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A list of countries that should change their name

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Look. Look. The world has seven jillion more pressing issues than the matter of international toponymy. But i’ve been staring at maps for long enough that i’ve got some strong opinions, and there’s a lot of confusion to be resolved.

First and foremost: one of the Congos is gonna have to take one for the team. There’s no way about it. I get that “Zaïre” is kind of skunked, but at the very least, one of them should consider making “Congo-Kinshasa” or “Congo-Brazzaville” official, to spare us all the tyranny of having to repeat “Democratic Republic of the Congo” a thousand times until we die.

The other main snafu of nomenclature is Dominica and the Dominican Republic: two countries, both of which are in the Caribbean, and both of which have the demonym “Dominican”, except stressed on different syllables. (Dominica on the -ni-, the republic on the -mi-.) This is not tenable.

The republic is the better known Dominica, but i’m going to say it should draw the short straw here, because it has a ready-made alternative right in the national anthem, which honours its valiant Quisqueyans. Not only would the name “Quisqueya” put them in the élite ranks of countries whose names start with a Q1, but it’s far more mellifluous than the other isle’s equivalent, “Waitukubuli”.

The Central African Republic might be better off going by the Sango “Bêafrika”, too. The name worked when it was the Central African Empire, high on Bokassa the butcher’s tinpot monarch dreams, but in a world of sixty-second attention spans, most of the time, it’ll end up shortened to CAR and confused with a Honda Civic.

We’re getting into pettier territory now with New Zealand, Britain’s antipodean twin2 and runt of the Anglosphere. I don’t particularly have anything against its current name, but when the alternative is this good, that’s hardly enough! Throw off your Dutch trappings and become Aotearoa, land of the long white cloud — culture war be damned, it rolls off the tongue like honey from turned wood. (And, hey, you finally get a usable adjectival form.)

Lightning round! Equatorial Guinea is neither crossed by the equator3 nor anywhere near the other two Guineas. Fix it. South Africa means the opposite of “North Africa” is “Southern Africa“ and is overall terribly generic. “Azania”’s the obvious pick, but historically inaccurate at best, being the Greeks’ name for what is now the Tanzanian and Kenyan coast. Might i suggest “Macrobia”, the opposite of Hyperborea, the semi-mythic land of the long-lived and happy at the very tip of Africa, beyond where the Romans ever ventured? And “United Arab Emirates” is trivially true, but boring as sin. The worst part is there’s no compelling alternative, with the area being an artificial conglomerate of princedoms once called the “Trucial States” because… er, they’d all signed truces with the British Empire. 10/10 naming, bang up job, good enough, let’s all go home.

Last, the bald eagle in the room: the United States of America, hogging the name of two entire continents all for itself in typical Yankee fashion. For all i care, they can keep it: the alternatives are straight trash. “Usona”? “Fredonia”? “United Statesians”?? Gods know nobody’s saying that with a straight face. Plus, it’s really funny when people from the rest of the Americas get riled up online about people using the word “American” for the U.S.

All that said — if they were to change, they’d do well to go back to the civil war, and start branding themselves as “the Union”, rather than “America”. All the historical swag, none of the cringe.

P.S. “Britain” is also ambiguous between the island and the country, but my preferred solution there is to make Northern Ireland the republic’s problem. Sorry, Sir Ian junior, but you’re reëntering the EU, and you’re going to like it.

Stuff i watched recently, December ’24

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GoodFellas (1990)

The first time i’ve actually enjoyed a Scorsese flick.1 I love how it uses music to illustrate the main character’s psychological decline. (8/10)

Evil Dead 2 (1987) (again) and Army of Darkness (1992)

Watched as a double feature for the Hallowe’en season — Evil Dead 2 is as funny as ever, and all you need to know about Army of Darkness is that it’s a film where a stop-motion skeleton explodes, and if that doesn’t sell you, it’s not for you. (I did find myself wishing i’d watched the theatrical cut, rather than the director’s cut — the studio-mandated happy ending has so many iconic bits i didn’t realise i was missing!) (7/10)

Synecdoche, New York (2008) (again)

In honour of Megalopolis2, Tyneside Cinema were doing a season of films with dizzying ambitions and variable results, from Southland Tales to Synecdoche. I jumped at the chance to finally see my favourite film on the big screen — and, yep, still a certified 11/10 masterpiece.

