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Monday Links from the Bench vol. CCCXXIX

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    Monday Links from the Bench vol. CCCXXIX

    You'll have to wait a bit longer for the injunction on celebrity tittle-tattle to be lifted, so for today you're stuck with this lot
    • The Voyeur’s Motel - "I know a married man and father of two who bought a twenty-one-room motel near Denver many years ago in order to become its resident voyeur. With the assistance of his wife, he cut rectangular holes measuring six by fourteen inches in the ceilings of more than a dozen rooms. Then he covered the openings with louvred aluminum screens that looked like ventilation grilles but were actually observation vents that allowed him, while he knelt in the attic, to see his guests in the rooms below. He watched them for decades, while keeping an exhaustive written record of what he saw and heard. Never once, during all those years, was he caught." Gay Talese on the “research” of Gerald Foos who, you’ll be pleased to hear, is no longer in the hotel business.

    • In China's City of Yixing, Everyone Is Fluent in Pottery - ”’A teapot is like a woman,’ Ping Yu (虞萍) says, holding up a teapot she made. It’s small and plump, hued a deep orange-red. She brushes her finger on the handle's curvature from bottom to top, taps the lid, and gently touches the spout. ‘She should be proportional; the lines should match up.’” How a combination of local clay and traditional craftsmanship believed to date back to Neolithic times produces the best teapots in the world.

    • Ambergris: How To Tell If You’ve Struck Gold With ‘Whale Vomit’ Or Stumbled Upon Sewage - Not easy to tell the difference, apparently, though worth it if you find the former: ”Described as floating gold, it’s a highly-prized natural treasure used by past kings and still sought after by artisan perfumers. According to reports, this latest could be worth £50,000 (US$71,000) for a 1.57kg lump.”

    • Joe Patten’s Fox Theatre Apartment - Joe Patten, who died just over a week ago, lived for nearly forty years in an apartment that’s part of a remarkably ornate theatre in Atlanta: ”Joe's first official connection with the Fox began in 1963 when he, as a volunteer, repaired and restored the Moller pipe organ which had been rendered unplayable for fifteen years… Still a volunteer in 1975, Joe Patten was pivotal in saving the Theatre when it was in eminent danger of being demolished by Southern Bell.”

    • US satellite started transmitting 46 years after being abandoned in 1967 - "An American satellite, abandoned in 1967 as a piece of Space Junk has begun transmitting again after 46 years." A bit like that Star Trek film with Voyager, though rather less dramatic

    • The Reckoning - "Fifty years ago, when Claire Wilson was eighteen, she was critically wounded during the 1966 University of Texas Tower shooting—the first massacre of its kind. How does the path of a bullet change a life?" The story of Claire’s long struggle to come to terms with the incident: her unborn son and her boyfriend were among those killed.

    • Keeping Up with the Queen - To celebrate HM’s birthday later this week: ”Can you keep up with the Queen? Enter your age to find out what Her Majesty was doing at your age.“ “Something a lot more interesting than you are” seems to sum it up

    • Actors Have Been Dying to Play the Skeletal Role of Yorick in ‘Hamlet’ - A lot of people have aspirations to appear in Hamlet after their death: ”Getting the role was one of [pianist André] Tchaíkowsky’s last wishes before he died in 1982 of cancer, and he’d included a proviso for his body’s donation to science that his skull ‘be offered by the institution receiving my body to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use in theatrical performance.’”

    • Stories We've Seen Too Often and Horror Stories We've Seen Too Often - Yet another list of tired story ideas, this time the ones that have plagued the editors of Strange Horizons. ”We often receive stories that match items on this list but that have cover letters saying ‘This matches something on your list, but I've done something new and unique and different with it.’ Such stories almost always turn out to be very similar to other stories we've seen. If your story is a close match to one or more items on this list (especially if it's a close enough match that you feel the need to include a cover-letter disclaimer), you may want to consult some friends who are well-read in the genre before deciding that it's probably different from what we see all the time.”

    • Ostensibly Ordinary: Pyongyang - Michał Huniewicz joins the illustrious list of Western visitors to North Korea who’ve managed to take a load of photographs they weren’t supposed to and get back out again with them.



      ”Meet our guides. We could not leave the hotel area without them. She was clearly the good cop, and even sang a song for us. He was the bad cop, and we reasoned he must have had some military authority, as soldiers would salute him upon inspecting his papers.”


    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    Top Korea advice as ever NF

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by barrydidit View Post
      Top Korea advice as ever NF
      The photos weren't exactly mind blowing!

      Except for the one of dear leader and the ketchup bottle.

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by BrilloPad View Post
        The photos weren't exactly mind blowing!
        Unless you're FLC looking for a new outfit for NLyUK to wear

        [img 33 - "guide"] for example

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by BrilloPad View Post
          The photos weren't exactly mind blowing!

          Except for the one of dear leader and the ketchup bottle.
          I thought some of them were very interesting, though admittedly my great interest in North Korea probably coloured my perception a little. The ones in the shop-he-shouldn't-have-been-in were good.

          I can't remember if it was in something I've posted here in the past or maybe in one of the several books I've read on the country, but there was an occasion when a visiting Westerner was taken to look around the token Pyongyang department store that outsiders are shown. It was quite clear that all the people in there, staff and customers alike, were just playing a part; in particular, nobody was actually buying anything. So, just for fun, he took something off a shelf and tried to buy it. Cue obvious panic on the part of the people behind the till who hadn't been prepared for this and didn't know what to do. After a few moments of confusion his minders jumped in and told him they'd take care of having the item delivered to his hotel, quickly bundled him out of the store, and took him away to look at some big statues

          Comment


            #6
            I enjoyed the DPRK pics, thanks!

            Comment


              #7
              Fascinating pictures of DPRK. Nick, Which of the books would you recommend, is Escape from Camp 14 any good?

              qh
              He had a negative bluety on a quackhandle and was quadraspazzed on a lifeglug.

              I look forward to your all knowing and likely sarcastic and unhelpful reply.

              Comment


                #8
                That voyeur thing was weird, I sort of felt like the writer drawn in and then perverse.

                Thanks
                Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by NickFitz View Post
                  • Ostensibly Ordinary: Pyongyang - Michał Huniewicz joins the illustrious list of Western visitors to North Korea who’ve managed to take a load of photographs they weren’t supposed to and get back out again with them.



                    ”Meet our guides. We could not leave the hotel area without them. She was clearly the good cop, and even sang a song for us. He was the bad cop, and we reasoned he must have had some military authority, as soldiers would salute him upon inspecting his papers.”
                  Here's some more interesting stuff on Pyongyang's metro system....

                  This is Yonggwang Station, the second and final stop for most tourists of the past. This arbitrary restriction spawned conspiracy theories that the Pyongyang Metro was merely two stations in total, and the well-dressed commuters were just actors assigned to delude visitors into the impression of an extensive public transport system that didn’t actually exist.
                  Stopping All Stations - The Pyongyang Metro - Earth Nutshell

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by quackhandle View Post
                    Fascinating pictures of DPRK. Nick, Which of the books would you recommend, is Escape from Camp 14 any good?

                    qh
                    Yes, Escape from Camp 14 is excellent. Also worth a read are Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader and Nothing to Envy. (I've also got The Aquariums of Pyongyang but I haven't read it yet.)

                    Comment

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