From a while back, actually, when I was still feeling well enough to shop. A new pair of Ro-Search combat boots, 8 dollars at a local thriftshop, and a set of Mondrian Composition coloured pencils, from the sale table at the bookstore. Not my fave Mondrian piece, but hey, pencils. My fave is Avond; De rode boom.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
The Gay Bob doll in all his glory. Harvey Rosenberg/Gizmo/Museum of the City of New York/93.83.A-J
I can’t be the only one who remembers Gay Bob. If you don’t remember Gay Bob, perhaps you remember the lunatic reaction, starting in 1978, which Anita Bryant climbed on top of, screaming her hatred of all things queer to the skies.
A 1978 magazine advertisement for the Gay Bob doll. Joe Wolf/CC BY-ND 2.0
I think it’s time for Gay Bob to come out of the closet again, along with his family, and some new additions, as well.
Gay Bob, who was meant to resemble a cross between Robert Redford and Paul Newman, was blond, with a flannel shirt, tight jeans, and one pierced ear. The doll gave anti-gay organizations plenty to fear; intrinsic within it was a celebration of gay identity, evidenced by Gay Bob’s programmed speech. “Gay people,” Bob said, “are no different than straight people… if everyone came ‘out of their closets’ there wouldn’t be so many angry, frustrated, frightened people.”
In a cheeky move, the box in which Gay Bob was packaged came in the outline of a closet, so that when he left his box, he was literally coming out of the closet. Gay Bob explained: “It’s not easy to be honest about what you are — in fact it takes a great deal of courage… But remember if Gay Bob has the courage to come out his closet, so can you.”
The affirming message was no accident. The doll’s creator, Harvey Rosenberg, a former advertising executive who developed marketing campaigns for various corporations, wanted Gay Bob to “liberate” men from “traditional sexual roles.” He created the doll soon after a series of shocks rocked his life: in quick succession, his marriage fell apart and his mother became seriously ill. He decided that his next projects would need to be of great personal significance.
[…]
Initially sold through mail-order ads in gay-themed magazines, Gay Bob soon expanded into boutique stores in New York and San Francisco. Rosenberg even pitched it to major department store chains, one of which liked the idea (but ultimately did not purchase it). And, it turns out, those consumers who feared the introduction of more “disgusting” dolls were partially correct—Rosenberg soon gave Gay Bob a family of his own, with brothers Marty Macho, Executive Eddie, Anxious Al, and Straight Steve (who lived in the suburbs and wore blue suits), and sisters Fashionable Fran, Liberated Libby, and Nervous Nelly.
If this is all new to you, you can read all about Gay Bob at Atlas Obscura.
The adamas stone on a mountain.
Whole lotta preachin’ going on. The last paragraph is about the stone.
Text Translation:
Of the adamas stone. Physiologus says: There is a stone called adamas found on a certain mountain in the east. Such is its nature, that you should search for it by night, not day, since it shines at night where it lies, but it does not shine by day, since the sun dulls its light. Against this stone, neither iron, fire or other stones can prevail. The prophet says of it: ‘I saw a man standing on a wall of adamant and in his hand was an adamant stone in the midst of the people of Israel’ (compare Amos, 7:7). But a creature cannot prevail against its creator, and for this reason Christ is the adamas stone. He stands on a wall of such stone, on the holy and living stones of which heavenly Jerusalem is built. These are the Apostles, the prophets and the martyrs, over whom neither fire, nor the sword nor the teeth of beasts could prevail.
Eurasian Jay, from Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Google Images, screenshot.
It wasn’t long ago I was moaning about the size of the chemo pump I get to be tethered to for two days per session. My friend who is also undergoing treatment told me their pump was more like an old Walkman, and electric rather than gravity fed, like mine. It’s also flat, rather than the silly giant capsule shape of mine. The above barely begins to cover all the different types, that’s not close to the whole page. Which leads me to wonder about standardisation, patient care, and patient outcomes. Whether or not you are paying attention to it, obviously everything about treatment has its effect on you, and user friendliness counts on some level, I’m sure. Of course, capitalism reigns supreme here in Ustates, and it’s quite apparent that there are plenty of chemo pumps all vying for attention and purchase. Obviously, more prestigious institutions with money behind them will have whatever is passing for the current state of the art and better design when it comes to patient point of view. Other institutions will have no choice but to go for cheaper options. And of course, there will be fingers, pockets, and the vagaries of salesmanship involved. Business is business, medical or not. What effect does this lack of standardisation have on patient outcomes, on the reputation of institutions? If I was given a choice, I would never choose the particular pump I’m saddled with. At the very least, I’d prefer something which could be carried at or below the waist. Oh yes, I’m sure they all get the job done, and the effect I’m talking about is certainly a small and subtle one, to be sure. Still, I can’t help wondering. Is this lack of a standard also prevalent elsewhere in the world?