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

I have a “hear me out”. (7½/10)

Poltergeist (1982)

Steven Spielberg did not technically direct this, but come on now, we all know this is as spiritually Spielberg as it gets. Some fun stuff, especially the motley crew of paranormal investigators, but it’s weighed down by the jarring tonal mish-mash and a glued-on fourth act where they seem to have suddenly realised they forgot a “0” in their special effects budget. (5½/10)

The Fisher King (1991)

I knew absolutely nowt about this going in, so when Robin Williams showed up, it took some time for me to mentally adjust to the combination of his zaniness, Jeff Bridges’ shock-jock sleaze, and the trademark layer of Gilliam grime coating it all. All of it comes together beautifully in a surprisingly good-hearted fantasy tale of big-city redemption. (8/10)

Juror №2 (2024)

I had bought the tickets and everything for Clint Eastwood’s final film — but it was the day after the U.S. election, and fifteen minutes in, i thought, cripes, do i really want to be sitting through a drama about the dysfunction of the American legal system right now? (N/A/10)

AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001)

There’s nothing i love more than a big, ambitious, messy film, and this hits all three. You can see the joins between the Kubrickian rigour and Spielbergian spectacle, but i don’t care. Viva the mess.

Haley Joel Osment is incredible in this. You can totally see why Kubrick thought no child actor could ever pull off the script.

All the tech has this glorious early-noughties Orion’s Arm-style shimmer and sheen to it, and let me tell you, i live for that shit. (9/10)

Summer of Sam (1999)

I kind of forgot i even watched this? (3/10)

🎵️ Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want to Turn into You (2023)

Favourite tracks: “Welcome to My Island” (especially the George Daniel remix), “Blood and Butter”, “Billions”. (7/10)

Se7en (1995)

It’s good. I have little more to say on the matter, except that the title is pronounced /sə.ˈsɛ.və.nən/. (8/10)

The Lighthouse (2019)

This is some kind of primordial film, one that you’d find washed up at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and six months later, radiocarbon dating would show it to be older than civilisation itself. (Very glad i had subtitles — those old-timey wickie accents don’t mess about.)

Also, Robert Pattinson is really, really hot in this. No man has ever been this Fucked Up. (10/10)

Wicked (2024)

I didn’t know Hollywood still had it in it to pull out all the stops for a big, colourful show-stopping musical like this. Ariana Grande stole the show, but the goat stole my heart. (9/10)

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XL

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I overheard this fleetingly on Radio 6 (Gods bless ’em, as always) and immediately smashed that like button.

Lords of Misrule 2024 — let the misrule begin!

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Lords of Misrule MMXXIV

It’s that time of year again, isn’t it? When the days shrink and night begins to rule. A time for staying wrapped up inside with a cup of hot chocolate for some. But for us, dear readers — we know better by now, don’t we? The time approaches for merriment, mænadism, and of course… misrule. Io Saturnalia, friends.

This is our fourth annual Satyrs’ Forest Lords of Misrule, where in the spirit of the season, i put you — yes, you — in charge of the site. If you write or put together anything, absolutely, positively anything, and email it to misrule@satyrs.eu, come Saturnalia (that’s December the seventeenth through the twenty-third, for those who aren’t up to date on their Roman calendar) i’ll put it on the site, etched in stone for all to see. Temporary defacements of pages are also quite welcome.

