5. Favorite sect or clan

All of the sects have their spectacularly dodgy, dishonest, distasteful and dislikeable sides, let's be honest - Society and the Powers That Be being dodgy, dishonest, distasteful and dislikeable is part of what the whole story is about after all. I am not, of course, trying to work out which would suit me best because the ( Read more... )

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This is totally, brilliantly haunting... a photographic collection of the suitcases found when the Willard Psychiatric Center in New York closed in 1995 - and the contents (where there are any)... a tiny, tiny window into the people who brought the cases and their belongings with them when they were admitted from 1910-1960 (at which time it was a ( Read more... )

The Marsden Archive

... these gorgeous, eerie photographs by Simon Marsden. I have a couple of his books, and am looking at getting more...

The Recessional by Rudyard Kipling

You may recall yesterday, when talking about Jabberwocky, I quoted Lewis Carroll... "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't exactly know what they are..."

In a way, it's also true of this, another poem I love but for completely different reasons - one that, to be blunt, is completely out of ( Read more... )

The Worst Jobs in History.

Let me be honest. I may have a deep and utter passion for history, but that does not translate even slightly to the faintest of yens to have been born in any other time in history.

I always agree with that semi-well known (and doubtless badly paraphrased) line of Isaac Asimov's: when someone he was talking to burbled ( Read more... )

Tales from the Far Side... the animated specials.

I don't usually like the animated versions of comic strips - Garfield, even the Peanuts specials leave me cold, they totally lose something in the transition (and the voices are never ever ever right)

But I admit, Sis and I both loved the two animated versions of Larsen's twisted, macabre Americana ( Read more... )

Fred McGherkin-Squirter

... was once, apparently, a real person. In the Sydney telephone book. Many years ago.

I have no idea who he was or where he came from... or went... or even if he was real or just a journalist's imagination at work, but along with the 1991 newspaper cutting that brought him to my attention and the others immortalised ( Read more... )

My worry monk



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Chocolataire

From the inimitable Miss Manners, in her Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium...

...She has another suggestion for you from her vast knowledge of obsolete social forms: the chocolataire. A chocolataire is similar to a tea party, except that everything is loaded with chocolate. Hot chocolate is the drink offered in winter and chocolate ( Read more... )