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© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
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© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
This was yesterday: “Oh gods, I went and filled the feeder, then took Jayne on a walk around the property, and there were DOZENS of Cedar Waxwings in the apple tree. I’ve been trying to get a photo of them for years.” This was not easy shooting, but still, oh, this was so exciting! I sat on the ground under the apple tree, and shot up. Lots of photos here, 12 of them, most below the fold. The last set is underexposed, but I was once again shooting into the sun, so it was the only way to prevent a bunch of silhouettes. They are constantly active, so most of my shots were somewhat artistic blurs. These are also birds who excel at the quick flip the moment you get a focus, so I ended up with a lot of butt shots too. These 12 were the best out of them all. Altogether, a great and grand morning, sitting under the apple and box elder maple trees, in the shade, surrounded by the soporific buzz of bees in all the blossoms. Picked a bunch of lilacs for the studio, too. Click for full size!
©voyager, all rights reserved
It’s raining today and rather than get muddy on one of our trails Jack and I decided to stay close to home and walk on the nice, clean concrete sidewalks in our own neighbourhood. We haven’t done that in a while and it was fun to check out everyone’s gardens and see what’s come up and what’s been newly planted. Yesterday we celebrated Victoria Day, and traditionally this holiday weekend is considered the safe date to plant outdoors with no risk of frost. That means that gardeners all around get busy and get their hands dirty. It also means the end of spring bulbs and I do hate to lose the tulips. They’re one of my favourite flowers and they come in so many colours, all of them bright and cheerful. To mark their ending I’m posting these beautiful tulips belonging to one of my neighbours. I think they’re a double tulip, but I don’t know the variety.
I thought that I am done with skeleton, I really did. I was wrong and I admit it. There is one more. The rib cage.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
However I cannot remember any interesting story about ribcage from my education. I have a personal story instead regarding deformities of the rib cage.
I had so-called Pectus carinatum, aka pigeon chest, as a child. The worst thing about it is not the physical deformity itself, which is now nearly invisible, but the way it fucked up my head. In addition to my other medical problems I had also suffered from shortness of breath due to constrained lungs. That meant that no matter how much I tried, I never had much stamina for running or swimming or any sport really.
This is where gym teachers come into picture. I find it astounding how all the athletic people I have ever met are convinced that accidents of birth played no role whatsoever and that they are the sole instigators of their strength and beauty and they take all the credit. So children who were not born physically beautiful and strong get ridiculed, body shamed and blamed – sometimes even by teachers whose should know better.
To this day I dislike being seen topless, the subconscious fear of ridicule is still there. And I hate PE teachers.
Do you all remember Vox Day’s quest to “rescue” comics from the horrible, evil machinations of SJW thinking? If you don’t, it’s all here. Well, the comic is out:
Goodness me, lookit that stew of crackpot sciency stuff! I’ll just bet you’re all riveted now, right? Right?
Here’s the amazon link to the comic, if your tastes run to idiot. I do believe I’ll pass. Fascists are bad enough in reality, I don’t need them pretending to be entertainment, too.
ETA: Looking at that cover, it’s not awful, but those breasts! I’ll assume Vox Day is at least familiar with them, and they don’t work like that. They aren’t actual balloons.
George Cruikshank, click for full size.
The Gin Shop, George Cruikshank, Etching coloured, 1829. Subject: Alcohol, Gin, Drunkenness, Mother’s Ruin, Children, Child Care.
The GIN Shop –
—”Now oh dear, how shocking the thought is They makes the gin from aquafortis:
They do it on purpose folks lives to shorten And tickets it up at two-pence a quartern.”
New Ballad.
You can read more about the Gin Craze here.
Art Passions Fairy Tales. Screengrab.
A wonderful site, full of enough fairy tale art to keep a person quite busy, sent along by rq: Art Passions. Fairy Tale art and artists encompass so very many styles, and the illustrations are crucial to the stories, they inflame the imagination, and illuminate the stories from within. In this particular case, serendipity strikes, as I brought home a book of short tales by Leigh Bardugo yesterday:
The first story, Ayama and the Thorn Wood, is a grand story which I enjoyed very much. I do have one noisy complaint however, and it has to do with the fairy tale art. In the story, Ayama is described thusly:
“Ayama was clumsy and apt to drop things. Her body was solid and flat-footed, short and round as a beer jug.”