I kindly ask the same things of you as years past: no political polemics, and nothing that would get me in legal trouble. Other than that, anything goes. A video essay on the occult implications of Gremlins 2. A rant about how birch trees used to be better back in the old days before Big Nature made them cringe. Whatever you, my lords of misrule, want.

Submissions are open from now until the fifteenth of December, 2024. Have fun, be merry, and don’t be afraid to get weird with it!

—Xanthe

Annihilation: In defence of the Shimmer

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Two mutated deer, their antlers clad in vibrant flowers, stand in a beautiful verdant forest, looking quizzically at the camera

Alex Garland’s Annihilation is nominally a horror film.1 Team of scientists goes into an evil forest, gets picked off one by one with cool body horror effects, blonde final girl makes it out and is irreversibly traumatised, movie ends, many such cases.2 But i’ve never seen it that way.

Might i just be a contrarian? Certainly, the biosphere our characters enter is cruel, but i think it’s a useful exercise to consider the situation from its perspective. The government is on their Gods-know-how-manyth expedition into the Shimmer at this point, and up until now, it’s all been military men. Cripes, if i were a sentient self-regulating ecosystem and all these feds started probing around my internals because they want to kill me, i’d develop an immune response too.

The world beyond the Shimmer is beautiful beyond description. It is a place where the sky glistens in iridescent3 waves, where every sort of plant grows from every sort of bush and beast, and where death is just one step in a beautiful cycle of life and rebirth.4 It blurs the line between not just the species but kingdoms of life — flora, fauna, and funga all mingling and merging together equally under one roof. Barring the terrifying human–bear hybrids, that’s a world i’d like to live in.

Plus, it seems willing to learn. In the ending “fight” (cue the noise), allegorical for the obvious as the visuals may be, the alien throws not a single punch. It’s learning by doing, mimicking every move Lena makes, enough to turn into a rudimentary facsimile of her — and even after its destruction, the ending glimmer in her and her husband’s eyes makes clear a part of the Shimmer’s essence is here to say. I say that’s for the better.

P.S. Here’s some stuff i’ve been listening to recently (sorted from “bleep bloop” to “strum strum”):

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXXIX

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Postcards from kinda the area around Beamish, but not, like, Beamish itself, you kn

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A tree which has fallen onto the autumn forest floor, taking not only the trunk but the roots with it, still covered in dirt
A reindeer stocking covered in dirt languishes inside a hole in the wall
I have to assume this has been here since at least last Christmas.
Peeking over the wall to reveal scaffolding for the façade of an old west town
I think this used to be(?) a centre for birds of prey. Not sure why it was done up like an old west town, if that’s the case…
I started hearing old-timey fairground music in the distance and it took me far, far too long to realise that it was coming from the old-timey fairground Beamish has. For fifteen minutes i was the most confused i had ever been in my whole life.

Stuff i watched recently, October ’24

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Posters for the undermentioned films

Big Fish (2003)

Tim Burton, you bastard, you’ve done it again. Hit a remarkable 0.7 Titanics on the cry-o-meter and made me want to call my papa. (8/10)

Alien: Romulus (2024)

I reviewed this one in full back in August, so go check that out if you want more detail. A stylish sequel (sevenquel?) that makes the world of Alien more believable than ever and introduces some great new talent. (7/10)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Seeing Christopher Lloyd in this was like seeing Jeff Goldblum in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Like, hey, you’re not meant to be famous yet!

It’s one of those films that’s been talked about so much that i have very little new to add, but i will say that i wasn’t expecting this to be as funny as it was.1 (7/10)

Sexy Beast (2000)

Ugh. Once the plot gets moving two thirds of the way through it’s pretty good, but that first hour is æsthetically revolting in the most perplexing way. The Spanish countryside has never looked so grimy and clammy. I hate all of these people. (3½/10)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

I didn’t know Steven Spielberg had the capacity to be so… cryptic? I love how the film builds up the mystery of what’s going on, with an ending that leaves you wondering in both senses of the word. Contact’s better, yeah, but Contact wouldn’t exist without Close Encounters as a base to work off. (9/10)

