Perfect Stuff for Opera: Wigged Out British Twins Make For One Riveting Tale
“The tale of the Gibbons girls is one of sibling rivalry that seemed in danger of turning murderous, featuring a baffling childhood pact of silence that propelled them, via educational exclusion, to become teenage outcasts who responded to dashed literary ambitions and bungled sexual adventures with a life of petty crime that would lead them ultimately to Broadmoor Psychiatirc Hospital.
Jennifer, born 10 minutes after June, imagined her older sister to be cleverer, prettier, more beloved. Jennifer feared she would be left behind. Later, June would write of Jennifer: ‘She wants us to be equal. There is a murderous gleam in her eye. Dear lord, I am scared of her. She is not normal … someone is driving her insane. It is me’.
Anne Treherne, an expert on elective mutes, met the twins and became convinced a game was going on: that by secret eye signals Jennifer was stopping June speaking, controlling her as if she were a robot. The twins spooked her colleagues: moving extremely slowly in perfect time, they seemed inhuman, like ‘zombies’, drinking cups of tea or taking off their coats in eerie unity. A head teacher even called Jennifer ‘evil’….”
Totalitarian Ambassador
The Germans are absolutely correct. Scientology and other religious cults were fomented by the CIA’s MK ULTRA and other covert “brain war” programs to undermine democracy globally, whether their blank-eyed followers realize it or not.
“Not everyone shares Mr. Singer’s enthusiasm. ‘Scientology is a totalitarian ideology,’ said Berthold Graf von Stauffenberg, the eldest son of Colonel Stauffenberg and a retired West German army general. ‘The fact that an avowed Scientologist like Mr. Cruise is supposed to play the victim of a totalitarian regime is purely sick.”
‘Tom Cruise is not just an actor who is a Scientologist,’ Ms. Caberta said. ‘He is an ambassador for Scientology. All totalitarian systems have their celebrities to open doors for them’.”
Link: Plot Thickens in a Tom Cruise Film, Long Before the Cameras Begin to Roll
Via: Wit of the Staircase
Meet the Carver
It must have been early ‘90s when Anton van den Brink wondered whether it really should take 2.5 tons of steel to transport just one person of, say, 100 kg. Instead of enjoying the splendours of Paris he was stuck in a hideous traffic jam, long before the larger European cities were considering congestion charges in an attempt to cut down on emissions arising from too many vehicles clogging the roads…
Inspired, Anton created something that will make you go out of your way to find curvy roads: the Carver One! You steer it like a car, but when cornering it banks like a motorcycle while you feel like you are flying a jetfighter. The thrill of this tilting capability combined with the handling of a sports car makes for an exhilarating driving experience unlike any other!
Link: Carver
“The Pirate Queen”
This spectacular new musical adventure tells of a compelling, inspiring woman: a heroine who led an extraordinary life as a pirate, chieftain, lover and mother in 16th Century Ireland. Her quest to protect her people – and save her one true love – embarks her on a thrilling voyage that climaxes in a heated confrontation with the one woman more powerful than her… her fierce rival Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Celebrating the real-life story of legendary Irish Chieftain Grace O’Malley, The Pirate Queen combines classic storytelling and a sweeping score with the powerful, vibrant traditions of Irish dance and song, to create a new musical event and an epic romance.
Link: The Pirate Queen
“Eurydice”
The most famous unheeded advice in the history of Western literature may be the admonition given by the ruler of the underworld to Orpheus, when that grieving youth went down to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, from the depths, and the lovers began their journey back upward. From this woeful act of disobedience a whole universe of art has been spun over the last couple of millenniums.
In her weird and wonderful new play, “Eurydice,” the gifted young writer Sarah Ruhl has adapted this mournful legend with a fresh eye, concentrating not on the passionate pilgrimage of Orpheus to retrieve his bride but on Eurydice’s descent into the jaws of death. What she finds there, and what she learns about love, loss and the pleasures and pains of memory, is the subject of Ms. Ruhl’s tender-hearted comedy, which opened last night at the Second Stage Theater in a rhapsodically beautiful production directed by Les Waters.
“Make it forty, Motherfucker…”
A riveting tale of teenage body parts.
