Home Improvement
Around the first of the year, we noticed some rotting wood at the bottom of the French doors in our living room. Daryl, in his usual master crafstman manner, slapped silver duct tape on it. It looks as elegant as you would imagine, and was prominently on display during each of the February visits from fellow flockers Sheila, Deron, Amy, and Phil.
So today I am making a special trip to Big Lots to purchase a roll of white duct tape. Because, look–I have my standards.
Year 4~Day 82 +53/365 AND Day 1178: Necessity is the Mother of Invention
From a Flickr set by Old Shoe Woman.
I just used everything in the refrigerator to make a sandwich for brunch.
In the Boom Boom Room
In order to pierce the crust of Dallas, Texas subcultures, it helps to know someone who grew up here.
Inside the hut, looking out
It’s lonely in the modern world.
Even in your company, I feel so alone. (Dwell, September 2009.)
Unhappy Hipsters. (Thanks, Kate.)
Bubble Wrap Turns 50
The product once envisioned as a new type of wallpaper turns 50 this month, and enthusiasts’ obsession with it has spawned more than 250 Facebook pages devoted to Bubble Wrap.
Ken Aurichio, communications director for Sealed Air, the Elmwood Park-based company that manufactures Bubble Wrap, thought he’d witnessed every form of Bubble Wrap mania until he received a wedding invitation last year from a woman in Ohio who said she would wear the product on her trip down the aisle.
Fuck it. I’m using it as wallpaper.
the first legal male prostitute
I think for a male, if you want to be successful in this type of venture, you’re not a prostitute. You’re a surrogate lover. You encompass everything that’s required of you—not only emotionally, physically—but psychologically. Because women are wired differently. They’re much more sensitive creatures. You actually have to enjoy what you do. You can’t necessarily say, “Oh, it’s just a job.” You actually have to say it’s a passion. I think it’s the same situation as with anything that happens when you break apart a social institution. There has to be some kind of change in terminology to describe persons like myself. And it’s more of a civil rights thing now. Basically this is the first time in the economy of the United States that a male has actually stood up and said, “I want to do this for a living.” And be protected under law to do it. It’s just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front instead of the back. She was proclaiming her rights as a disadvantaged, African-American older woman. And I’m doing the same. I’m actually standing up now, and hopefully I can be supported by the male community and be understood as a person. This actually isn’t about selling my body. This is about changing social norms.
Congratulations.
(via marginal revolution)
Essential Components of a Home Defense System
Your air rifle. Your crank phone. Your guard cat.
Twelve Meditations on a Dollhouse | IV. Meditation on the Great Hall
The Great Hall. Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle. (Museum of Science and Industry. Chicago.)
(We have skipped past Cinderella’s Drawing Room, where “the vases at each side of the door going into the Great Hall are made of carved amber over 500 years old. They came from the collection of the Dowager Empress of China.”)
“As you go around the corner, stop and look through the clear glass in the center of the chapel window. You will see the altar, and on this altar is a little tabernacle. On top of the tabernacle you will see a beautiful golden sunburst. In the center is a glass container holding a sliver of the true cross. This was given to me by my friend, Clare Booth Luce, when she was the Ambassador to Italy and had her first audience with the Pope. He gave this to her, and she gave it to me to put in the chapel of the Fairy Castle.”
Twelve Meditations on a Dollhouse | II. Meditation on the Dining Room
The Dining Room. Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle. (Museum of Science and Industry. Chicago.)
“The tapestries on the wall, which are needlepoint made in Vienna, are the smallest stitches that have ever been stitched.”
Twelve Meditations on a Dollhouse | I. Meditation on the Kitchen
The Kitchen. Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle. (Museum of Science and Industry. Chicago.)
“The copper stove in the back of the room is the stove in which the wicked witch locked Hansel and Gretel.”
Twelve Meditations on a Dollhouse | Prologue
At the height of her popularity in the 1920s, film star Colleen Moore earned, it is said, a million dollars a year. In 1928 she commissioned the creation of a massive dollhouse to house her collection of miniatures.
Architect and film set designer Horace Jackson created the floor plan and layout of the dollhouse. “The architecture must have no sense of reality,” Jackson said. “We must invent a structure that is everybody’s conception of an enchanted castle.”
Completed in 1935, the dollhouse was exhibited throughout the United States and Canada to raise money for children’s charities. Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry acquired it in 1949, and there Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle, as it is now called, remains.
My Favorite Pit Toilet
Ever. (Tapley Woods. Jo Daviess County, Illinois. US of A.)
The World of Ivor Cutler
Toilet rolls. Ivor Cutler.