Silent Running (1972)

Douglas Trumbull, 2001’s special-effects man, gets into directing with this sickeningly seventies environmentalist sci-fi fable. There’s a lot to like here, but i can’t help the feeling that this would have worked a lot better if you’d cut it up into five twenty-minute TV episodes and had Tom Baker show up midway through. (5/10)

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

Went to the cinema for this, for… some reason? Tim Burton is back, baby, having finally freed himself from Disney’s offputting computer-generated tendrils, and while Beetlejuice²: Beetlejuice Harder is ultimately inessential, it’s a fun legasequel that’s better than anyone was reasonably expecting, keeping up the same manic energy as the original. Michael Keaton, Catherine O’Hara, and Winona Ryder haven’t missed a step since 1988. Willem Dafoe is great too, though like most of the new cast, his character doesn’t have much to do in the story, which struggles to commit to any of its three plot threads.

Also, the lead girl falls in love with a socially awkward zoomer who listens to Sigur Rós, which means there’s still a chance for me. So that’s… that’s good. That’s reassuring. (6/10)

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Once you’ve seen one Woody Allen film, you’ve seen them all, and boy did i wish i was seeing Annie Hall instead. (5/10)

Casablanca (1942)

Come on. It’s Casablanca. What do you want me to say? Every five minutes there’s a line that made me point at the screen like Leonardo DiCaprio. “We’ll always have Paris.” (10/10)

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Unnerving to see Dev Patel before his ongoing “sexiest man alive” era, but you can never go wrong with Danny Boyle, whose kinetic, saturated style elevates a simple feel-good rags-to-riches story. (6/10)

The Substance (2024)

I cannot fucking believe i roped my mum into coming to the cinema with me.2 Greatest decision of my life. Her fucking face!

The Substance is the goopiest [sic] movie i’ve ever seen, and that’s ignoring all the body horror. Demi Moore digs through wet rubbish to pick up a sticky USB drive and splatters eggs everywhere. Dennis Quaid eats a bowl of shrimp that makes the world’s most viscerally disgusting noise. Margaret Qualley’s teeth fall out.3

My one complaint is i wish it had gone further. Everyone on the internet thinks it went too far. No. They are fools. That blood-sprayed audience should have started melting into The Thing, and we all know that deep inside our hearts. (9½/10)

Videodrome (1983)

Long live the new flesh! A film starring a Betamaxussy and a man who exists exclusively through semi-sentient VHS tapes. So many ideas, so little time (the Cronenberg special). Watching this is like trying to remember a nightmare you just woke up from.

I’m filing this in the same folder as Rear Window, a film with a surprising amount to say about an internet that it couldn’t have reasonably foreseen. What are we if not, like Brian O’Blivion4, ghosts of all our past transmissions? Is the online avatar not the new flesh? Existenz tackles the internet more head-on, but suffers from the fact that David Cronenberg doesn’t know what a video game is. Videodrome is unburdened by the future facts, and so can say whatever it wants. (10/10)

Hundreds of Beavers (2024)

A double feature with Videodrome. Sure. Why not. Let’s go.

This tickled the Gremlins 2 area of my brain in delightful Looney Tunes-esque fashion. What a silly little flick. (9½/10)

The A-Team (2010)

Stepdad’s pick for movie night. My review: “Stepdad’s pick for movie night”. (3/10)

Megalopolis (2024)

Francis Ford Coppola’s final fart is why Hollywood can’t have nice things, an incomprehensible schmaltzy mess about how Adam Driver is a Very Special Boy who is always right. I don’t know where the money went — everything looks like Spy Kids. What an embarrassing way to go out. (2/10)

