Post by Editor in Chief on Jun 12, 2011 5:14:39 GMT
Bomb-Making for Fun and the Destruction of Those Who Would Profit
-Nawab Sepulchrave ibn Simurgh
I was recently leaning against a wall on Lettuce Lane, observing the smoke arising from the crater of the Morporkian Embassy, when I observed a fellow member of the KCC strolling past. I straightened my posture - leaning against walls is an ironic habit I picked up during the Revolution, when being the first against one was fashionable - and salaamed him. He saloomed me back.
Ignoring the unorthodoxy of his reciprocal salute, I said: "A fine morning to tour the latest exploded buildings, is it not? The air is so still that the drifting smoke is shown to its best advantage."
"Impressive workmanship," he agreed. "Whoever blew up the embassy this week seems a true artist."
I should clarify that after the Djelian Revolution, the word "art" was re-defined to mean "the manufacture and use of incendiary bombs." This was a logical extrapolation from Marx's precept that "up until now artists have only sought to understand the world; the point, however, is to blow it up."
The word's precision invigorates to our aesthetic controversies. Morporkians distract themselves from the international oppression of the worker by wondering, "What is Art?" We Djelians ask: "With how slight an explosion, and with how insignificant an inconvenience to capitalism, does Art commence?"
I looked at my newly-arrived comrade. He was young - perhaps the same age as Lenin was when he built his first flame-thrower. He wore a nihilist-black Revolutionary uniform, with a tattered green cravat. His fingers were stained with paint, his eyes possessed a dreamy look and he had tucked a sketchbook under his arm. But it was not until I saw a bundle of fuses peeping out from his shirt pocket that I realised he entertained artistic ambitions.
"Art is long, the fuse is short," I quipped. He laughed obligingly, but I think only because he saw the insignia of my various posts within the Council. That of the Nawab is a death-head above a star-burst of gold. I sighed. "May I see what you have been working on?"
At this he brightened, and placed his sketchbook on a smouldering column to free his hands. The book caught alight, but neither of us was distracted by a blaze of mere drawings. We embarked upon the contemplation of genuine art.
He drew the fuses from his pocket. Each was attached to a small ball full of something that rattled. I threw one into the embers of the Morporkian embassy. There was a fiery flash.
"Very nice," I said, "but a bit assassin-ish. Anyone can explode a swamp dragon, ignite fireworks, blow up an Alchemists' Guild or make flash-bombs. The first-rate artists of chemical Communism prefer less orthodox materials."
He asked what I meant, and I proceeded to give an impromptu lecture on bomb-making. Midway through it, we had to move a little down the street to escape the increasing smoke; "Djelian smog", as it's called. Later, as an afterthought, I jotted down what I could remember of my remarks, with the idea that a few of my fellow citizens who have not yet provided their inner artist with diphosphorus pentoxide might find them useful.
---
Djelian explosives are not completely caught within the net of chemistry. Some chemical principles are agreed to be inviolable - the law of multiple proportions, which upholds Marx's emphasis on the rational distribution of property. Out of camaraderie, our chemistry never contradicts it.
On the other hand, the principle of conservation of mass fares badly with us. Our bombs defy it with impunity, permitting some amazing effects. One hypothesis maintains that the efficient cause of our freedom from the law of conservation of mass is the following line of the Internationale: "We have been nought, we shall be all!" This abrupt shift from nothing to everything contradicts the principle in question, and prepares the way for further instances of the same.
The aspiring artist's guiding principle should be that Communism is not merely the wand of miracles; it is also their retort, Bunsen-burner and measuring-spoon. I once blew up the Merchants' Guild in Ankh-Morpork armed with nothing more than a gourd filled with salty water, an iron nail, and the knowledge that Communism burns more intensely than phosphorus when exposed to the acids of mercenary exploitation and capitalist self-interest.
The chemical reactions that occur between Communism and ideologies uncongenial to it make anarchists extremely useful. They are famous for having some skill in bomb-making, it is true - but they make them according to a methodology alien to ours, so I do not refer to that. No, they make excellent bombs in their own right.
In the past, several anarchists were admitted to Djelibeybi partly on compassionate, partly on scientific grounds. The compassionate rationale was in affording them a glimpse of utopia. The scientific premise was that it would advance our science to observe the eventual explosion sparked between their hyper-individualism and our kingdom's rarefied Communism.
Usually they exploded whilst eating badly-cooked rabbits out in the terrains, or whatever it is that anarchists do with their time, but in a few cases they have gone mad, gibbered about Djelibeybi's resemblance to Nineteen Eighty-Four and the sovereignty of the individual, then loudly burst. Sometimes they have taken others out with them, making them ideal defectors to Ankh-Morpork in their final days. I believe this is what happened with Fane.
