A Contrario

“Wires” o_o

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:49:00 -0400

“Wires” o_o

stewartmackintosh: After being once removed due to complaints...

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:38:28 -0400

After being once removed due to complaints from the academy, the (unofficial) Official CTE Promo Video has been put back on YouTube! Enjoy.

Okay, I just tried to type in the UrbanDictionary URL, and instead I ended up on a Google search of...

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:20:03 -0400

Okay, I just tried to type in the UrbanDictionary URL, and instead I ended up on a Google search of Urkel.

neil-gaiman: I was going to explain this photo, and then I...

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:07:00 -0400

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...

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:00:57 -0400

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.

my-ear-trumpet: I hate when people post interesting images...

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:00:42 -0400

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)

affectioveritas: Awesome

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:32:56 -0400

affectioveritas:

Awesome

Why do people online say “lol” to things that aren’t funny? Like for example,...

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:28:52 -0400

Why do people online say “lol” to things that aren’t funny? Like for example, “I just updated my profile page, lol”. Why are you saying you’re laughing when it’s not funny? I don’t get it.

fuckyeahvintageillustration: ‘The Pinafore picture book - the...

Fri, 17 May 2013 20:28:23 -0400

Sir Joseph Porter was one of the many people who had fallen victim to the beauty of Miss Josephine Corcoran

In short, he did everything possible to make everyone on board thouroughly ill and happy

"I know who takes sugar-plums to bed with him"

Luncheon in the wardroom

The good captain was distressed to see his dear daughter in this bilious frame of mind

So she came on deck to indulge in a rêverie all alone

Her short and snappish replies to Sir Jospeh's pretty speeches at dinner

"What are you trying to do?" said Sir Joseph

'I mixed those children up!"

Corcoran presented blushing little Buttercup to Sir Joseph, who gave her sixpence on the spot

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?

Fri, 17 May 2013 20:26:20 -0400

jade-cooper:

Barque by Stas Kulesh

Do you ship ships too?

ancientpeoples: Rhyton (Drinking Vessel) in the Shape of a...

Fri, 17 May 2013 20:26:03 -0400

ancientpeoples:

Rhyton (Drinking Vessel) in the Shape of a Donkey Head

c. 460 BC

Greek, Attica

This drinking cup could not have been set down without its contents spilling. It is fashioned after the head of a bridled donkey with a white muzzle, teeth, and ears. Like the naked satyr chasing a fleeing maenad on the vessel’s neck, the donkey belongs to the retinue of the wine god Dionysos. Douris, one of the great Athenian vase painters of first half of the fifth century B.C., decorated this amusing cup.

Source: The Art Institute of Chicago

jesuisperdu: walker evans

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:39:09 -0400

jesuisperdu:

walker evans

timelightbox: Photograph by John Moore—Getty Images“I sped out...

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:29:50 -0400

timelightbox:

Photograph by John Moore—Getty Images

“I sped out to the airport, met up with my charter pilot and we set off in a Robinson R-44 Raven II helicopter into a stiff headwind for the 45 minute flight to the ‘target,’ as he put it,” photographer John Moore tells TIME. He was on assignment for Getty Images on May 14, 2013, tasked with shooting aerial photographs of the iconic JetStar roller coaster in Seaside Heights, New Jersey; now slated for demolition more than six months after Hurricane Sandy had “tossed it in the Atlantic Ocean.”

“I had originally planned to fly later in the afternoon, a little closer to sunset, for the best light,” Moore says, until a tip came in from Getty staff photographer Mark Wilson, who was shooting the scene from the ground, that “the crane was making quick work of it and that I’d better hurry and get up in the air before it was all gone.”

“We flew in circles over the scene for about 25 minutes at varying altitudes, hoping to get a moment when the crane would lift a large piece of the debris from the surf,” he says. The photograph above, featured in this week’s issue of TIME and in LightBox Pictures of the Week, was made “from a height of about 500 feet, shot in the mid-afternoon with a high shutter speed in order to eliminate any possible camera shake from the helicopter.”

“You can see the beach of the Jersey Shore stretching northward, much of it, unlike the jagged pier, restored ahead of the upcoming tourist season, which begins anew with Memorial Day Weekend,” Moore adds. “Local business owners and residents hope the tourist income will help Seaside Heights get back to normal after Sandy’s cruel seas washed so much of their community away.”

—Eugene Reznik

See more of this week’s best photos on LightBox.

unhistorical: “Suddenly a rumour spread among the people that...

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:06:37 -0400

unhistorical:

“Suddenly a rumour spread among the people that there was not enough beer and pretzels for everybody”

“1,389 people were trampled to death”

xombiedirge: AT-AT Walkers by Hermann Mejia / Blog Part of ‘A...

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:51:46 -0400

AT-AT Walkers by Hermann Mejia

Close Up Detail

xombiedirge:

AT-AT Walkers by Hermann Mejia / Blog

Part of ‘A Saga in the Stars’, the Star Wars tribute art show opening Saturday May 4th at Gallery Nucleus.

adanvc: Group of teenagers pushing an old car. St Louis,...

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:56:50 -0400

adanvc:

Group of teenagers pushing an old car. St Louis, 1944.

by Nina Leen

odditiesoflife: Anamorphic Sculptures These sculptures are...

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:42:33 -0400

odditiesoflife:

Anamorphic Sculptures

These sculptures are created with such mathematical precision that the image can only be seen as a reflection. To get this effect the London-based artist, Jonty Hurwitz, first scans a 3D object, then distorts it with a computer using π algorithms. His final pieces, made from steel, resin, perspex, or copper, have to be viewed next to a round reflective cylinder – only then do the objects come into focus.

anime-backgrounds: The Day of the Crows(Le Jour Des...

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:41:03 -0400

anime-backgrounds:

The Day of the Crows(Le Jour Des Corneilles). Directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint. Made by Finalement, Melusine Productions, Walking The Dog, and Max Films Animation

bofransson: Oskar Kokoschka, Venice - Boats on the Dogana,...

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:37:44 -0400

bofransson:

Oskar Kokoschka, Venice - Boats on the Dogana, 1924

Important Holidays of the Year

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:35:33 -0400

January 10 - Peculiar People Day
First Friday of May - International Tuba Day
May 4 - Star Wars Day
May 15 - National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day (America)
June 28 - Paul Bunyan Day
Labor Day Weekend - Paul Bunyan Days (St. Maries, Idaho only)
Sep 19 - International Talk Like a Pirate Day