The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel is an accompanying work of François Rabelais’ The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel. The woodcuts are wonderfully creepy, and well worth a look even though they were most certainly not done by Rabelais.
The Public Domain has an article up about this work, and there’s an excellent post about it at Poemas del río Wang. Or, you can head right to the original images at Gallica.
Juoni.
The Finnish word juoni has multiple meanings. Plot (of a book or a play) or intrigue. As a geological term it means a dike. This dike is (I think) a magmatic intrusion, probably thousands of millions years old. This rock is in Kaivopuisto, Helsinki and the (otherwise) paved seaside way/path for pedestrians goes over it.
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© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved.
Meretricious / Vapid / PoppycockMeretricious
Adjective.
1: of or relating to a prostitute: having the nature of prostitution, meretricious relationships.
2a: tawdrily and falsely attractive. b: superficially significant: pretentious.
-meretriciously, adverb.
-meretriciousness, noun.
[Origin: Latin, meretricius, from meretric-, meretrix prostitute, from merēre to earn.]
(1626)
“I’ll say you’re right,” said Mark. “Unfortunately, Miss Marple, we didn’t realize that. We wondered what the old boy saw in that rather insipid and meretricious little bag of tricks.”
Vapid
Adjective: lacking liveliness, tang, briskness, or force: Flat, Dull.
-vapidly, adverb.
-vapidness, noun.
[Origin: Latin vapidus flat-tasting; akin to Latin vappa flat wine and perhaps to Latin vapor steam.]
(1656)
“His face grim, Conway Jefferson lay remembering and thinking. Before his eyes he saw again the pretty, vapid face of Ruby.”
Poppycock
Noun: empty talk or writing: nonsense.
[Origin: Dutch dialect pappekak, literally, soft dung, from Dutch pap pap + kak dung.]
(1865)
“And she didn’t care tuppence for Mr. Jefferson. All that play of affection and gratitude was so much poppycock.”
All quotes from The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie.
I couldn’t make up my mind today, so a twofer…
A total cutiepuss from Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Installation view of Indecline’s “The People’s Prison” (2018) at the Trump International Hotel & Tower (all photos by Jason Goodrich for Indecline and used with permission, unless indicated otherwise).
Robert Mueller may not have succeeded in bringing Donald Trump to justice yet, but for a fleeting few hours Friday night, the shadowy art collective Indecline did what millions of people in the US and beyond have dreamed of doing since November 2016: they put Trump behind bars.
It may not have been the actual maximum security prison of our collective dreams, but Indecline — most recently known for surreptitiously staging a graveyard at Trump’s Bedminister Golf Course, hanging a troupe of “Ku Klux Klowns,” and previously for planting naked Trump statues in multiple cities during the 2016 election — managed to stage a prison cell installation, dubbed “The People’s Prison,” in a suite on the third floor of the Trump International Hotel & Tower next to Columbus Circle. The work was installed in less than 24 hours, entirely undercover, and without the knowledge of hotel employees, who unwittingly helped carry all of the props and equipment to the room.
Installation view of Indecline’s “The People’s Prison” (2018) at the Trump International Hotel & Tower.
Surrounding the one-man prison cell were portraits rendered on American flags, burned and tattered at the edges, each illuminated with its own individual lamp. Indecline worked with 12 artists — including Molly Crabapple, Ann Lewis, LMNOPI, and the Panic Collective — to create the portraits of 12 artists and activists from across history, including Muhammad Ali, Leonard Peltier, Angela Davis, Hunter S. Thompson, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and even more contemporary figures like Erica Garner and Edward Snowden. Interviews with each of the portrait subjects played for the duration of the show over a background soundtrack of strangely relaxing ambient music.
All of the figures in the portraits, an Indecline spokesman told Hyperallergic, are “activists and fighters that we look up to. Activists that made a difference and made a good point. He has to sit here with the people who actually made a difference.” The spokesman continued: “Everyone on these walls fought to make this flag stand for something greater than it does currently under the Trump administration … they’re the ones who should be regarded as historical figures.”
My, my, conspiracy lunatic and asshole christian Rick Wiles has been booted off Youtube. This is a terrible event, everyone! It presages the very worst of all history wadded up together in a nasty spitball.