The World of Ivor Cutler features photographs of Ivor Cutler’s flat, taken by Ivor Cutler. Captions by Ivor Cutler. These were originally sent by Ivor to his friend John Knutas, with whom Ivor had a correspondence over many years.
You can find the series at ivorcutler.org.
Holiday Jewelry Commercials in Need of New Copy
Diamond Dick opens the little box; she shows the weakness he likes and reaches for him, leading with the puppies he bought for her last year–and the recession is over.
Captions?
The New Luby’s Prototype
The new Luby’s prototype elevates the cafeteria experience with an upscale design and open floor plan. The restaurant’s exterior incorporates limestone, wood and stucco to invoke the appeal of the Texas Hill Country. A vaulted entrance guides customers through the center of the dining room to the serving line. An open-view kitchen provides enhanced visibility and ambiance, while oversized windows surrounding the dining room present an abundance of natural light.
This “next generation” cafeteria offers a more contemporary look and feel with upscale features that include granite surfaces, exposed wood ceilings, terrazzo floors and cherry wood walls. The restaurant also features a covered seating area on the outdoor patio.
An elevated cafeteria experience is no longer a cafeteria experience.
The new Luby’s prototype is no longer a Luby’s.
Inside The Hut
So I’m renovating my work hut, and this is a photograph from stage 1 of the process. I’ve insulated the whole interior with space blankets and now I’m fronting it all off with thermal aluminium foil. After that, I’ll lay down some carpet underlay, with carpets and rugs over that, and Bedouin tent-style roof drapes from eave to eave, via the apex of the roof, with wooden tent poles. Looks like a little wooden cabin in a field from the outside, but inside will be silver factory meets desert gypsy caravan. That’s what I’m working on, anyway. I am the insulation queen, these days.
from the comments
I figure if they can build elaborate nests with air conditioning and whole underground farms, and can build boats to get across flood waters–they might also be able to locate a discarded sex doll and inhabit it in such a way as to meet interesting people and exchange nutrients.
“Hezlow thair” he said, offering his hand–but then inexplicably rubbing his head against hers, there in the crowded elevator. “Might yew haz some sugarz for me? Ah–I yam smelling your anzer.”
“Suddenly his kiss was…flowing. At last I pulled away– and he was gone. Except for his clothes. Did he just leave me in the cabana and head naked for the pool? I took a step but my legs wobbled–and there was a terrible humming in my head….”
“The first thing that aroused suspicion was the fact that officer Hormiga, standing in line at the food bank, was weeping ants. Later the patrol car was found crushed–and upside down on top of a tall building.” (Thanks, Mike.)
Yeah, Michael–thanks a lot.
Overheard
“Do you guys sell wall-mounted bottle openers?”
Don’t Waste It–Work It In
They are the creations of Dan Phillips, 64, who has had an astonishingly varied life, working as an intelligence officer in the Army, a college dance instructor, an antiques dealer and a syndicated cryptogram puzzle maker. About 12 years ago, Mr. Phillips began his latest career: building low-income housing out of trash.
Your call is so valuable
(Via I do believe I came with a hat.)
attention to detail
Audi has a reputation for the quality of the interiors of their cars.
It seems that Audi’s “obsession for attention to detail” is so rigorous that it created a Nose Team way back in 1985 to sniff all 500 or so bits that go into its interiors to be sure that nothing is overly noxious. The six-member Audi Nose Team is reportedly prohibited from wearing any scents to work, including perfume, shower gel or aftershave and is not allowed to eat garlic. No, we’re serious.
Como Dios manda | The way it’s supposed to be
Or, as my Toronto photo-friend Jannx put it: “On the Lam(p)”.
Speaking, as we were, of the circus
and of circus tradition . . .
The stone mansion at 10 St. Nicholas place in Upper Harlem, near 150th Street, was built in 1886 by circus legend James Bailey. Original, animal-themed stained glass windows decorate the façade, and inside the crumbling interior (it was once a funeral home and has fallen into decay), there is a warren of bright rooms and narrow corridors. The back garden is spacious but overgrown, and some people call it a “modern Grey Gardens.” The mansion is full of features from the original construction, but needs several million in repairs. But for a gorgeous historic stand-alone mansion that includes about 8,250 square feet of interior space, the price tag is a lot lower than you’d ever guess.
(New York Magazine via a reversecowpie tweet)
IKEA in Hell
In the mid seventies, when ABBA topped the music charts, Sweden was just putting the finishing touches on its giant civil defense nuclear bunker outside Stockholm, called the Elephant.