god, AND

Major sidebar. I need to write more about how really personally involved people (women) get in the lives of certain historical personages. I have noticed this most with:

Catherine of Aragon
Anne Boleyn
Abigail Adams***

People are talking about these women like they were their next door neighbors.

I once stumbled upon a website that was serving as a weird memorial/shrine to Abigail Adams. There was an animated gif "eternal flame" followed by THOUSANDS OF comments and notes which were all personally addressed to her in a very familiar way. Like a patron saint. It's weird, completely unexpected, but at least they're idolizing someone who warranted it instead of an actual saint of made-up virtue.

This is just a personal memo for later. Major thesis forthcoming about the people out there who refer to Catherine of Aragon as "my girl Cat."

In case you were wondering

...Where I stand on the Elizabeth I locket ring. I think it might NOT be Anne. The girl in the portrait looks fair, and Anne was unequivocally famous for her dark hair and darker eyes. Her olive skin was much noted in a day when the standard of beauty was firmly in favor of ultra white skin and other Aryan features. There's no reason to believe she would ever have been portrayed otherwise, even after death.

Is it too strange to think that Elizabeth could have been honoring someone else? Even her bitch sister Mary seems to resemble the portrait (as a girl) more than AB. Not that I would expect Elizabeth to feel emotionally beholden to Mary, but she had far more of a relationship with her.

Anyway, just muddying the waters, it could very well be Anne. I'm sure Elizabeth had issues.


Close-up of the portrait thought to be Anne.

The ring was removed from Elizabeth's finger when she died. She apparently wore it faithfully for about 25 or 30 years after its commission in the 1570s. I believe the locket aspect of the ring was generally unknown until she died, but I'm not digging sources up PERSONAL BLOG = secondhand information is a go. This isn't the news!

One thing I love about situations in which crucial details are lost forever is that you are absolutely unable to not wager your own hilarious opinions about what happened.

Usually the hypotheses of other people just piss me off, but I love to see people interested in convoluted historical interpersonal drama. And translating it in their own retarded vernacular. Kind of like I do. While casually reading as you do about Catherine of Aragon and her claim that she was the rightful queen to Henry VIII because she had never consummated her prior marriage with his brother Arthur, who died, I read this comment:

"i dont understand this queen. her and arthur, didnt a queen and king consumate there marriage the night after there married. unless something was up."

Excellent sleuthing! Surely something indeed WAS UP! Can't fault the girl, she quickly arrived at a 500 year old debate that still roils among Tudor biographers. But wait, how does she know what "consummate" means when she still doesn't have their/there in order?

****
ETA: I take it back. Looking at the ring again, it does totally look like Anne Boleyn. It's still an awesome ring/story.

My new favorite tumblr

The daily travails of a lesbian construction worker in New York. Or as she puts it, "The deranged experiences of a queer woman in a male-dominated industry."

Male readers may be put off by her generally sharpened and critical view of the men she encounters, but get real, buddies: a woman (a gay one!) living that far off the grid of accepted female behavior/careers is going to receive the most asinine, outrageous, pathetic commentary from the men she has to work with. Shit they wouldn't have the courage to say to each other, yet they feel emboldened and entitled to with her.

The types discussed aren't salt-of-the-earth workaday dudes. They're assholes who actually quit jobs to evade their five child support garnishments, falsely claim "exempt" on their federal taxes for 10 years, and draw dicks on their female coworker's gear. And those are just the things they brag about! I'd hate to hear the stories they're ashamed of. You hear a lot of interesting tales working at a staffing agency with a huge construction division.

I love her writing style. Casual as speaking, hilarious and full of inviolable reason. She writes the way I that I feel when words fail me, and sometimes they do. These are the times when I can only close my eyes and put my arms in the air in a sort of primitive gesture of distress.

"Hoochie Beach" is my favorite.

Creepy Laura

Another Oddities referral.

I love Laura, the mortician/clothing designer/model. Unabashedly, delightfully weird.



Can't find one without the ad.

Relaxing on her cooling table in a dress of her own design.

www.lauraflook.net

Weird Arizona Highways commemorative video, I guess very early 80s. Ever-fantastical, magical!



Interesting for the Goldwater photography stories. Although Dolan Ellis really, really makes me want to kill myself. I had a weird flashback of 80s/90s Nickelodeon and that Fred Penner show. Terrible!

Stay a while

I found myself trapped alone in here for a while today. It's a lovely 1901 bungalow with apparent Amityville tendencies. Right now it contains an exhibit about the restoration of a nearby Victorian and is full of strange and random items found in and under the house, like books and letters and bottles under the porch and 100 year old broken kitchen implements from under the ground floor.

The very average key lock turns smoothly from the outside, but once you are in, you are in. I spent about five long minutes jiggling, turning, and struggling before moving to the back door which was even more immobile than the front. So I just stood in the hall for a while, wondering what to do, my fingers sore from the repetition of trying to turn a key in a lock that had somehow been re-keyed in the last 20 minutes. After trying the front door again, getting nothing, and stamping and screaming REALLY?!?!?, the lock clicked over.

George Harrison HBO film

The trailer is a little too "...In a WORLD" - Does GH really require a Hollywood intro? Well, you know what I say. It'll be on 10/5 and 10/6.

Pulp got back together.

For a minute, a few months ago.

Not sure if I've mentioned how I love Jarvis, but I do. In fact, I like him more the older and rougher he gets. The voice somehow gets sexier*, the appearance is no longer that of a very tall, very young girl, so I guess he is still peaking. Seems like he can't hit certain high notes anymore. That's ok, JVC. ilu.



His weekly radio show: Jarvis' Sunday Service

* i just need to point out that i hate the word "sexy" - one of my least favorite adjectives and oh hell no is it ever a noun. but i'm beat! i got nothing! there's no other word for it. aiight get out of here, this never happened.

Camping this weekend was fun, and ridiculous. I need to make a note to not wander aimlessly in the woods by myself (this time the phone could not have helped me) but I survived yet again.

I lost my fucking mind staring at the stars in a clearing at midnight. I can't remember having seen them so clearly ever in my life, and it was the most amazing thing. I couldn't even take it all in. There were too many places to look. Lost my fucking MIND.

Being "in nature" is always very thrilling for me and I turn into a very excited child, perhaps one at Disneyland. Screaming and carrying on when I see animals. etc.


One day I'll use one of the cameras collecting dust in drawers and on shelves instead of my phone.