12 Indicted On Hate Crimes Charges For Hair Cutting Assaults Led By Break-Off Amish Group
I think this is my favorite story of 2011.
Hidden Mothers
This was a practice where the mother…often disguised or hiding often under a spread…holds her baby tightly for the photographer to insure a sharply focused image.
Hidden Mother : Tintypes and Cabinets Flickr Group
(via Roslyn Cook / Retronaut)
The Origin of the Yarmouth Bloater
Exactly when the first Yarmouth Bloater was made is not clear, but it is believed to have been around 1835 when a herring-curer named Bishop had a happy misfortune.
It transpired that one night a quantity of fresh herrings had been missed and not processed, so as not to waste these fish Bishop is said to have covered them in salt, spitted them and hung them up in the smokehouse.
On his return the next morning he was amazed by their colour and taste and so proceeded to perfect the cure.
In 1919 a Mr J W de Caux J.P. wrote, “A real Yarmouth bloater is a full herring slightly salted and smoked; it should be eaten within two or three days, as it will not ‘keep’ long, and soon loses its flavour.”
Product Description
Get that classic 19th century look with our Gentlemen’s Moustache, a costume facial hair accessory. This costume facial hair is available in a variety of colors including black, blonde, light grey, dark grey, light brown and medium brown. Our Gentleman’s Moustache costume facial hair is made of 100% human hair on a lace back for a realistic look. Spirit gum is needed to apply this item. This human hair moustache facial hair would make a great accessory to a Englishman, Colonel Major or other 19th century character costume. One size fits most adults.
quote out of context
ANYWAYS: An Antarctic Mystery, as far as I can tell, is based on the idea that The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is, in fact, completely true, and these later adventurers are going to follow up on his report. I am certain that I am failing to communicate how completely awesome this is, that Jules Verne is in some meta, wonderful way based an entire novel on the premise that the framing of yet another foundational adventure novel is in fact not a framing but a true thing. And he spends SIXTY PAGES setting this up.
So
Remember when Phil posted a weird rap battle video, and then I said it was in response to this guy who may or may not have been inspired by the first guy’s first video about tea, which was even more awesome?
Well, some guy at a blog I’ve never heard of wrote an article about them.
“The Wire” as a 19th Century Serialized Novel
Joy Delyria and Sean Michael Robinson have produced a brilliant satirical essay that re-imagines the acclaimed television series The Wire as a 19th-Century serialized novel. It’s wonderful, and will give you a reason to use the word “Dickensian” today.
Via Geekosystem
Thanks, @amandagt via @bittman, @kbittie, and @adevries18.
Tweet of the day, honorable mention
Specifically, he’s been tweeting gorgeous photos from this collection all afternoon.
The Presidential Ham
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: An imposing, handsome figure, Buchanan stood a bit over 6 feet tall and had broad shoulders and a sizable paunch. He had a very fair complexion and large blue eyes. His massive forehead receded to silky gray hair, which he wore swept up and back. He had rather small feet for his size and took quick steps. His most distinctive feature was a wryneck; his head was habitually cocked to the left. Unlike most victims of wryneck, his was not caused by muscular malfunction. Rather, it was a result of a peculiar eye disorder. One eye was nearsighted, the other farsighted; also the left eyeball was pitched higher in the socket than was the right. To compensate, Buchanan early developed the habit of cocking his head and closing one eye. If he were talking to someone or examining something close up, he would wink shut the farsighted eye; if gazing in the distance, he closed the nearsighted one. For reading he found it easier to focus with a candle in front of his eyes. He apparently coped well with the disorder, for he read much throughout his career and did not wear glasses until near the end of his life. His health otherwise generally was sound. One of Buchanan’s eyelids twitched, which, combined with his personality (in 1825, at least) led a modern Jackson biographer to describe Buchanan as a “winking, fidgeting little busybody.”
Historic Property for Sale
Old Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas.
Ten-plus bedrooms. Seven-plus bathrooms. Twenty-five thousand square feet.Three-plus acres.
Kinda pricey for the likes of us, though. Listed at $975K.
But maybe we could bargain ‘em down. The seller is described as “very motivated.”
Oh, and there’s this: “The fort sits on the banks of the Rio Grande River across from Ciudad Juarez.”
Spelled Cuidad Juarez in the listing. Indeed.
The Order of Myths
A film by Margaret Brown. Trailer:
Read more
Now you know
The United Kingdom Explained from Colin Grey on Vimeo.
What Cindy said
Having just had our groceries rung up by a weathered, late-fifties, husky-voiced strawberry blonde with heavy eyeliner:
I don’t think Miss Kitty was much of a checker.
Murdered Kansas Abolitionist David Hoyt’s Bloodstained Map and Condolence Letter
What he was doing in the area is not entirely clear. Some reports indicate that he was attempting to negotiate a truce with proslavery elements; others suggest that he was “testing” the intentions of Southerners in Lawrence by entering a proslavery gathering unarmed.