ETA: I just didn’t have the energy to do this yesterday, but I talked about it in a correspondence with my friend in colon cancer treatment. Look at the people in that screenshot. Most of them with manic grins and poses, screaming “LOOK AT MY GOOD ATTITUDE! I HAVE POSITIVE!” Fuck that noise. I do not have a positive attitude. I don’t even have a good attitude. I have a shitty, cynical attitude, about most everything, and that certainly includes having cancer. If I lose that, I will be in serious trouble. My colon cancer friend is the same way. So, another little note: don’t go around telling a cancer patient something like “you have a positive attitude, and that’s the most important thing!” No, it’s not the most important thing. It’s not fucking important at all. What is important is whatever attitude your friend or loved one normally has is still intact and firing on all cylinders. If dark, twisted, gallows humour keeps someone going, don’t try to paint it pink with positivity. If razor sharp wit and observations keep someone going, allow that. It’s not up to anyone else to call the shots on what attitude will work best for any given person. As I said before, the person with cancer is still the person you know, they are still the same person they were before diagnosis; cancer is not a call to do a 360 on your personality and attitude.
I was putting off another chronicle for a while, which I’ll get to a bit later, but it turns out today is World Cancer Day. The whole thing is so damn Perky Positive that it exhausts me, but I will say this: If you’re putting off a standard screening, don’t. Grit your teeth, clear your schedule, and get it over with. It may well save your life. The people who love you will appreciate that. Yeah, it can be scary, no one wants bad news. No one wants that news. Nonetheless, Get. It. Done. If you’re stupid like me, and wait until pain shows up, it will be for the worse. If you’re a younger person, and put off something like getting the HPV vaccine, stop that right now, and Get. It. Done. If you’re a parent, and you have not given this gift to your child, Get. It. Done. It’s much better to get that news when you have a good chance of survival. I’ve already known too many people who were dead inside six weeks of diagnosis.
Okay, stories. I was going to put this off until after the next session, but I felt compelled to write today because of the whole world cancer day thing. This involves chemo, having an ostomy, and rivers of shit. If you would rather avoid such shit, now’s the time to stop reading. My next chemo session is the 7th this month, the last two weeks have been a nasty hell spent in a river of shit. I’m exhausted, have next to no motivation to do anything at all, punctuated by bursts of explosive anger. It’s a kind of madness. I’ve had the interesting experience of having constipation and diarrhea at the same time. I don’t recommend it. Chemo turned the shit in my bowels to stone, it felt like I had a belly full of rocks. I waited a couple of days, to see if anything would move, nothing. Yeah, okay, so I take the recommended softener/laxative stuff. That was a fucking mistake. I turned into a skin bag of diarrhea, a spout stuck on ‘pour’. Thing was, this wasn’t coming out the ostomy end, oh no. My belly was still full of rocks, could feel them. This goes on for days. Now I’m taking stuff for diarrhea. Doesn’t work. I’m now on day 8 or 9 of leaking. It’s slowed down some now, and some of the rocks have exited the building, but not through the ostomy end. Feels like all I’ve been doing for over a week is cleaning shit: off myself, off the floor, off the toilet, out of clothes, out of underwear. The only thing happening there is Grimhild burping out farts on a regular basis, and Grimhild has a new trick of rapid shrinking down to flush with my skin, then popping back out again. I’m sure I’ll be having fun with my surgeon again this week. Obviously, stuffing my face like a victim of starvation after chemo is not going to be an option, because I cannot face another two weeks like the ones I’ve been through. Hello mostly liquid diet.
And then there’s the pain. Oh Sweet Crispy Christ, the pain. I have an abnormally high tolerance when it comes to pain, but even I have limits. Why in the fuckety fuck did no one arm me with pain meds before chemo? Why in the fuckety fuck am I going to have to bring this up? Suffering is not good for your nonexistent soul, it isn’t good at all. Out of my current doctors, only the radiation doc was familiar with the direct and referred pain caused by a colorectal tumour, and I’m wondering why. The pain has prevented me from sleeping, it’s woken me up from sleep. It overrides everything and leaves me wanting nothing more than to be unconscious. A low down (no pun intended, but…) colorectal tumour makes your tailbone a center of pain, it spreads out over and through the ilium, the lower spine, and puts amazing, blinding pressure on the sciatic nerve. It’s so gosh darn fun to get up and think you’re going to walk, and have a lightning strike of pain take your leg out from under you. That kind of pain momentarily shocks you out from under the dismal symphony of pain which has already become oppressively routine.