“There wasn’t much to [his teenage bedroom]; just a bed without a frame and some scattered belongings. What I noticed right away, however, was his nunchuku.
“Wow! Where did you get these?”
“My Dad got them for me in Chicago. Watch this.” Chuck proceeded to give me a display with his nunchuku that I had previously only seen in bad kung-fu movies on late-night cable.
“Gosh, you’re good at that.”
“Yep. Thanks.” Chuck thought for a moment. “You know, every time I look at these things it makes me think of something.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
Chuck did not ever mince words.
“Well, I’ve always wanted to see one end of these inside a girl’s vagina.”
Oh dear.
“And I’ve got twenty bucks that says you won’t do it.”
“Make it forty, motherfucker, and I’ll swing ‘em around….”
I Frieking LOVE Wit of the Staircase for finding this!
Link: qarrtsiluni.com
Dream Inspired Performance
“17 year old Bianca Passarge of Hamburg dresses up as a cat, complete with furry tail and dances on wine bottles, June 1958. Her performance was based on a dream and she practiced for eight hours every day in order to perfect her dance.”
Vintage Photography
Devastatingly Sexy
The Barbarian, the story of an inter-racial attraction between a beautiful tourist (Myrna Loy, looking exceedingly beautiful here) from the states and an Arab prince (Ramon Novarro, in what has to be his sexiest role ever), who disguises his true identity, an Arab prince, as part of a coming of age tribal ritual, and in the hopes of gaining Loy’s hand in marriage. Though Ramon’s ploy is an elaborate one–kidnapping her dog so that he may return it to her and offer his services as her tour guide in Cairo–Myrna’s character is less than enthusiastic to except his offer, though she is undeniably attracted to Ramon. Before long the darker side of Ramon’s character’s infatuation makes itself known. Fireworks promptly ensue between the two but it is unclear that Ramon is actually falling in love with the woman he pursues until closer to the end of the picture.
This sexy 1933 film was produced in what later becomes known as “precode”, the last year before the Production Code was enforced which resulted in Hollywood actresses becoming virgins again overnight. This movie gained many raised eyebrows thanks to a scene in which Myrna Loy swims in the nude at an oasis, though she later wrote that she was wearing a flesh-colored stocking in defence of her modesty.
Still, Gilding can’t help but note how hot this pictures is of Myrna Loy emasculating Ramon Novarro in The Barbarian.
A Touch of Expression
So, Gilding is not above a little promotion of the entreprenuers in her family. This lovely piece of jewelry is handcrafted by Gilding’s great aunt.
Along with JuJu’s marvelous creations, she can make whatever YOU want. Different colors, different beads, but also custom beads. Announce the upcoming arrival of your bouncing baby with a piece of jewelry made with named custom beads. Or give your bridal party jewelry that is uniquely made just for them. Book Club parties, Girls Night, any occassion will be made more special with a unique gift from JuJuJules.
For a limited time prices may even be negotiated.
“The healthy person doesn’t torture others. Generally, it’s the tortured who turn into torturers.”
–C.G. Jung
Torture and the Human Gaze
There’s something about the human gaze that’s inescapable, isn’t there? We look into a human face, we note the vitality of the eyes staring back at us, and we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we stand in the presence of a being–a fellow human–to whom we owe respect and compassion. Her face, her eyes, bore into us, demanding from us an ethical response. Her face, as the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas puts it, traces “where God passes.” Regardless of whether one takes Levinas literally or metaphorically, his point is clear: seeing the face of the other puts us in a profoundly ethical space that elicits from us recognition of the other as worthy of our moral consideration. If we fail to live up to this invitation, the other’s eyes judge us. So the eyes are the windows of both the other’s soul and ours. If we abuse her, we see the silent recrimination in them, and see ourselves as falling morally short. We feel shame. The gaze of the tormented in turn torments us. This may be part of the reason guards can fly into rages when prisoners, refusing to deferentially lower their gaze, stare straight into their eyes.
