originally published in arizona highways, by john running.

kittle

perversely, i secretly enjoy that this cat full-out attacks other people (after provocation) in full biting-squid back-leg-kicking manner, but not me. or rarely me. and not because she thinks i'm special. she's just a bully, and if you approach her in fear, you're fucked. scary.

hear the mandrake grone

i'm taking this class on "witchcraft and heresy" in europe in the dark ages. i had to take it because i waited until the week before the semester began to register, and this was the only thing left lying around. i would have eaten this shit up in high school, but as it is, i'm put right the fuck out at having to immerse myself in the pastoral woman-hating hyper religious days of medieval england and france. fuck them, you know? there are a lot of things i'd rather be doing than reading about old women getting the rack and then burnt because some asshole accused her of witchcraft because her goat ate his garden. not a euphemism. who knows!

so most of the time i am reading the minutes of various witch trials and the confessions of the accused. they're what you'd expect, pathetic and full of leading questions. the desperation of the accused and the salacious allegations and accounts of what was said during torture is sickening. but i came across this play that i had never heard of, the masque of queens, written by ben jonson, who displays an obvious personal preoccupation with then-contemporary witchcraft theory. parts of it amused me; you can read most of it here. this excerpt is about what a bunch of nasty old witches have been up to in preparation for some shenanigans.

T H E

M A S Q U E

O F
Q U E E N S,

Celebrated from the House of FAME:

B Y T H E

Q U E E N of Great Britain, with her L A D I E S.
At W H I T E H A L L, Feb. 2. 1609.

Let us disturb it then, (c) and blast the Light;
Mix Hell with Heaven, and make Nature fight
Within her self; loose the whole henge of Things;
And cause the ends run back, into their Springs.
Hag. What our Dame bids us do,
We are ready for. Dam. Then fall too.
(d) But first relate me, what you have sought,
Where you have been, and what you have brought.

I Last Night, lay all alone
O'the Ground, to hear the Mandrake grone;
And pluckt him up, though he grew full low;
And, as I had done, the Cock did crow.

I Had a Dagger: what did I with that?

Kill'd an Infant, to have his fat.
A Piper it got, at a Church-ale,
I bad him, again blow Wind i'th' Tail.

A Murderer, yonder, was hung in Chains,

The Sun and the Wind had shrunk his Veins;

I bit off a Sinew; I clipp'd his Hair,
I brought off his Rags, that danc'd i'th' Air.

The Scrich-owls Eggs, and the Feathers black,
The Blood of the Frog, and the Bone in his back,
I have been getting; and made of his Skin
A purset, to keep Sir Cranion in.

And I ha'been plucking (Plants among)
Hemlock, Henbane, Adders-tongue,
Night-shade, Moon-wort, Libbards-bane;
And twise, by the Dogs, was like to be tane.

I Went to the Toad breeds under the Wall,

I charm'd him out, and he came at my call;
I scratch'd out the Eyes of the Owl before,
I tore the Bat's Wing; what would you have more?

inez upon her steed, "woodrow"

inez milholland, captioned as the prettiest suffragist in the country. nice to see little has changed in the dumbshit american media. a lot is said about the social and intellectual decline of america, but when, exactly, was our "apex"?

she was an early vassar grad, labor & civil rights lawyer and active in the pacifist movement leading up to WWI. here she is riding on washington in a nawsa parade in 1913.

unfortunately she died several years before the passage of the nineteenth amendment, and was re-cast as a martyr for the cause because of it.

I love old persons

"Brittany...like the North of France, or like that blond girl who was gyrating on the tv a few years ago?"

be careful

Someone

...really likes Augustine's "Confessions" -

Hint: it's not me.

more crap from thought catalog

Sassy kids.

Now Accepting Applications

She's so absurd that she belongs in another era, but she won me with her opening attacks upon short people. I have no problem with short persons, I'm just saying; live in a mushroom? That's funny.

"I have an almost never-ending list of personal flaws and past mistakes, yet I sit atop a golden throne of judgment,"

Well that doesn't ring any bells. It seems to be that being a total prick is sometimes really well-counterbalanced by owning and criticising one's assholish ways. That's my approach anyway.

http://8tracks.com/

I use this site every day at work. I've discovered things I wouldn't really expect to like, like Mariee Sioux. Not that there's anything unlikeable about her but anything that seems kind of hipstery cute just pisses me off. My only complaint is that when you choose the "soul" tag, 100 stupid mixes come up, "music to make you smile," "music that reminds me of my trip to france," blah blah blah.

I am looking for Sam Cooke, not the Sundays.

cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies

amazing. beautifully creepy, in a rose for emily sort of way.

"doilies are like dream-catchers," he says. doily-makers are a type. even i don't have much inclination to pick that one up. when i worked in picture framing, i hated the doilies. people would bring in outrageously sized things they had bought on vacation somewhere, some quaint township in the countryside somewhere in the u.k., a complex doily with perhaps the rustic image of a farmhouse or cow knotted inside. it took hundreds of stitches to get them down. and then what did you have? a fucking doily on a blue velvet mat in an oak frame!