Armed with the chemical principle just sketched, and a little knowledge of valency theory, you can go very far on very little.
I will conclude these elementary remarks on Djelian art by speaking of some of the famous innovations of Djelian artists. Ptenisnet pteh Pterrible, Fewms Nicemelons' mother the venerable Mrs Nicemelons, Echo Chamber and Greygrene have all, in their way, produced immortal works of art that briefly, before obliterating everything and everyone in a nightmarish firestorm, uplifted the buildings or crowds into which they were flung into museums.
The chief innovation of Ptenisnet is called the 'Ptenisnet Cocktail.' It deliberately has a blast radius exactly equal to the grounds of Ankh-Morpork Council. Delightfully, no matter how much incendiary material one pours into it, the radius of the resulting explosion, though growing proportionately more intense (see: the law of multiple proportions), neither shrinks nor swells past what it would take to exactly demolish their Council building.
Apparently it was Mrs. Nicemelons, whose son is now a Sultan, who invented the famous 'Fewmsean Fuse', an indispensable technique of deferred devastation. She was and remains expert at distilling explosives from melon-pulp, which before the Revolution were used to harass Pharaoh's household. She was an artist when art was still terrorism. Pharaoh could barely go for a walk without his legs being blown off. Her contribution to the artist was to invent a way of making melon-pulp smoulder as a sort of fuse. I've never been able to work out how it works.
Greygrene's artistic career was mostly devoted to experiments with volatile gas. His long and circuitous diatribes were studiously tedious, for he early discovered that the more boring an oration, the more inflammable are its exhaled vapours of speech. In the course of his screeds on the indefensibility of the death penalty, his research assistants usually hovered around him, trapping his gases in jars.
Then there is Echo Chamber. Of all of the great artists of recent antiquity (aftershocks from our recent release from circular time are still being felt), he was arguably the most inventive. When invested with the first Nawabcy, he devised a range of explosives that he could safely employ within the Treasury. His solution was to explode the gold itself, after which it could be expertly collected, cleaned of thief-viscera, and re-minted. This succeeded only too well in the case of Surt, who did not merely die, but was removed from existence.
When Ankh-Morpork eventually constructed a Treasury, Echo generously deposited a single piece of gold thus prepared from our own. Unfortunately for the Morporkians, the most dystopian object in the universe, namely a shadow from an industro-capitalist's top hat, eventually fell across the coin, triggering an oriferous melt-down began. Molten gold erupted from the roof of their Treasury in a geyser.
-Nawab Sepulchrave ibn Simurgh
I was recently leaning against a wall on Lettuce Lane, observing the smoke arising from the crater of the Morporkian Embassy, when I observed a fellow member of the KCC strolling past. I straightened my posture - leaning against walls is an ironic habit I picked up during the Revolution, when being the first against one was fashionable - and salaamed him. He saloomed me back.
Ignoring the unorthodoxy of his reciprocal salute, I said: "A fine morning to tour the latest exploded buildings, is it not? The air is so still that the drifting smoke is shown to its best advantage."
"Impressive workmanship," he agreed. "Whoever blew up the embassy this week seems a true artist."
I should clarify that after the Djelian Revolution, the word "art" was re-defined to mean "the manufacture and use of incendiary bombs." This was a logical extrapolation from Marx's precept that "up until now artists have only sought to understand the world; the point, however, is to blow it up."
The word's precision invigorates to our aesthetic controversies. Morporkians distract themselves from the international oppression of the worker by wondering, "What is Art?" We Djelians ask: "With how slight an explosion, and with how insignificant an inconvenience to capitalism, does Art commence?"
I looked at my newly-arrived comrade. He was young - perhaps the same age as Lenin was when he built his first flame-thrower. He wore a nihilist-black Revolutionary uniform, with a tattered green cravat. His fingers were stained with paint, his eyes possessed a dreamy look and he had tucked a sketchbook under his arm. But it was not until I saw a bundle of fuses peeping out from his shirt pocket that I realised he entertained artistic ambitions.
"Art is long, the fuse is short," I quipped. He laughed obligingly, but I think only because he saw the insignia of my various posts within the Council. That of the Nawab is a death-head above a star-burst of gold. I sighed. "May I see what you have been working on?"
At this he brightened, and placed his sketchbook on a smouldering column to free his hands. The book caught alight, but neither of us was distracted by a blaze of mere drawings. We embarked upon the contemplation of genuine art.
He drew the fuses from his pocket. Each was attached to a small ball full of something that rattled. I threw one into the embers of the Morporkian embassy. There was a fiery flash.
"Very nice," I said, "but a bit assassin-ish. Anyone can explode a swamp dragon, ignite fireworks, blow up an Alchemists' Guild or make flash-bombs. The first-rate artists of chemical Communism prefer less orthodox materials."