Sitting at my desk, staring off into middle distance, I become aware that I’m nodding along to the rhythm beat of pain in my lower spine rather than the music playing. Time for inadequate meds again. It’s a piss always having to be medicated, too. Well fuck it, I have animals who would like to be fed, so I’ll go do that. For the record, rats totally win on the “oh gods, we are going to die right this second, pitifully, in your arms, if we aren’t fed immediately!” There’s nothing like walking in and seeing a group of boys standing up and reaching their little hands out like a chorus of Tiny Tims.
Courtesy Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax.
Virginia drivers can already get a state-issued license plate to show their support for the National Rifle Association, but a push for a “Stop Gun Violence” specialty plate took a contentious turn this week in the House of Delegates.
[…]
“We’re the snowflakes,” said Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax, the plate’s sponsor. “But these guys see ‘gun violence’ on anything and they go ballistic.”
During floor debate Thursday, Gilbert said Simon was trying to make a political point that goes beyond “a little ol’ license plate bill.”
“It is him trying to build a narrative that gun violence is somehow different from regular violence,” Gilbert said, asking Simon why the license plate couldn’t raise awareness of violence generally.
So…you want a plate which says “stop violence”? Apparently Mr. Gilbert didn’t notice that he himself made a distinction between gun violence and “regular” violence. Perhaps republican assholes could get together and put out a degrees of violence pamphlet, assigning points or something. At least that waste of time would prevent them from doing harm for a while. The fact of the matter is that gun violence is indeed different. You can kill a whole lot of people very quickly with a gun. If nothing else, I’d think being able to kill cops with guns might have given these assholes pause, but no. As an aside, Mr. Simon deserves a smack for his word play.
The legislation filed to create the anti-gun violence plate would’ve imposed a standard $10 plate fee. But Republicans argued it should cost $25, the rate for revenue-generating plates that raise money for a social cause.
Republicans argued that cause should be mental health, prompting Simon to accuse the GOP of hijacking the plate’s message.
“To buy into the myth that this is a mental health problem and that these license plates ought to be used to solve a mental health problem unfairly stigmatizes people living with mental illness,” Simon said. “It unfairly characterizes it.”
Oh yes, it perpetuates stigma, and it’s a very unfair, malicious, and lazy conclusion that so many people run to and take refuge in, whenever there’s another major shooting. Othering is terribly convenient for those who refuse to pay attention to the problem staring them in the face.
Simon said he filed the bill on behalf of a constituent, 65-year-old retired microbiologist Carol Luten, who gathered the 450 prepaid applications required before the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles will consider issuing a specialty plate. That constituent’s concerns go well beyond the mass shootings that draw headlines and focus more on everyday gun violence, such as children dying because an adult left a firearm unattended, Simon said.
“The people putting this plate in ought to have a say about what that plate means and where the funds from it go,” Simon said.
Simon suggested the money from the plate could go toward domestic violence prevention, but Republicans voted to direct the money to mental health on a 50-48 party-line vote.
Of course they did. Nothing like sticking to their narrative that guns are just harmless instruments.
The two House Republicans currently running for Congress — Dels. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge, and Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper — voted against the plate.
“Obviously none of us support gun violence,” Freitas said. “The issue that I think a lot of us have is this idea of putting the focus on an instrument as opposed to a focus on the crime.”
Right, you want to focus on the crime. The problem there being…the fucking crime. By the time you’re focusing on that, at least one person is dead. Some of us find value in trying to make it a hell of a lot more difficult for someone to commit murder. For every brand of ugly immorality, you can count on republicans. Bet they are all “good” christians, too.
The full story is at Richmond.com.
The tale is divided into two scenes. A naked man and woman stand apart above a fire, offering each other fire stones. In the lower image, they embrace.
Commentary:
A literal illustration of the text only requires a picture of stones, as shown in London, B.L.Harley MS 3244, f. 60, but the arrangement of the figures and tree is intended to suggest the Fall in the Garden of Eden.Fire-bearing stones are male and female. When they are apart the fire does not ignite, when close together, the mountain burns. The warning is for men to stay clear of women and avoid kindling lust. Beside the painting are sketches which are a combination of the Ashmole and Aberdeen illuminations. Ashmole Bestiary, f.103v. Their comparisons are analysed here.
