The upcoming edition of CofC will be postponed indefinitely due to a bout of pneumonia that has laid your humble blogger low. This carnival has been great fun to compile, but also requires extra effort by the host because submissions tend to be, shall we say, either light or merely spam. For this reason, I believe we shall give it, and me, a rest for the time being.
If the picture at left whets your whistle, then by all means head on over to the source at Morbid Anatomy.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
- Lewis Carroll: "The Walrus and the Carpenter" (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)
A bit late off the blocks but none the worse for wear, welcome to the 15th Cabinet of Curiosities Blog Carnival, a place where pigs have been known to fly above many a scalding sea.
My tender hearted daughter weeps bitter tears at the fate of Carroll's little oysters, even though you never actually see the moment of their demise in either the original artwork or the Disney version. Sometimes, as Alfred Hitchcock knew full well, what you do not see can make a greater impression on the mind than what you do.
With that in mind, what are we to make of this post and video offered up by Steven Germain at Rough Fractals, which concerns people's reactions to a work of installation art that we never get to see unless we go there ourselves? The Earth Room is 280,000 pounds of earth in a loft in Soho funded in perpetuity, and more than just dirt.
Disney had a penchant for animated furniture, so no doubt would have appreciated The Origins and History of Singing Bowls posted by Gary Mullen at HandcraftedUK.
Earline Bradt at Ancestral Notes doesn't know what to make of the hand-wrought and rusty iron artifact that emerged from a backyard excavation. Who puts grooves on a Tomahawk?
Sarge describes the many guises of Kokopelli at American Indian Culture. The goat-footed balloonman whistles far and wee, indeed.
M. Diane Rogers of CanadaGenealogy introduces us to Hannah Maynard : British Columbia Photographer 1862-1912. This remarkable artist "experimented with many photographic techniques and effects – sometimes with almost bizarre or, as some will have it, surreal, results."
Also at Rough Fractals, a preview of upcoming works based on a lifelong fascination with snow globes.
Currently in the pipeline is a new Snow Globe to be called "Cognitive Rocket Ship". Inside the Globe is a rocket ship that is about to take off and in the cockpit of the rocket ship sits the pilot (the pilot is a woman - for more about the pilot see the relevant parenthetical below) who is gazing into a Snow Globe of a rocket ship in which sits the pilot looking into a Snow Globe of a rocket ship. There are some technical problems in the manufacturing because the third Snow Globe in a Snow Globe is really, really tiny...
Having recently taken a crash course in delousing - one of the fringe benefits of universal primary school education - I was quite taken by this Bicentennial Cootie Cartoon by Bill Mauldin of Willie and Joe fame.
If "Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one", then how much Sherwood Premium Cider did Robin's Merry Men have to quaff to produce these sterling results?
Curiositycabi.net is a self-described trove of "bones, skeletons, dust, shadows, misremembering" and a gorgeous assemblage of images to boot.
I am certain I had a flying pig around here somewhere, but that will have to wait for a future edition.
Those of you eagerly awaiting the 15th Edition of Cabinet of Curiosities scheduled for this time slot will have to bear with us while we attend to technical difficulties at the station, including a double dose of pneumonia and head lice that has put our household topsy turvy and precludes any serious attempt at blogging. Rest assured we will endeavor to return you to your regularly scheduled programming as soon as possible
The 15th Cabinet of Curiosities blog carnival will be out in a week. What treasures will you unearth? What stories will unfold? Whatever are we to make of these wierd and wondrous goings on? Drop in next Monday and find out (or send us your finest work for inclusion via the handy submission form.
In another installment of our " Switched at Birth" feature here at Walking the
Berkshires, we feel compelled to point out the uncanny resemblance between the Bard of Late Night and the Bard of the English Stage. Schaffer, meet Shakespeare.
I believe our 14th President and the actor who starred in The 5th Element have more in common than loose locks and craggy brows. Gary Oldman is unlikely to appear anytime soon as Franklin Pierce, however, unless they do a presdiential series on the History Channel called "The Worst and the Dullest".
Then we have Napoleon's Marshal Ney and William Schatner's Captain Kirk
.
As for red toques and Gallic profiles...
The eye sees what it wants to see. So when users of Google Ocean discovered a grid-like terrain feature on the seabed near the Canary Islands, the hypothesis quickly emerged that it could be the fabled lost city of Atlantis.
Bernie Bamford, 38, of Chester [England] who spotted the "city", compared it to Milton Keynes, the new town built on a grid design. "It must be man made," he said.
Well yes, and no. The thing is the size of Wales, which should have been a tip off. No modern metropolitan area even comes close, which should have been a fairly obvious clue that the lost civilization theory was full of holes. For a street or boulevard to be visible at this scale, it would have to be hundreds if not thousands of meters wide. This did not occur to Mr. Bamford and other adherants of "Atlantis Found".
Now, alas, Google reveals the grids are an artifact of undersea mapping, not evidence of ancient civilization on a massive scale.
"Sea floor terrain data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data.
"The fact that there are blank spots between each of these lines is a sign of how little we really know about the world's oceans."
Ah, but hope springs eternal. Perhaps when Google Mars makes its debut, even a rank amateur will finally be able to spot those canals.
The much anticipated 14th edition of Cabinet of Curiosities is splendidly hosted at Damn Data, and under their excellent stewardship offers a veritable goblin market of goodies this month with a decidedly fey allure. Step into the faerie ring, and never mind the coffins in Arthur's Seat!
One of the central truths of advertising is that sex sells. Another is that words and phrases with perfectly innocent definitions can sound downright pornographic when taken out of context. Just try saying "kumquat" without blushing. The fruit itself is actually extremely sour, not at all what the name would suggest. Accident? I think not.
