenes. The Steampunk show was another matter. Steampunk, as Wikipedia defines it:

'...is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United States—that incorporates elements of either science fiction or fantasy. Works of steampunk often feature anachronistic technology or futuristic innovations as Victorians may have envisioned them, based on a Victorian perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, art, etc. This technology includes such fictional machines as those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne...'

So there you have it. Most of the artifacts and clothing involve configurations of leather, metal, and imagined sci-fi contraptions. Steampunk, while on the surface rather silly, is precisely the sort of sub-culture or alternative community our people must construct as a balwark against the State-sponsored popular culture. My particular favourite was the Jules Verne exhibit, featuring the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and a model of the submarine Nautilus, with which I was fascinated as a small child. Captain Nemo was an early inspiration.

Afterwards we stopped by the German Club for a late lunch.

Spearfishing Bahamas

2011-12-14T02:55:00.000-08:00

Made In Germany (Rammstein)

2011-12-13T20:16:00.000-08:00

Oysters Tsarina

2011-12-12T06:46:00.000-08:00

There was a time not too long ago, as you know, when I enjoyed oysters and champagne almost every evening. A couple of bottles of Veuve Clicquot and two dozen raw oysters on the half-shell with bank colleagues after work. It is only recently that I revived the practice, though on a slightly different scale. I read an interview with Barry Humphries in the FT over the weekend in which he mentions a dish called Oysters Tsarina (excerpt below). I am unfamiliar with it, but it sounds très delish. If you have the precise recipe, please do pass it along.

'He talks about an interview he did many years ago with a newspaper at the Savoy Hotel. “I could order whatever I wanted. So I ordered Oysters Tsarina. Oysters that you dip in sour cream, chopped onions and caviar. You slurp those down. And the chef came out, quite an elderly man, and he said, “I just wanted to say you’re the first person to have ordered Oysters Tsarina since von Ribbentrop.” He beams at this outrageous association with the Nazi foreign minister. Humphries is a connoisseur of provocation.'

'Lunch with the FT: Barry Humphries', Financial Times, 9 December 2011

Living Dangerously (Ranulph Fiennes)

2011-12-12T06:26:00.000-08:00

'First published in 1987, this book takes Ranulph Fiennes from his South African boyhood and army career to the series of breathtaking expeditions which have justly earned him the title of "the world's greatest living explorer". Since then, however, his determination to seek new challenges and, more importantly, to conquer them has led him to attempt to reach the North Pole without dogs or motorized equipment, to find the lost city of Ubar, hidden in the Arabian desert, and most recently, his extraordinary journey across the Antarctic to the South Pole. Writing with honesty and good humour, Ranulph Fiennes gives us a taste of the excitement, the hardship, the vital teamwork and the sheer courage that is the life of the modern explorer. He is an English hero in the classic mould - a man of whom it can be said that he has been everywhere and done everything.'

Viyella Sensation

2011-12-09T05:58:00.000-08:00

City Gent

2011-12-09T05:56:00.001-08:00

Links 2 3 4 (Rammstein)

2011-12-09T05:54:00.001-08:00

la lutte est le destin

2011-12-08T07:57:00.000-08:00

Gun Room

2011-12-07T07:21:00.000-08:00

Arches

2011-12-07T07:18:00.001-08:00

Mein Land (Rammstein)

2011-12-06T05:09:00.001-08:00

Tweed Suitery

2011-12-05T16:10:00.000-08:00

Fortnum & Mason Christmas Hamper

2011-12-04T08:37:00.000-08:00

There was a piece in The Daily Telegraph on that great holiday tradition, the Christmas hamper. Here is an excerpt:

"For a great many people, a Fortnum’s hamper represents the very epitome of a traditional Christmas, or at least as dreamt up by Dickens – himself a loyal Fortnum’s customer.

And in truth, could there be anything more thrillingly festive than the first sighting of a distinctive F&M logo’ed wicker basket sitting plumply on a doorstep (hopefully your own)? Nestling inside is the flavoursome promise of gastronomic fare fit for a king, or a caliph.

With the coming of the Romantic Movement, the vogue for eating outdoors and enjoying the countryside led to the popularity of Fortnum’s hampers. As The Season became established, the well-to-do were sustained at the Eton-Harrow cricket match at Lord’s, Henley Royal Regatta, Ascot and so forth by jugged hare and truffles.

Hampers, or rather tea chests, were also dispatched to officers fighting the Naopleonic Wars, and in the 1850s, Queen Victoria ordered the store to send Florence Nightingale an enormous consignment of concentrated beef tea for the wounded in the Crimea.

“Earl Haig requested bespoke hampers, designed like panniers, to straddle a camel and, of course, Fortnum’s obliged,” says Tanner. “There was a dedicated officers’ supply department, set up in 1914 to provide food parcels for the Western Front, Gallipoli, Russia and North Africa. Winston Churchill complained bitterly by letter when his wife Clemmie sent him upmarket provisions because what he really desperately wanted was a hot-water bottle.”

It was after the Great War that Christmas hampers really took off as fewer people were inclined to make their own Christmas cakes and puddings."