Time to while away another grey afternoon:
Happy invoicing!
- Ermahgerddon: The Untold Story of the Ermahgerd Girl - "Meet Maggie Goldenberger, who helplessly watched an Internet meme spawn from her awkward adolescent photo. Except, maybe the “Gersberms” girl never existed the way we thought she did?" How a Polaroid photograph from around 2000 originally came to be taken, and eventually resurfaced as a meme.
- David Hemmings, Blow-Up and the Red Buildings on the Stockwell Road - On filmmaking in Swinging Sixties London: ”Antonioni thought the roads were a bit grey in Woolwich and had them painted black, and it was said that even pigeons were dyed so they were just the right sort of pigeons… Most people thought that Antonioni was only up to his old particular ways when they watched Hemmings drive his Rolls Royce down a long terrace of Victorian and Edwardian buildings, all painted entirely red. The buildings, however, really were that colour and were made up of dozens of properties all owned by the motorcycle spares company, Pride and Clarke, and every one painted red.”
- There Once Was a Dildo in Nantucket - With their husbands away for years at a time on whaling voyages, the housewives of nineteenth century Nantucket had to find other ways to pass the time: ”’Dildos have been found in chimneys,’ one mason had told me. ‘It should be obvious why they kept them there.’ ‘Why?’ I had asked, encouraged. ‘To keep warm.’”
- Lost & Found - "No one will ever be sure how John Donovan spent his last days on earth. What is nearly certain is that on May 6, 2005, as a blizzard dumped 8 inches of snow on Southern California’s Mt. San Jacinto, Donovan was trapped on the flanks of the 10,834-foot peak under an ocean of blinding whiteness." But a year after his disappearance, a lost couple found his backpack, and it helped to save them.
- Attention K-Mart Shoppers - Need some quarter-century old supermarket music? Fill yer boots: ”In the late 1980's and early 1990's, I worked for Kmart behind the service desk and the store played specific pre-recorded cassettes issued by corporate. This was background music, or perhaps you could call it elevator music. Anyways, I saved these tapes from the trash during this period… Until around 1992, the cassettes were rotated monthly. Then, they were replaced weekly. Finally sometime around 1993, satellite programming was intoduced which eliminated the need for these tapes altogether.” Bonus link: ”This is a digitized version of an in-store reel to reel tape that was played within a Kmart store in 1973. In my opinion, the opening Kmart jingle is the most important artifact of this recording, but the music and small number of commercials make it a great listen.”
- Coconuts in Medieval England Weren’t as Rare as Monty Python and the Holy Grail Made You Think - No swallows required: ”The whole scene concentrates on those coconuts. The put-upon straight-man of the film, Arthur, gamely tries to explain the existence of coconuts in medieval England (“they could have been carried”). The grail remains all but forgotten as the guards on the castle walls uproariously tear down his explanations. (“Are you suggesting that coconuts migrate?”)… Except medieval England was lousy with coconuts. No, really, and Monty Python may well have known it.”
- TV Show House Prices - Properties from four famous shows, with valuations then and now: ”A wonderful flat set on the 8th floor of a purpose-built block, offering a spacious reception room, lovely kitchen, three well-proportioned bedrooms, two bathrooms and a balcony with striking views. Perfectly situated in the heart of popular Peckham…”
- “Arabian Street Artists” Bomb Homeland: Why We Hacked an Award-Winning Series - In which Fox’s set dressers are unaccountably sloppy over checking the work of graffiti artists: ”The series has garnered the reputation of being the most bigoted show on television for its inaccurate, undifferentiated and highly biased depiction of Arabs, Pakistanis, and Afghans, as well as its gross misrepresentations of the cities of Beirut, Islamabad- and the so-called Muslim world in general… It was our moment to make our point by subverting the message using the show itself.” I believe this story has been covered by mainstream media over the past week, but you might as well read all about it from the horse’s mouth
- How Doctors Take Women's Pain Less Seriously - "When my wife was struck by mysterious, debilitating symptoms, our trip to the ER revealed the sexism inherent in emergency treatment." A terrible story of sloppy misdiagnosis
- Компакт-кассеты из СССР - Which Google Translate assures me means ”Compact Cassette from the USSR” - and that’s what this is a gallery of (Follow the thumbnail links to see the inlay cards, where available.)
Happy invoicing!
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