Read this profound blog in its entirety Death and the Maiden: Torture and the Gaze
Via: Wit of the Staircase
Winchester: Trillogy by Jeremy Blake
“Accompanied by individual soundtracks, the 21-minute loop of the Winchester trilogy slowly unfolds on three large screens in front of the audience. A slightly blurred image of the Winchester Mystery House appears furthest to the left. The Winchester Rifle heiress, Sarah Winchester, built the 160-room Victorian mansion in San Jose. From 1884 and 38 years onwards she kept 22 carpenters at work 24 hours a day, following the instructions given to her by a spiritualist medium she had visited after the death of her daughter and husband. The medium explained that spirits of the thousands of persons, who had died because of the Winchester riffle, were now seeking vengeance and would ultimately kill her too. To save herself she had to build, and continue to build, a house for herself and the spirits.
If she stopped she would die. Thus Sarah spent her inherited fortune adding room upon room, creating an architectural marvel with staircases leading nowhere, trap doors, chimneys serving no purpose and double-back hallways until she died in her sleep in 1922.”
As Blake explains, while he believes a documentary on the Winchester mansion would be fascinating–as it was for himself “some kind of buried treasure”–he was not interested in being a historian.
Rather, as an artist he wanted to draw some sort of meaning through showing what he thought was the psychology of the builder of the house. In other words, what interested him was the neurosis of the Winchester widow who built the behemoth and the poetic powers of what they built.
Jeremy Blake has established himself on the international art scene with his fusion of abstract paintings, film footage, sound and animation. A process he himself describes as ‘time-based paintings’. His continually looping DVDs have been projected on plasma screens at museums world wide, and outside the traditional art institutions his hallucinatory transmutations of colors and shapes have played an important part in Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie Punch-Drunk Love and served as a visual accompaniment to Beck’s live shows during his Sea Change tour.
Andy’s Mindboggling Blog
From The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander says “There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named.”
That doesn’t stop Andy from creating a blog that he deems: “is an online note to self—of objects, models and concepts—a place to store these ideas while readying for life as a shopkeeper.”
Perhaps a bit on the quirky side, Andy has managed to find himself some very unique items on ebay of which this list displays…including those items that he did not win and rues the day for.
Still, the children’s chopsticks above that he bid on actually takes the cake in Gilding’s opinion. I make those every weekened for my nieces and newphews in training of proper Asian dinner ettiquette. Who knew all this time I could be making money from Andy by selling them on e-bay.
Sex in the Convent: The Nuns Protest
Three Verses
Sister! We stripped off our ardent bodies
In endless and senseless profusion….
It was autumn and the sun – don’t you remember?
Added sweet sadness to the white splendour of our abode
Sister Pilar, are your eyes still so black?
And your mouth so fresh and red?
And your breasts…? How are they?
Oh, do you recall how you would come into my room late at night,
calling to me like a mother, telling me off like a child?
“When she fled, in a flight of deranged wimples,
from the impetuous will of my desire
she would seek shelter in a corner, like a cat …
but her nails were sweeter than my kisses.Juan Ramón Jiménez
The verses would be no more than the erotic, if masterful, outpourings of a prodigious poet and Nobel laureate were it not for the fact that they appear to talk of his amatory adventures with a series of nuns. But now that a Spanish publishing company has decided it is time to publish the erotic musings of Juan Ramón Jiménez, an outraged order of nuns has asked for his poems to be silenced.
Jiménez, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1956, two years before he died, is believed to have become involved with at least three nuns from the Sisters of the Holy Rosary congregation. The three worked at a nursing home run by the order in Madrid, where the young poet spent two years at the beginning of the last century. He later described the period between 1901 and 1903 when, on doctor’s orders, he was cared for by the nuns, as the “happiest of my life”.
Now a series of poems that he declined to publish during his own lifetime, in order not to shock his future wife, will help to explain why he was so happy. “These poems will be surprising for many people because they are lewd and erotic,” said the editor, José Antonio Expósito. “This is not the normal Juan Ramón.”
Read the full article My Sex in the Convent
Heavy Metal Addiction Equals Disability
A Swedish heavy metal fan, Roger Tullgren, 42, has had his musical preferences officially classified as a disability. The results of a psychological analysis enable the metal lover to supplement his income with state benefits.
Because heavy metal dominates so many aspects of his life, the Employment Service has agreed to pay part of Tullgren’s salary. His new boss meanwhile has given him a special dispensation to play loud music at work.