Or go to a diner and tell the waitress you take it black, like it over easy, and prefer fresh squeezed. There is something very earthy about breakfast at a greasy spoon, and when Flo told Mel on Alice to "kiss my grits" we all knew she wasn't talking about hominy. We can thank the US navy for taking things further downhill with "shit on a shingle" (creamed chipped beef on toast), though the limeys have their own version "on a raft" made with kidneys. And anyone who made it through Ulysses and all that organ meat that Molly Bloom craves without catching the overt sexual references wasn't paying attention.
Any grease monkey knows how to do a lube job, twist a lug nut and what is going on between the master and the slave cylinders. As for pistons and crankshafts, it takes a lot of thrust to get the engine going. I am convinced that the absolutely filthiest song ever to slip past the censors is the Beach Boy's "Little Deuce Coupe", as a sample of the lyrics makes patently obvious:
Just a little deuce coupe with a flat head mill
But she'll walk a thunderbird like (she's) its standin still
Shes ported and relieved and she's stroked and bored.
She'll do a hundred and forty with the top end flooredShe's got a competition clutch with the four on the floor
And she purrs like a kitten till the lake pipes roar
And if that ain't enough to make you flip your lid
There's one more thing, I got the pink slip daddyAnd comin off the line when the light turns green
Well she blows em outta the water like you never seen
I get pushed out of shape and its hard to steer
When I get rubber in all four gears
Much more clever than The Lemon Song, which has all the subtlety of a ball peen hammer.
Sports metaphors are a slippery slope, especially when inserted in the workplace. That CEO missed an opportunity by neglecting to include ice hockey terms in his inappropriate address. Pressure in the crease, anyone?
Old School Ads, however, are the cream of the crop. As one memorable British 60s advert put it: "Unzip a banana"
My, oh my. What ever happened to Carmen Miranda? I think I'll go have a Snickers. I hear tell it satisfies.
Associate professors of English the world over are eagerly awaiting the April release of Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith's masterwork: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Billed as "The Classic Regency Romance - Now With Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!", this is the first time that Ms. Austen, who has been dead herself since 1817, and Mr. Grahame-Smith, whose noted works include How to Survive a Horror Movie and The Big Book of Porn, have combined their literary and exploitative powers. One can only hope that Sense and Sensibility and Satan is even now slouching toward Bethlehem.
But why stop there? There must be many other sacred cows of literature that are ripe for shameless subversion! The publisher of Austen and Grahame-Smith's flesh fresh derivative work cheerfully predicts it will introduce this classic novel "to a new legion of undead fans", so why let them have all the glory?
Here, then, without regard for copywrite or the bounds of good taste, are my top 10 other beloved works of literature and import that could stand the Grahame-Smith treatment:
"Skate Punk Pooh": The Hundred Acre Wood is now a housing development, but that doesn't stop the chubby little cubby from hanging with his homeboys and busting out their nups where Christopher Robin plays. Dag, Pooh gets some sick airfeet with that balloon!
"Wal-Den": Henry David Thoreau's pondside musings, reinterpreted as a paean to profit. The must-read manual for business tycoons looking to crush the competition and achieve global dominance. "Big is Beautiful!"
"The Grapes of Napa": Steinbeck's rags-to-riches epic of the Joad family, who rise above their dustbowl origins to live the good life as owners of a hugely profitable California winery. They hit it big with "Rose of Sharon Red" when Wine Spectator calls it the "Mother's Milk of Merlot" and the rest is history.
"Plato's Republican" : The Greeks gave us democracy, but they didn't give us Democrats! Take a walk on the Supply Side with the Philosoper King, and learn what 300 Spartans have to tell us about the importance of small government and a strong defense. Never mind tax reform, the G.O.P. needs to lay off the hemlock to be a lock in the next election.
"The Small and the Furry": Faulkner, with mice. "Caddy smelled like cheese."
"The Declaration of Co-Dependance": Sally Hemings' tutu! Revisionist historians reveal the Founders' feet of clay. Overcome with repressed guilt over that childhood "cherry tree incident", George Washington can never live up to his father yet becomes the Father of our Country! John Adams was the kid who always got picked on in school, and now he's gonna make his enemies pay. It's more than a 3/5 compromise with these dysfunctional founders. Hilarity ensures.
"Mob Edict" It's mutiny on the Pequod, as Ishmael and the crew pitch Captain Ahab overboard and hoist the Jolly Roger. The wayward whalemen descend into anarchy and the hunter becomes the hunted in an orgy of shipboard slaughter. Queequeg returns to his cannibal roots and Mr. Starbuck gets dark roasted. In the end, there can be only one.
"The Getty's Burkha: A Dress": What if Abraham Lincoln had been born a crossdressing Islamic fundamentalist? Would the South ever rise again? Inquiring neo-confederates want to know!
"Slaughterhouse None": Kurt Vonnegut's classic reimagined as a vegan manifesto. Co-authored with P.E.T.A.
"Happy Thoughts: The Inspirational Poems of Emily Dickinson": The feel-good poet of all time, Dickinson reminds us that nothing makes life seem so worth living as when we take the time to notice the little things, like the buzzing of a fly. With a new forward by Norman Vincent Peale.
Cabinet of Curiosities #14 will be hosted this month by the good folks at Damn Data / Cabinet of Wonders on February 16th. They have a brilliant Compendium of Curiosities of their own that has often provided choice bits for CofC and I am delighted by their offer to host this carnival. Let's make sure they have plenty of blog fodder!
Submit your best stuff by Sunday Feb 15th via the handy submission form.
(Acceptable losses
mixed media, 2008
Thomas Doyle, courtesy of Bioephemera)