He asked what I meant, and I proceeded to give an impromptu lecture on bomb-making. Midway through it, we had to move a little down the street to escape the increasing smoke; "Djelian smog", as it's called. Later, as an afterthought, I jotted down what I could remember of my remarks, with the idea that a few of my fellow citizens who have not yet provided their inner artist with diphosphorus pentoxide might find them useful.
---
Djelian explosives are not completely caught within the net of chemistry. Some chemical principles are agreed to be inviolable - the law of multiple proportions, which upholds Marx's emphasis on the rational distribution of property. Out of camaraderie, our chemistry never contradicts it.
On the other hand, the principle of conservation of mass fares badly with us. Our bombs defy it with impunity, permitting some amazing effects. One hypothesis maintains that the efficient cause of our freedom from the law of conservation of mass is the following line of the Internationale: "We have been nought, we shall be all!" This abrupt shift from nothing to everything contradicts the principle in question, and prepares the way for further instances of the same.
The aspiring artist's guiding principle should be that Communism is not merely the wand of miracles; it is also their retort, Bunsen-burner and measuring-spoon. I once blew up the Merchants' Guild in Ankh-Morpork armed with nothing more than a gourd filled with salty water, an iron nail, and the knowledge that Communism burns more intensely than phosphorus when exposed to the acids of mercenary exploitation and capitalist self-interest.
The chemical reactions that occur between Communism and ideologies uncongenial to it make anarchists extremely useful. They are famous for having some skill in bomb-making, it is true - but they make them according to a methodology alien to ours, so I do not refer to that. No, they make excellent bombs in their own right.
In the past, several anarchists were admitted to Djelibeybi partly on compassionate, partly on scientific grounds. The compassionate rationale was in affording them a glimpse of utopia. The scientific premise was that it would advance our science to observe the eventual explosion sparked between their hyper-individualism and our kingdom's rarefied Communism.
Usually they exploded whilst eating badly-cooked rabbits out in the terrains, or whatever it is that anarchists do with their time, but in a few cases they have gone mad, gibbered about Djelibeybi's resemblance to Nineteen Eighty-Four and the sovereignty of the individual, then loudly burst. Sometimes they have taken others out with them, making them ideal defectors to Ankh-Morpork in their final days. I believe this is what happened with Fane.
Armed with the chemical principle just sketched, and a little knowledge of valency theory, you can go very far on very little.
I will conclude these elementary remarks on Djelian art by speaking of some of the famous innovations of Djelian artists. Ptenisnet pteh Pterrible, Fewms Nicemelons' mother the venerable Mrs Nicemelons, Echo Chamber and Greygrene have all, in their way, produced immortal works of art that briefly, before obliterating everything and everyone in a nightmarish firestorm, uplifted the buildings or crowds into which they were flung into museums.
The chief innovation of Ptenisnet is called the 'Ptenisnet Cocktail.' It deliberately has a blast radius exactly equal to the grounds of Ankh-Morpork Council. Delightfully, no matter how much incendiary material one pours into it, the radius of the resulting explosion, though growing proportionately more intense (see: the law of multiple proportions), neither shrinks nor swells past what it would take to exactly demolish their Council building.
Apparently it was Mrs. Nicemelons, whose son is now a Sultan, who invented the famous 'Fewmsean Fuse', an indispensable technique of deferred devastation. She was and remains expert at distilling explosives from melon-pulp, which before the Revolution were used to harass Pharaoh's household. She was an artist when art was still terrorism. Pharaoh could barely go for a walk without his legs being blown off. Her contribution to the artist was to invent a way of making melon-pulp smoulder as a sort of fuse. I've never been able to work out how it works.
Greygrene's artistic career was mostly devoted to experiments with volatile gas. His long and circuitous diatribes were studiously tedious, for he early discovered that the more boring an oration, the more inflammable are its exhaled vapours of speech. In the course of his screeds on the indefensibility of the death penalty, his research assistants usually hovered around him, trapping his gases in jars.
Then there is Echo Chamber. Of all of the great artists of recent antiquity (aftershocks from our recent release from circular time are still being felt), he was arguably the most inventive. When invested with the first Nawabcy, he devised a range of explosives that he could safely employ within the Treasury. His solution was to explode the gold itself, after which it could be expertly collected, cleaned of thief-viscera, and re-minted. This succeeded only too well in the case of Surt, who did not merely die, but was removed from existence.
When Ankh-Morpork eventually constructed a Treasury, Echo generously deposited a single piece of gold thus prepared from our own. Unfortunately for the Morporkians, the most dystopian object in the universe, namely a shadow from an industro-capitalist's top hat, eventually fell across the coin, triggering an oriferous melt-down began. Molten gold erupted from the roof of their Treasury in a geyser.