The Cowan’s Auctions copywriter continues,
Included with the lot is a 3pp letter, 5 x 8″, Leominster, 11 Sept. 1856. The letter is from James F. Legate to the parents of David Hoyt expressing his condolences and trying offer some solace in the idea that their son gave his life …that Freedom might live….Take comfort for he died that Liberty might come to the oppressed people of Kansas…. Incredibly, he also asks Hoyt’s parents if they know anyone else who will come carry on the fight: I have been laboring ever since in the State to get a party to go back with me. Has he no friends to go & do battle for which he fell a [martyr]? If so I’ll take them to the spot where he yielded his young, useful life….
Both map and letter sold last month for a mere $705.
Possible moral of the story: Do not “test” the intentions of Southerners while unarmed.
(Via SC.)
Donal Og
This is a translation of an Irish poem, I first heard it in The Dead, and though I don’t usually like poetry I liked this quite a bit. I was looking around for the scene where it’s recited and it doesn’t appear to be on the youtubes, so I sat down and made a recording of it.
[audio src="http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Output.mp3"]
Electricity | Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
Deron and I been going back and forth about Walt Whitman, and and now I am meditating on Whitman and my other main man, William Blake. Sometimes one or the other of them feels present to me in a way that is electrifying.
High Society
With the illicit drug trade estimated by the UN at $320 billion (£200bn) a year and new drugs constantly appearing on the streets and the internet, it can seem as if we are in the grip of an unprecedented level of addiction. Yet the use of psychoactive drugs is nothing new, and indeed our most familiar ones – alcohol, coffee and tobacco – have all been illegal in the past.
From ancient Egyptian poppy tinctures to Victorian cocaine eye drops, Native American peyote rites to the salons of the French Romantics, mind-altering drugs have a rich history. ‘High Society’ will explore the paths by which these drugs were first discovered – from apothecaries’ workshops to state-of-the-art laboratories – and how they came to be simultaneously fetishised and demonised in today’s culture.
High Society exhibition. 11 November 2010 – 27 February 2011 at the Wellcome Collection, London.
from the comments
Fitzgerald certainly doesn’t merit J’s scolding, but she has been gone now for 10 years, and her last novel was in 1995, so that’s practically a generation that she’s been gone. Alan Garner is still at work, though he works very slowly and carefully and doesn’t churn things out like so many ‘literary’ writers do. And I must say I quite liked Barnes’s Arthur and George. But as most of you know, most of fiction reading is a century or more back, and while those authors could often over-analyze and over-describe, they have a mastery of the English language, and tone, and setting, and characterization, that one doesn’t much see today. At the moment I am actually reading Tarzan of the Apes–1914. Of course it’s American, not English, though Tarzan is English, and it was written for the pulps–but Burroughs’s command of English is much sharper than most of what is written as ‘literature’ nowadays. He’s full of stereotype and cliched thought, but he handles the language rather well. I find this also true of Dracula, which is beautifully written, though it’s a ‘genre’ book, and I would certainly rank it above Frankenstein, which is also no slouch with the language. In the Victorian period (sorry, Cindy) the ‘sensation’ novels could be just as well-written and just as thoughtfully produced as the literary fiction–the difference was not writing skill, but subject matter. The spread of universal education and ‘dime novels’ may have had as much to do with the dumbing down of writing as anything else.
Breakfast This Morning
Black coffee in a metal cup and a little plate of black beans.
Where’s my sourdough biscuit? Hey there! Cookie!
“Being a big guy certainly has its advantages”
Donkey, don’t you dare
I’m watching the film Canyon Passage (Jacques Tourneur, 1946) for the first time, and in it Hoagy Carmichael plays the singing proprietor of a trading post in frontier Oregon. Sooner or later he’s going to sing “Old Buttermilk Sky”, but he made his first appearance astride a donkey, strumming and singing a tune called “Rogue River Valley”.
I was disappointed the second time he sang the song’s refrain. It begins:
“Oh, donkey, don’t you dare to dally”
The first time round I’d heard:
“Oh, donkey, don’t you dare to doubt me”
That is all.
Update: If you give this a look and a listen, you’ll realize that “Donkey, don’t you dare to doubt me” was pure wishful hearing on my part.
I live to embellish. I hear what I deserve.
There is thunder in His footsteps and lightning in His fists
i hate this hip hop version its just for the sound and not the gory of the lord
Randy Taylor on Antiques Roadshow
What the fuck is this?
Ask Swearengen
Dear Al,
I am at this moment sitting in the first-class compartment on a flight across the American continent. There is good wi-fi and good drink, but also a number of people for whom I have no patience. What think ye?
Faux Richard Branson
- – -
Dick,
Sometimes I wish we could just hit ‘em over the head, rob ‘em, and throw their bodies in the creek.
Superciliously,
Al
Ask Swearengen
Dear Al,When you find yourself in the Costco picking up whiskey and canned peaches, what do you do when you get in the self-checkout line and find yourself behind some hoople-head who don’t know how to use it?Onanistic in OK- – -
Dear Self-Stroker,
I’ll tell you this, son, you can mark my words, Crazy Horse went into Little Bighorn, bought his people one good, long-term ass-fucking. You do not want to be a dirt-worshipping heathen from this fucking point forward. Pardon my French.
Love,
Al
