MOORE ON GUNS

From Facebook today

WAITING

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SUICIDE

Il y a quelque chose d'obnubilant dans cette photo devenue mythique. Voici son histoire...

À l'âge de 23 ans, le 1er mai 1947, Evelyn McHale mettait fin à ses jours en sautant du 86e étage de l'Empire State Building. Sur le vif, Robert Wiles, un jeune étudiant en photographie qui passait par là, a capté la scène de sa mort, quatre minutes après sa chute sur une limousine des Nations unies.  

Connue aujourd'hui sous le nom de Most beautiful suicide, la photo montre le cadavre de la belle jeune femme qui repose sur un amas de tôle cabossée. Robert Wiles va vendre sa photo au magazine Life, qui la reproduira en pleine page dans son édition du 12 mai 1947. Ce sera la seule photo qu'il publiera. (source)

La photo de Wiles colorée ultérieurement

L'histoire de LIFE:


In May 1947, LIFE magazine devoted a full page to a picture taken by a photography student named Robert Wiles. The photograph is extraordinary in several ways — not least because it remains, seven decades later, one of the most famous portraits of suicide ever made. Along with Malcolm Browne’s 1963 image of a self-immolating Buddhist monk and a small handful of other photos of men and women seen before, during, or after their own self-slaughter, Wiles’ picture graphically and unforgettably captures the destruction — both literal and figurative — that attends virtually all suicides. 

The woman in the photo was 23-year-old Evelyn McHale. Not much is known of her life, or of her final hours, although countless people have put enormous effort into uncovering as much about the troubled, attractive California native as they possibly could. For example, the tremendous visual-culture blog Codex 99 has an admirably solid discussion of her life and her suicide. But even that examination of her history and her death feels somehow lacking — not because the Codex post is weak, but because Evelyn left behind so little to hold on to. In the end, there is not even a gravesite; she was cremated, according to her wishes, and no marker or tombstone exists. 

 But beyond the mystery of Evelyn McHale’s life and death, there is the equally profound mystery of how a single photograph of a dead woman can feel so technically rich, visually compelling and — it must be said — so downright beautiful so many years after it was made. There’s a reason, after all, why she is often referred to as “the most beautiful suicide”; why Andy Warhol appropriated Wiles’ picture for his Suicide: Fallen Body (1962); why once we look, it’s so hard to look away.

In Wiles’ photo, Evelyn (it doesn’t feel right to refer to her as “Ms. McHale”) looks for all the world as if she’s resting, or napping, rather than lying dead amid shattered glass and twisted steel. Everything about her pose — her gloved hand clutching her necklace; her gently crossed ankles; her right hand with its gracefully curved fingers — suggests that she is momentarily quiet, perhaps thinking of her plans for later in the day, or daydreaming of her beau. 

(Here, again, the Codex 99 post provides insight into her final hours, and maybe her final thoughts.) 

For its part, LIFE magazine captioned the picture with language that veers strikingly from the poetic to the elemental: “At the bottom of Empire State Building the body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque bier her falling body punched into the top of a car.” 

A single paragraph, meanwhile, describing how the scene came about is at-once unsentimental and elegiac:

On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. “He is much better off without me. . . . I wouldn’t make a good wife for anybody,” she wrote. Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale’s death Wiles got this picture of death’s violence and its composure. 

This is not the place to delve into the deep, troubling universe of suicide, with all of its attendant pain, grief and lingering, unanswerable questions. But for a single moment, we can look one last time at Evelyn McHale, and remember her. Even if none of us ever knew her. Even if we’ll never really know what pushed her off the building. Even if she’s long, long gone, and never coming back. (source)

SPACE ODDITY by Col. Chris Hadfield

Because it seems like it is currently being removed from YouTube, I'm gonna leave this right here.

Space Oddity performed by Col. Chris Hadfield from Cyberyan on Vimeo.

UN PEU DE RÉALISME, SVP.

Imaginez une famille pauvre qui serait voisine d’une famille riche. Maintenant, imaginez les enfants de la famille pauvre faire une crise à leurs parents en exigeant de pouvoir eux aussi, comme les enfants riches du voisin, aller à Brébeuf en BMW, pour des raisons d’équité et de justice. 

C’est l’effet que me font les demandes de rattrapage des fonctionnaires Québécois quand ils se comparent à ceux de l’Ontario ou de l’Alberta.

EXTRAORDINARY

YUGEN

J'aime

Source: I fucking love science on Facebook

TWITTANNIVERSAIRE

Je ne suis pas très actif sur Twitter. À dire vrai, je n'y vais pas souvent. C'est une plate-forme ici, maintenant. C'est un endroit où tu vas quand tu cherches de l'info sur un sujet de brûlante actualité, ou quand t'as rien de mieux à foutre.

Le rappel que j'ai reçu de Twitter aujourd'hui n'est donc pas pour moi un sujet de fierté ou de plaisir, mais plutôt un signe du temps qui passe. J'ai du mal à croire que ça fait six ans déjà.  Le quotidien défile sans que je m'en rende compte, jour après jour, et me voici déjà aujourd'hui. Ce jour d'hui qui sera déjà si lointain dans quelques temps à peine.

KIN MON HARPER

Péage sur le pont Champlain... j'vais vous régler ça dans le temps de le dire. Le Fédéral ne veut rien comprendre? Parfait. On va le construire nous-même, le pont. Ensuite, on va foutre un péage à tous les bateaux qui passent en-dessous. S'ils ne paient pas, y'aura plus rien qui circulera sur la voie maritime entre Montréal et les grands lacs.

PROLOGUE

MAY THE 4TH ET TOUT ÇA

Je suis coincé au boulot aujourd'hui. En bon petit fan de Star Wars, je me serais bien offert un marathon des films de Star Wars, en cette journée internationale de... Star Wars, justement. Mais ça n'est pas possible.

Alors comme les bureaux sont déserts, si on excepte yours truly, je bosse en me blastant les trames sonores de Star Wars de John Williams.

Bliss.

Happy Star Wars day ! May the 4th be with you.