This sort of thing happens all the time around here.
Sleep: They Don’t Sleep Anymore On The Beach
I went with my son to see these guys last night, these guys being Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It was loud and wonderful. This is the beginning of a 23 minute epic which I have always loved. For those with an interest, from the album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven.
[audio src="http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/sleep.mp3"]
Holiday Inn. U.S. Route 90, W San Antonio St, Marfa, TX 79843
My Driftless Regional Winter
seems to be shaping up like this scene from Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg.
WARNING: NSFC (not suitable for Carole).
New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis
Jeffrey Rose, of the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity at the University of Birmingham, suggests archeological studies of submerged areas of the Persian Gulf may yield a lost history of human migration out of Africa and of the origins of human culture.
The emerging picture of prehistoric Arabia suggests that early modern humans were able to survive periodic hyperarid oscillations by contracting into environmental refugia around the coastal margins of the peninsula. This paper reviews new paleoenvironmental, archaeological, and genetic evidence from the Arabian Peninsula and southern Iran to explore the possibility of a demographic refugium dubbed the “Gulf Oasis,” which is posited to have been a vitally significant zone for populations residing in southwest Asia during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. These data are used to assess the role of this large oasis, which, before being submerged beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean, was well watered by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Batin rivers as well as subterranean aquifers flowing beneath the Arabian subcontinent. Inverse to the amount of annual precipitation falling across the interior, reduced sea levels periodically exposed large portions of the Arabo-Persian Gulf, equal at times to the size of Great Britain. Therefore, when the hinterlands were desiccated, populations could have contracted into the Gulf Oasis to exploit its freshwater springs and rivers. This dynamic relationship between environmental amelioration/desiccation and marine transgression/regression is thought to have driven demographic exchange into and out of this zone over the course of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene, as well as having played an important role in shaping the cultural evolution of local human populations during that interval.
There was probably an easier way to say that.
dear clusterflock
Did everyone enjoy the book?
Nicholas Brawer’s Radiator Flasks
from the comments
I like what Rick said about turning the screw until it is tight. It seems more respectful to the screw and the threads. Of course, we want it to be horizontal, but the screw doesn’t care about our desperate need for horizon lines on our walls.
Sir Wilfred Thesiger’s photographs of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula
Sir Wilfred Thesiger took nearly 40,000 photographs during his eight decades of travels throughout Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Now, to mark 100 years since his birth, Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum is displaying some of his most striking images.
The BBC has an audio slideshow of Thesiger’s work. The photo above is of a Masai warrior wearing the mane of a lion he had speared.
Fugitive Pope
How are you? Are you having a good day today? (David Lynch music reference.)
I have a new book out from Louffa Press, FUGITIVE POPE. It’s all letterpress, and you can read more about it here.
The Ontario Generating Station: A building ‘of modest though massive design’
Built into the cliffside of the Niagara Gorge, the architectural design of the powerhouse resembles any of several Egyptian mortuary temples, such as that of Hatshepsut at Deir ei-Bahri. Inside, the walls are inlaid with an Egyptian revival motif. The powerhouse of the Ontario Generating Station lacked some of the classical elegance and the well-appointed executive offices of its neighbours upriver (instead, senior personnel were housed in more easily accessed buildings above the gorge, such as the Transmission House demolished to make way for the Fallsview Casino), but it made up for this in its durability. Twice during its operational history ice jams built up on the river and crashed into the plant, flooding it with ice and water. While some damage occurred during both these events, it was possible to quickly clear the plant and return it to service.
dear clusterflock
Favorite religious song.
Nuns Gone Wild
The Boston Globe interviewed Craig A. Monson about his new book, Nuns Behaving Badly:
Poring through thick volumes of correspondence between the Vatican and local church authorities, Monson pieced together five of the most dramatic stories he found of misbehaving nuns in Italy during this period — nuns who plotted escapes, who burned down their own convent, and one who got caught sneaking out to the opera, disguised as an abbot. They are striking for the amount of detail and first-person testimony they include — the local bishops’ investigations of nuns’ misdeeds involved interviews, typically recorded word-for-word by church scribes.