Francis Ford Coppola shoots for the moon and misses with Megalopolis, his long-gestating passion project that shows why studio interference isn’t always the worst thing. Sometimes you need someone in the room to say “no”. Every creative decision made here is baffling: Adam Driver’s character can stop time, and this never comes up. Our main character can stop time, and this does not play a role in the film’s story! His political rival leaks a video of him having sex with an underage pop star, and within about five minutes, it turns out it was fake and she was 23 anyway, so that plotline’s resolved and never comes back up. Every conflict is like this. I don’t know what’s going on. (4/10)

Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis: A Fable defies your puny human notions of “good” or “bad” in an ambitious sci-fi drama that’s like if Hillary Clinton wrote a Neil Breen film.5 You can neatly split the cast into “knew what kind of movie they were in” and “didn’t”. Shia LeBeouf knew — he chews the scenery with every line as if the sets were made of cotton candy. Aubrey Plaza knew, because there’s no way not to know what kind of movie you’re in when your character is called “Wow Platinum” and makes Mr LeBeouf give her head. Adam Driver probably knew? He can get pretty hammy, but he’s kind of trying to keep a straight face. Nathalie Emmanuel didn’t know — she’s the female lead, but her performance is so wooden i was genuinely shocked to find out she wasn’t a nepotism hire. Giancarlo Esposito is insulated enough from the properly weird stuff that i don’t think he knew. (6/10)

Francis Ford Coppola’s Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis: A Fable is so sincere i can’t help but love it. It’s a man who built his fame on films about the criminal underworld and the hell of war going: “I refuse to let this be my legacy”. Megalopolis is about a man with a vision for a better future and the power to make it happen. (His vision for a better future mostly involves those moving walkways they have at airports. I never said it was perfect.) And, yeah, it’s a little undercooked. Yeah, it’s as subtle as a brick.6 But it’s the film the man wanted to make, and it’s a film that proudly stands against the cynical doom and gloom that has infested popular culture since the nineties. I can’t help but respect that. (8/10)

“Whaddaya think of this boner i got?” —Jon Voight, 2024 (10/10)

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXXVIII

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A death on the internet

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A video popped up in my Youtube recommendations recently that gave me pause. I didn’t recognise the name of the channel, or the man on the thumbnail, sat unbothered atop a log in a distinct yellow hunting jacket. Beside that image were two short words: “I’m Dead”.

It’s an omnipresent trope of fiction, and it’s a strange feeling seeing it cross into the real world. “As i’m recording this today, it is 20 December, 2023, and i’m recording this and giving Brad instructions to publish it upon my death. So if you’re watching me: i’m dead.” I never met the uploader, Paul Harrell. I never watched anything he made. I’d never even heard his name. But watching his last message a tear crossed my cheek nevertheless, an experience, judging by the video’s comments, that isn’t uncommon among people who happened to stumble upon it.

What makes it stranger is that, while, yes, a recording of a man speaking from the grave, “I’m Dead” is also a Youtube video, with all the trappings of the format. Mr Harrell makes note two minutes in that other creators have made claims of him with which he strongly disagrees, and bemoans (tongue planted in cheek) that he won’t be around to respond anymore. In a twist on the formula, he thanks the viewers for all the likes, comments, and subscriptions over the years — no point in beseeching for more, after all. I don’t point these quirks out to denigrate the man; by all accounts he seems to have been an upstanding chap with a passion for weaponry. But… I don’t know. It’s hard to put into words the cocktail of emotions that arises when someone jumps from talking about his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer to going “thanks for the likes”, all in the typical jolly cadence of online video.

Time comes for us all. Two of my most valiantly followed blogs are run by authors of fifty-nine and seventy-three; barring a rapid scientific breakthrough, i am near certain to outlive them. Videomakers trend younger; still, in just the past year, a cancer diagnosis and a stroke have passed my subscription feed. I don’t get torn up when a musician i love passes, but in this postmodern age, the internet begets a one-sided connection that feels a damned lot more like friendship than a vinyl record ever could. One by one, the first generation of internet creatives is dying — and, unless we remember them, their spirit will too.