Given this description, why in the fuckety fuck is Ayama drawn like this?:
This never should have gotten a pass from anyone, let alone the author. It is not a crime to depict characters correctly, and all girls do not need to be tall and thin with a teeny waist. FFS, seeing this sort of thing is infuriating, and it went a long way to souring a very good story. In the story, Ayama is strong, courageous, imaginative, and thoughtful. In the drawing, she’s just another generic pretty, skinny girl. That’s not doing anyone any favours. We all come in different shapes and sizes, and that’s a message all kids need. What they don’t need is yet another cookie cutter shape to try and stuff themselves into, regardless of fit.
Yellow.
A beetle I’m unable to identify on a yellow hawkweed flower. Click for full size!
© Nightjar, all rights reserved.
From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
A lovely Tit from Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Jack and I went to the park today and found a flotilla of geese surrounding the island where the swans have nested.
©voyager, all rights reserved
Screengrab. Man looks like he was unwrapped after a a few decades of mummification. Yeah, I know, but still…
Here’s a somewhat novel defense of the Tiny Tyrant – he’s better than Pharaoh. Yep. Naturally, the first question springs to mind: um, which Pharaoh would we be talking about? There were a bunch of them.
“Throughout biblical history, God continually raises up imperfect leaders,” he said. “In the days of the Pharaoh of Egypt—let’s not be Pollyannish here—anything that is inappropriate for young children, it was far worse in the king of Babylon’s time and the Pharaoh. When they partied, they partied and they didn’t even have an X-rated label because anything went.”
Uhhh, X-rated kinda means anything goes, and that’s not even touching on the absolute idiocy of trying to paste that over various Egyptian dynasties. I don’t think it a terribly wise focus either, given the Tiny Tyrant’s penchant for nasty partying. All throughout history, pretty much everything was worse for children, so I’m afraid that’s not much of a winner either. This is also a display of complete ignorance about Egyptian history, which in many aspects, was highly civilised, with a whole lot of very smart people running things.
“Donald Trump, like so many other leaders in the Old Testament, was raised up by God not because he was perfect,” McGuire added. “Other men in the Bible were pagan kings, in fact, they made the people worship them as gods. God has a historical record from Genesis to Revelation, over and over again, God says in his word, ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ He chooses who he will raise up and put down.”
Monarchy, regardless of where it’s taken place, has always been considered to be of divine origin and choice. Nothing new there. The ancient Egyptians had gods, you know, and they took them pretty damn seriously. Just like you do. That means god[s] first, monarch second. Most monarchs were quite smart enough to play up their various god[s], and simply relied on their authority as ruler to keep people in obeisance, and being fodder for wars often fought over…god[s]. “Thus saith the lord”. Yeah, there was a lot of that, and a lot of what Jehovah said was hideous, psychopathic bullshit. So fucking what? I could walk around every day saying “Thus saith Caine”, and writing “Thus saith Caine”. Wouldn’t mean a thing, except perhaps as an announcement I had decided to be an obnoxious ass.
“He put Trump into office for a reprieve,” he continued, “because our Founding Fathers, the pilgrims and Puritans, entered into a holy covenant with Almighty God, based on Deuteronomy 28. It’s an everlasting covenant. That’s why America is great. So here we have a man, a billionaire, and they don’t like him because they can’t control him. He isn’t a lapdog for Pharaoh’s new world order.”
Oh FFS, what a stew of crap. Yeah, Deuteronomy 28 is interesting. 28:14 begins:
And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them. (Emphasis mine. Heh.)
That’s followed by an astonishing amount of curses, truly horrible shit, from petty infliction of hemorrhoids to family doing the worst things to you. Oh, and I guess you fellows haven’t heard, but all the pharaohs are dead. Long dead. As for the Tiny Tyrant, he cant control himself, in any sense of the word. That’s why he can’t run any business successfully, and resorts to cons and grifting.