I was a little disappointed he didn’t mention the Motown-infused shenanigans of lounge-singers-turned-nuns.
Conversion Camp
The Good Men Project has a fantastic piece of reporting by Ted Cox, who assumed the role of a closeted Mormon and attended a Christian weekend retreat of reparative gay-to-straight therapy:
In one corner of the room, a portable stereo played Shaina Noll’s song. At one point, the staff members all sang out in unison, their voices filling the high walls of the camp lodge. Somewhere in the room, a man sobbed over the sound of the music.
It was the first night of “Journey into Manhood,” or JiM, a 48-hour weekend retreat designed to help gay men become straight. In that room, about fifty men—some 30 “Journeyers” and 15 staff members—sat on the carpeted floor of a ranch lodge two hours outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Most of the men, except for a few of the staff members, struggled to overcome their attraction to other men.
Sometime during all that holding and touching and singing, while I was cradled in the Motorcycle position, I felt it: the unmistakable bulge pressing through his tight jeans. It was the first time in my life I had a felt another man’s erection.
Overall, it’s a pretty in-depth examination of the utterly skewed value these organizations place on their ideas of gender roles and masculinity. Read the entire piece–it’s worthwhile.
India’s Underground Owl Market
Between local shamans and the success of the Harry Potter series, India has a pretty vibrant illegal owl trade:
“Owl is the king of the birds and has enormous powers. When I chant into an owl’s nail and give it as a talisman, it cures sleeplessness and restlessness. When I chant into the feather from an owl’s breast and make a talisman, then the owl speaks in your dream and shows you the way,” said Ali with pride, baring his reddish, betel-stained teeth. “If you want to vanquish your enemy, then owl’s blood and bones are used.” He chants next to the live owl for hours by the river at night before the bird is purified and made effective for magical remedies.
India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said that more children were being given owls as pets because of the immensely popular books and movies about Harry Potter and his feathered companion, Hedwig. “There seems to be a strange fascination even among the urban middle classes for presenting their children with owls,” he said.
photo out of context
coming out of sleep
Fuck white meat.
Iranian Marble
The WSJ has a pretty fascinating report on how Israel, despite having restricted nearly all trade with the country, still sees a pretty insatiable demand for Iranian marble from its most prominent architects:
“It has a coffee color that you can’t find anywhere else,” effuses Avi Yerushalmi, owner of Israeli Marble, one of the country’s largest stone wholesalers. “Unlike other beige-colored marbles that tend to be very soft, Gohara is strong,” he adds.
To get around Israel’s ban on the stone, middlemen in Turkey repackage it with false certificates of origin, according to Israeli and Turkish stone dealers.
[...]
“I don’t like to sell it—they’re our enemies—but everyone wants it,” says Yali Etzion, general manager of Ariel Marble, a marble store north of Tel Aviv.
I’m trying to think of the American equivalent for this situation.
Screw Options
Why only slot and phillips? Who the fuck is Phillips, anyway? Think of how many final position questions could be solved with extra choices.
Bad Writing – Official Trailer
Thick, heavy beautiful snow
piling on top of the seven or eight inches piled up here already.
I wish y’all could be here. We could borrow firewood from the absent neighbor. Drink wine and eat up the soup I just made.
dear clusterflock
Like, if you were installing outlets, and the outlet covers had slotted screws, would you align the slot in the screw so that, when the outlet cover was in place, the slot was horizontal or vertical?
Happy Birthday, Vera Constance (Duncan) Ryan (b. December 11 1915–d. March 15 2009)
My mother, Vera Ryan, at Mission San José, San Antonio, Texas. July 1949.
Mother, I love the way you and other ladies dressed, even when scrabbling round old Spanish missions in Texas in 1949.
Untold Stories
From Jonathan Smith’s series, Untold Stories.
The Second Coming Sale
After opening with the trumpeting of horns and a glimpse of a land assailed by fire and lighting, the 30-second ad shows Falter in his store, stating his belief that as he reads the news “we are really close” to the Day of the Lord and the return of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem.
“Nonetheless, here and now, if you want jewelry, I have access to millions,” he then says. And it’s all on sale at 50 percent off during his Second Coming sale.
