A Contrario

“Wires” o_o

neil-gaiman:

I was going to explain this photo, and then I decided that a caption competition would be more fun.

Photographer: www.markmanne.com

I apologize for the length of the following, highly innacurate account of the story behind this photo.

The flight to some no-name town in the middle of nowhere that may or may not have been Wichita, Kansas had involved two layovers: one scheduled,  the other an unscheduled emergency landing when both engines blew up mid-flight. It had only been through the sheer willpower of the pilots, along with five of the seventeen-and-a-half bottles of Vodka a Ukrainian man had smuggled aboard with himself in a Bonjour Kitten duffel bag that he had given them to drink for their nerves, did the plan glide safely onto a runway. To celebrate their good fortunes, Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman had feasted with the other passengers on pizza from Sbatti. The pizza, nine and four-ninths pounds worth, had been smuggled aboard in a nondescript duffel bag by a Belorussian woman who had no affiliation with the Ukrainian man whatsoever.

“Oh, the flight was wonderful!” She drawled, still reeling a little, when she and her husband met their friends at their hotel five hours later. They had been ferried to their hotel in a private limousine paid for by the air company that had owned the exploding jetcraft, who had paid for limousines to ferry all the stranded passengers to their respective hotels to counteract the damage they secretly suspected the fiery chariot of the air had caused.

But heavens, they had no time to unpack before the book signing! “Oh, I hate being married to a famous person!” Amanda declared with sorrow.

“Tell me about it,” Neil Gaiman muttered, for though he loved his wife he secretly hated every minute of her concerts he attended. Though she had talent her musical genre was just simply not to his tastes.

Amanda ignored her husband’s quip, and asked the chauffeur if he would kindly take them to the book signing. The chauffeur of the limo agreed because he had nothing better to do and was not anxious to return to his mother’s basement where he lived until at least mid-night.

Off to the public hall that looked like a spaceship he took them, while such magical happenings like a woman with a cat on a leash and a man emptying the contents of his stomach onto the street appeared on the sidewalks they drove past. During the ride Amanda found her way into the limo’s private wine stash, and was very generous and giving to herself for the rest of the ride.

Once in the social hall that looked like a spaceship on the outside the power couple found that the inside resembled not a spaceship, but rather an ugly discotheque of the 1980s instead. They also found upon entering a throng of fans rabid for Mr. Gaiman’s autograph, and he was dragged by their clawing hands to a podium and set up. Amanda was as ignored by the literary fanatics as my grandmother was ignored by the Chinese people in China when she and her husband traveled there once many moons ago, for he was fat and tall and they assumed he was rich and clamored for photographs with him, but my grandmother was tiny and petite and so they cared not for her.

Amanda Palmer continued to be a generous hostess to herself with the wine she had stolen from the limo, to nurse her feelings of rejection.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gaiman was swamped by fans to tho point that his head spun. “Mr. Gaiman, sign my book!” “Neil, sign my cat!” “Yo Gaiman, sign my cast will ya? My shiv wound won’t last forever, but this plaster cast will!”

A little girl, tired of waiting in line, wandered up to the brunette who was drowning her sorrows in Chianti ‘26, and asked “Who are you?”

“I’m Amanda fucking Palmer,” she told the little girl, eyeing her severely.

“You shouldn’t swear,” the little girl scolded, eyeing her back more severely than the woman could ever muster up herself. The little girl held her gaze for a moment, and then flounced back into line where her mother stood.

Amanda Palmer lost her patience after a charmingly racist couple from Texas asked her in the politest tones if she was related to the golfer Arnold Palmer, and did she ever drink Palmer’s Half & Half with him in restaurants? They waited with baited breaths for an answer.

In response to the question asked of her, Ms. Palmer grabbed the electric ukulele a Gaimanfan passing by was carrying, and gave a very aggressive strum on it.

Neil Gaiman knew that strum anywhere, and he ran from the podium and from the crowds of fans.

“Hold my drink for me,” Amanda ordered of her husband when he appeared at her side like a good faithful husband should, and handed the glass of wine off to him. Then she hitched up her skirt, climbed atop a table, and began to play.

“IIIIIIIII,” she called, dragging out the syllable, “Come from Alabama, a banjo on my knee,”

‘Oh no’, Neil Gaiman thought, ‘she is now singing American folk music while strumming an electric ukulele’. Because if there is one thing a writer knows how to do, it is to narrate what is happening.

“And I’m going to Louisiana,” Amanda declared to the audience, “my true love for to see.

“It rained all night the day I left, the weather it was dry.” She glared at the mobs below her, silently daring any of them to disagree with her. “The sun so hot, I froze to death. Susanna don’t you cry!”

Many spectators present that night later testified at the court hearings that it was the most violent rendition of of the well-known classic “Oh Susanna” they had ever heard, and one security officer named Popinjay, who took very precise shorthand, had declared meekly that there had not been such a brouhaha at a book signing since the Great Wichita Calamity of October 8, 1871 (which is not well known of for it occurred the same day as the Great Chicago Fire began).

Following that night is a six-month gap in Amanda “Fucking” Palmer’s biography that Wikipedia refuses to fill in.

thefatalbeverage:

More John Duncan. Jeanne d’Arc et sa garde

I think I like this particular painting because it feels very medieval. Well done, Duncan, I guess the faerie voices taught you well.

(via historicalhetalia-haven)

my-ear-trumpet:

I hate when people post interesting images without any explanation of what we are looking at. After two minutes of googling I found that the Images are of the Meigs Elevated Railway taken from Scientific American (July 10, 1886)

(Source: cloudcircus, via fuckyeahvictorians)

affectioveritas:

Awesome

fuckyeahvintageillustration:

‘The Pinafore picture book  - the story of H.M.S. Pinafore’ told by Sir W. S. Gilbert and illustrated by Alice B. Wooward. Published 1908 by George bell & Sons, London.

See the complete book here.

The story takes place aboard the British ship H.M.S. Pinafore. The captain’s daughter, Josephine, is in love with a lower-class sailor, Ralph Rackstraw, although her father intends her to marry Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty. She abides by her father’s wishes at first, but Sir Joseph’s advocacy of the equality of humankind encourages Ralph and Josephine to overturn conventional social order. They declare their love for each other and eventually plan to elope. The captain discovers this plan, but, as in many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a surprise disclosure changes things dramatically near the end of the story. (Source)

jade-cooper:

Barque by Stas Kulesh

Do you ship ships too?

(via shipsshipships)