GIANT SIGH

"In the mid 1960s, the city of Westbrook, Maine had listed this house as one of the next houses to be condemned and demolished. My folks bought it for very little money, mostly the back-taxes owed to the city. By the time we moved in, our entire neighborhood were already terrified of the place, adults included. The place was seriously creepy. It had no insulation, broken pipes everywhere, thousands of bats residing in the3rd floor attic, scary bad wiring and it had weathered to a dull slate-gray color and hadn't seen a speck of paint in well over 40 years."

by flickr user SurrendrDorothy. There's more info.

I would have done anything to have had that experience as a child. I love moldering old houses. I am kind of annoyed by restoration, in fact, though I realize it's often necessary. Things (and people - other story) should show their age. It's what makes them interesting.

The museum I intern with is an 1895 Victorian dollhouse. It is a perfect showpiece, fully restored and staged in high Victorian frilliness. When the city bought it in 1970, it was a dirty disaster of a rooming house filled with drug addicts, hippies and fleas. There are tons of poster sized photos from before the renovation, and I can't get enough of them. I wish the museum would try to get in contact with people who lived there before they all die off. I need some first person accounts. The house is pretty magnificent, but I feel blah about all the glossy grandeur. It looks a little fake.

Victorian Houses tumblr.



My museum in the 30s or 40s. Peeling paint & screened upper porch.

19th Century Medical Crap

Force! The Master Rebuilder tonic.

"This preparation consists of a highly scientific combination of properties whose splendid reconstructive and restorative values are thoroughly recognized by all standard medical authorities." O RLY

Whatever it was is still in there, sliding thickly around. Grode. If you can make out the image, it's an Adonis type...forcing open the mouth of a struggling grizzly bear. Force!



Glass eye. It's like a hollow shell. I always imagined them to be solid glass balls, but I guess that would create a weight such that your fake eye could pop out any time! No bending over without closing your eyes first.

Dolly

70s Dolly kind of reminds me of my grandma. Something about being a little plump and decisively stuffed into something polyester.

You know what I mean.

Oh,

Another perfect analogy for life

Two interesting things: Fry and genealogy

Firstly I have to state that, as he touches on in the program, genealogy is kind of bullshit.

Due to limitations of time and records, we can only focus on certain of the innumerable ancestors we have. Also, we pick and choose which ones are the "best" and just focus on them, forgetting that we have all the DNA from the uninteresting and unknown ones too. Also, how far back does it cease to matter? How related ARE you to that 14th century King of England, and, if you're prepared to count that, then you have just gained a million distant cousins who are also "heirs". Great. More family to dislike and ignore.

My grandfather's surname has been in the states for ever. Someone did a tremendous amount of research on them and I came across most of the findings a couple of years ago. The oldest record is in the 1680s, I think. I keep meaning to check if anyone came on any boats of note (Mayflower power) but something always distracts me, and I have to question that even that recently in history, does it matter? Following one surname through endless branches disqualifies thousands of other relatives. I still occasionally dabble partly because it's a great way to sharpen researching skills and partly because it does put a human face on history: yours.



Have I mentioned that I love Stephen Fry? I adore him. I love every second of him. I listen to him speaking when I'm at the gym, instead of music.

Stupid movies encourage literacy?

No, I'm asking. Do they?

The Raven, with John Cusak as E. A. Poe.

The plot is super fucked up ridic. I think it's about a serial killer who starts using Poe stories as inspiration. The authorities become suspicious that it is Poe, who then becomes...a gun-waving vigilante on the trail of the killer? Normally, I frown on movies using this much license with history, especially with someone like Poe who is already very misunderstood to begin with (ilu eap). I frown because people are very stupid, and they believe what they see actually happened. People really believe that Pocahontas looked like a sexy Filipino Bratz doll and sang like Vanessa Williams, you know?

But then I thought, welllllll...Maybe some idiots people will go to the bookstore after this (Amazon) and pick up a collected works of EAP instead of watching another round of 16 and Pregnant. It could happen. In this case I am going to side with "all attention is good attention" within reason.

Next! Anonymous, a fiction about the ~intrigue~ behind who really penned the works of Shakespeare.



I just found out about this. Again, maybe people will be interested and will want to research and read for themselves about the mystery of Wilhelm Von Shakespeare.

This strangely optimistic pragmatic approach to awful media is the result of my toilings with museum education, and from trying to figure out how to make people care about things they aren't aware of. It's kind of fascinating. It seems to be making me less of a dick! Interesting.

Because normally this blog post would just go like

FUCK THIS MOVIE
FUCK THAT MOVIE
LEAVE IT ALONE
THE TRUTH IS INTERESTING ENOUGHH
ILU EAPPPPP

etc.

PINTEREST

Pinterest is sort of like a highly sophisticated Tumblr. You can categorize and remark upon all of the little pictures you save. At first, I thought the site was just going to be twenty thousand postings of Japanese teen street fashion and the latest crap from West Elm, but it's actually turned out to be quite useful.

I'm obsessed with DIY CRAFTS and MAKING THINGS. Result, I have a million fucking bookmarked sites with ideas I meant to remember and then never return to. Pinterest allows me to categorize and comment upon all of the little ideas. The unfortunate side effect is I keep sort of veering over to the site while trying to WORK. One minute I'm writing a paper and the next I'm wondering about how to get a lamp fitting into a mason jar. WTF. I already have internet-induced ADD in which I pretend to be able to successfully multi-task but then just end up doing one useless thing for 45 minutes.

MY PINTEREST SITE!!

If you are interested in DIY ideas, different ways to braid your hair, and pictures of horses, then this is the place.

HIS NAME IS CESARE

why don't you have wings to fly with?

Thanks, Lah'

MTE.

First, I was going to say that I love when widely accepted or celebrated people suddenly bust with something like this. It's not that he's debunked anything, he simply calls attention to the flagrant absurdity of it all. I feel a bit smug when I see these things, like, Yeah. Now what, Seinfeld fans*? Your dad just dissed Jesus! But then I realized that most people probably can't stand Larry David. They just have no choice.


___
* this is a trick reference, because EVERYONE IS A SEINFELD FAN.

Desi?

People often ask me if I am a Latina. This usually just ends up pissing me off for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because they often don't seem to believe me when I say I'm not, as if I would lie about it. Secondly, I don't actually look Hispanic, and the only people who insist that I do are just white midwesterners who can't tell brown people apart anyway.

THAT SAID,

Look at this Ricky Ricardo looking guy! He DOES look a little espanish, no? My grandfather. A 2nd generation American of German heritage only. I guess I have to add, Allegedly.