Buyer Beware

i'm house-shopping again. it has been...interesting.

i have saved a few choice photos that i have encountered during my search. i have to admit that i'm kind of disgusted, physically and psychologically, when i enter these musty, greasy, stranger houses. even though everything is gone but the handprints, i still feel this lingering cloud of other-people vibes that more often than not acts on me like a talking amityville house. probably because i spend too much time touring despondent old neighborhoods in search of original tile.

these pics are more about scary taste than anything else. not quite anything like some of the worst i've seen (during prior home searches - no time for shenanigans now), like the one that looked condemned, with the walls knocked out, the ceilings hanging, and a squatter who was luckily not home at the time. my favorite was beautifully derelict, though, in a gray gardens kind of way. painted pink probably before i was born, it had faded to a pale dusky orange and the indoor paint hung off the walls in foot long sheets. old heavy silk drapes were still on the windows and the fabric rubbed to dust in your fingers. seems like that's the only kind of place you can find all original these days.

one from the veto list.

ohhhh and it's so grimy looking.

...or had died when i was young

True Love, True Love by boudledidge

Connie Francis. I thought this was a super old folk song or something, but maybe Woody Guthrie wrote it? Who knows. But she sings it dark and sweet and tragic.

The Conspirator

Say, I'm actually kind of interested in this movie about Mary Surratt. It was produced by The American Film Company, which is dedicated to historical accuracy in its films, always a super sweet goal to have. At least it won't be infuriatingly retarded, or star Matthew McConaughey.

Stories and photos of the execution of the four conspirators sentenced to death have always been extra chilling to me. Execution and hanging weren't exactly unusual but for some reason, I find those pictures to be very disturbing, and her tension and fear jumps out of the frames. It must be her posture, however changed by a corset, a bag on her head and hands tied behind her back. She wasn't involved as heavily as the others and it seems that a lot of people felt she shouldn't be killed even then. I think her complicity had a lot more to do with her emotional relationship with Booth than anything else.

And I thought I got involved with the wrong people.

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.