More misogyny ahead.
Text Translation:
Of fire-bearing stones. On a certain mountain in the east, there are fire-bearing stones which are called in Greek terrobolem; they are male and female. When they are far from each other, the fire within them does not ignite. But when by chance the female draws near to the male, the fire is at once kindled, with the result that everything around the mountain burns.
For this reason, men of God, you who follow this way of life, stay well clear of women, lest when you and they approach each other, the twin flame be kindled in you both and consume the good that Christ has bestowed upon you. For there are angels of Satan, always on the offensive against the righteous; not only holy men but chaste women too. Finally, Samson and Joseph were both were tempted by women. One triumphed; the other succumbed. Eve and Susanna were tempted; the latter held out; the former gave in. The heart, therefore, should be guarded and guided by all forms of divine teaching.
For the love of women, which has been the cause of sin from the beginning, that is from Adam to the present day, rages uncontrolled in the sons of disobedience.
Folio 93v – the age of man, continued. De lapidibus igniferis; Of fire-bearing stones.
From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Johannes Kepler first used “Vulgar Era” to distinguish dates on the Christian calendar from the regnal year typically used in national law.
In an utterly repulsive paean to the Tiny Tyrant, Johnny Enlow at Charisma News made this little announcement:
Trump’s God-given assignment is so powerful and extensive that I was shown we will be known nationally as “before Trump” and “after Trump.” In fact, the whole world will be known as “before Trump” and “after Trump.” As a nation, this presidency is being used by God to save us from a systemic “gangrene” of corruption that was so entrenched we would not have survived moving forward. Evil was entrenched in hidden, behind the scenes, power positions that were now humanly impossible to overcome. We needed help, we needed rescuing and God has sounded His Trump and come to the rescue. It is not Trump rescuing us. It is God rescuing us.
All I can say is that I’m very glad I have not yet eaten today. If you have a cast iron stomach, and about twenty new irony meters, you can read the rest of the toxic garbage here.
AFP/File / Christof Stache.
The Nuremberg Toy Fair opened yesterday, and all the hot new toy trends are making happy waves.
The Nuremberg toy fair, the world’s largest, opened its doors this week to an industry in the throes of reinvention as toymakers vie for the attention of children increasingly glued to smartphones and tablets.
With traditional toy companies torn between joining kids in the digital world or coaxing them away from their screens, here’s a look at some of the most eye-catching trends from the fair’s 69th edition.
[…]
Parents whose pleas to “play outside” routinely go unheeded may be happy to hear that nature is, apparently, in.
Be it the humble spade, magnifying glasses or DIY gardening kits, there’s no shortage of tools to get kids interested in the outdoors. One firm is even offering the chance to raise your own butterflies.
For those who’d rather not get their hands dirty, there’s Beekeeper Barbie — comes with a hive, bottles of honey and tiny bees.
[…]
The boom in board games is showing no sign of slowing as families try to turn off their screens and spend time together, said Heinrich Huentelmann, a spokesman for German giant Ravensburger.
Old classics like Monopoly and Cluedo are perennial favourites, but there’s also been a surge in games that have no winners, such as the smash hit Gravitrax where the goal is to build increasingly complex tracks for marble-type balls.
“We can’t manufacture that one fast enough,” said Huentelmann.
Also in the spotlight are “cooperation games” where the only way to win is for all players to work together to chase a mechanical cockroach from a castle for example.
[…]
Toymakers are taking the “blind bag” craze to the next level this year, betting that children will not just want to collect the ever-more elaborate mini-toys found in surprise packs, but also the matching accessories and play-sets.
Known as “collectibles”, the cheap dolls or fantasy creatures sold inside opaque packaging are essentially the industry’s answer to the “unboxing” trend that caught toymakers off guard a few years ago, when YouTube videos of toys being unwrapped mesmerised kids everywhere.
In 2017, collectibles accounted for eight percent of the global toy market, according to the NPD research firm, making the tiny toys a multi-billion-euro business.
“Kids love the surprise element and being able to trade and swap. Key for parents is the low price,” said Gary Coppen of the Headstart toy company, which is bringing out baby and pet collectibles whose gender is only revealed in water.
And, it’s predicted that Mermaids are going to be the next huge thing, edging out Unicorns. You can read all about it here.