“America’s leftist snowflakes are furious that half the country no longer listens to their idiotic Marxist propaganda. My ancestors were German Reformed Church members who fled religious persecution in Europe in the 1700s and risked everything to come to America so they could freely worship God. There’s freedom running through my veins. My ancestors were not silenced, and I won’t be silenced by YouTube’s New Nazis. Every generation has its tyrants. We have tech tyrants,” stated Mr. Wiles.
Pastor Wiles fears America is on the verge of a French Revolution-style upheaval during which leftist mobs will try to execute Christians and conservatives to purge “Old America” speech and thoughts from our society. “France is an atheistic, socialist nation today because it never recovered from the French Revolution that started in 1789. The Jacobins decapitated Catholic priests and burned churches over a period of 10 years. Likewise, the communists who overthrew Russia in 1917 slaughtered 300,000 Russian Orthodox Church priests. Don’t tell me it can’t happen here,” Wiles remarked.
“Mao Zedong would be proud of the Marxist cultural revolution sweeping America and erasing our heritage,” said Pastor Wiles. “It must be stopped, or we will be swept into a communist nightmare that could take 70 years to escape.”
Hmm, last time I looked, France was doing okay. Haven’t noticed that it’s particularly atheistic, but yes, it is secular, as a nation should be, in order to serve all its citizens well. As for Mr. Wiles’s grasp on history, he could use a bit of work there. Missing a fair amount of bits. Perhaps if Mr. Wiles stopped braying for a moment, he’d realize no one has siphoned the freedom out of his veins – he still has the freedom to worship as he likes, where he likes.
“I have warned for years that a spirit of Nazism is rising up inside the USA,” he added. “The new Nazis are here. America is on the verge of a French Revolution-style upheaval during which leftist mobs will seek to execute Christians and conservatives in order to purge American society.”
Yes, most of us who are at least part way woke are all too aware of the nazis running about, and we aren’t happy about it. You might want to pay attention to actual news now and then, Mr. Wiles. I’ll happily settle for defanging all you deluded asshole christian conservatives. You can still have your churches to run to, where you can complain and moan to your heart’s content. I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to execute anyone. I probably wouldn’t mind gagging you lot for a while though.
Ilma.
Ilma is Finnish for air and also colloquially weather. In November 2017, it was windy and wet snow was falling in Hesperia park in Helsinki. With flash, it was possible to catch the trajectories of the falling snowflakes in the air (thanks for the advice in this blog a few months before, Caine).
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© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved.
Choir of Young Believers – Hollow Talk. Lyrics at the link.
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© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Grackle! I was so excited. Just the one so far. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
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© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Donald Trump, left, stands next to the Easter Bunny, right (Screen cap).
Before entering Bethesda-by-the-Sea Church for Sunday services, Trump stood in front of the front doors and answered questions about his call on Twitter to end deportation protection for so-called Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as children.
When he was asked about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Trump blamed Mexico for “not helping at the border.”
“If they’re not going to help us at the border, it’s a very sad thing. Mexico has got help us at the border. And a lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of DACA. And we’re going to have to really see,” the president said.
There’s the christian that all the lunatic, asshole christians love, taking an oh so pious stance (look, I’m going to church!) and then denying responsibility for and degrading children. Can’t you just feel that christian love? Afterwards, the Tiny Tyrant did the bunny and egg roll stuff, with a by now standard idiotic word salad message to all the sprogs:
In his address to the children at the event, Trump began by referring to the White House as “this house or building or whatever you want to call it because there is no name for it, it is special.” Trump then said that he and his staff keep the White House “in tip-top shape, we call it sometimes tippy-top shape, and it’s a great, great place.”
He then pivoted to talking about the military, which he said would soon be “at a level it’s never been before” and “you see what’s happening with funding” and “just think of $700 billion, because that’s what’s going into our military this year.”
My, who knew there was no name for the white house? When did that happen, because I certainly missed it. So, I guess we now have Tippy-Top Shape House. That seems to accord well with the Tiny Tyrant’s mentality. Moving on, what’s more joyful to talk about on Ēostre Day, to children, than a military sucking up yet more money, a bloated horror of a tick sucking the lifeblood out of the country? I suppose you can’t start priming the next gen of cannon fodder soon enough, eh?
