YouTube

Apologies for this brief interlude. Here are some of my favorite YouTube clips, for your enjoyment:

http://youtu.be/0LcjKj8L5-Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oYxs-JEQP8

I've had a realization about the magazine covers, but I got a new phone that doesn't have a good camera and that's how I take the pictures and I need to add this month's Women's World cover to the list before I talk about them more because it's Just So Perfect. So stay tuned.

Which libretto are you looking at anyways?

As you may or may not know, I find ephemera fascinating. Like "ephemeral", "ephemera" comes from the Greek ephemer(os), meaning short-lived. Ephemera (singular is ephemeron, and now I'll stop with the dictionary stuff) is printed material that is meant to be transitory or disposable - advertisements, flyers, stage programs, things of that sort.

Saul Zalesch at LSU curates EphemeraStudies.org, a lovely collection of ephemera that makes my day just about every day because he sends out notifications almost every day when he adds new stuff.

Anyways, getting to the point... Today's cool thing was a booklet from Sarah Bernhardt's Last Visit to America tour in 1917. It made me think of a passage from Tom Robbins's Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas wherein the speaker was explaining to the protagonist that Sarah Bernhardt was 


"such a powerfully popular, awe-inspiring actress that when she toured in North America her performances invariably sold out, even though she spoke hardly a work of English. Whatever play she did, Shakespeare, Moliere, Marlowe , or whatever , she did in French, a language few nineteenth-century Americans could comprehend. Theatergoers were provided with librettos so that they might follow the action in English. Well, on at least a couple of occasions, ushers passed out the wrong libretto, a text for an entirely different drama than the one that was being staged."


And goes on to compare contemporary society's view of the world as "using the wrong libretto."


I'm not citing Tom Robbins as a great thinker or anything, because I'm not one of those who think he is (although I do like the way he plays with language) I'm just saying that this is what came to mind when I saw the Sarah Bernhardt booklet. I didn't actually even remember it right - as I remembered the passage, it related much more to my own current situation of life bizarreness in that it wasn't that all of humanity was being handed the wrong libretto in terms of the media we are given and told to believe, as Robbins says, but that we were all reading off of different librettos, and that was why nothing made sense.


Anyways, it piqued my overly developed need to determine what can and cannot be termed "factual" so I started just quickly cruising the Web looking to see if the ushers did, in fact, hand out the "wrong libretto." What I found was so much more gratifying. No evidence at all of the ushers screwing up, but a whole bunch of people citing Tom Robbins, believing without verification that the ushers handed out the wrong libretto, and based "deep" life arguments on this. Just as Robbins said we do with the Bible and everything else that's handed to us.


As self-gratifying as that sounds (and it was gratifying, because the people quoting him came across as a bunch of self-congratulating idiots who were willing to swallow whole whatever piece of pop-philosophy came their way), it is part of a larger problem with people and our propensity to believe what we read. Combine that with the Internet and it becomes terrifying. Saturday morning, D. and I were watching some conspiracy theory "documentary" about how the U.S. government is trying to control the world. Because it's not most of the way there already. All of the guys presenting their theories were saying they "saw it on the Internet" or "there's a website that says" or "I can't tell you who told me and I can't produce any evidence but this is what I'm saying so it's real." And people believe this stuff because other people say it and it's convenient to believe.


It'll be interesting to see how this goes down in the next election, given that anyone can say anything without any supporting documentation and some group of people out there will believe them.


"We all know what you're thinking, but it's OK. We like you anyways."

Old people rocking out...

I like it when it's a bit too cold for most people to roll down their windows while they're driving, cause I can roll mine down and rock out without people looking at me funny. Sort of my very much more repressed version of singing in the grocery store cart when I was four.

There are circuses and then there are circuses...

Leaving work today, talking the big budgetary will they/won't they with Jessamyn Modrak and Renee Brown Corbino, I made a snide comment about how I watch a circus every day. Media circus, that is. Not five minutes later I saw a dwarf standing on the corner with a really tall, thin man in a ten gallon hat. And the universe reverberated with laughter at it's own pun. :)

Brothel tokens

And that's all I have to say about that.

Remember these? I want one.

I had one when I was kid but my folks said it broke. I'm increasingly skeptical of what my folks had to say about things.

New batch of magazine covers

Here's the latest batch of magazine covers (http://artephemeraandotherstuff.blogspot.com/2011/02/grocery-store-checkout-line-magazine.html). As I was going through these tonight, I saw this posted on Facebook: http://www.mamamia.com.au/weblog/2011/02/send-this-clip-to-every-single-woman-you-know.html. Not that I'm trying to turn "My Favorite Things" into a forum for my ineffectual outrage regarding media representation of women and (more importantly) what it does to young women in particular, but... it's my blog.

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, so "Bake up some Valentine's Day Love", but not through your's, so melt some fat stat! 

And now for the closeup...

Everything you could ever want. Chocolate and "TV snacks" that make you thin and full of energy. Which in theory should give you better things to do than watching TV...

I'm also noticing a new theme on these. Tiredness cures. And stress cures. Hmm... This one combines the two. With chocolate cake and corned beef.

As opposed to non-jiggly fat. The 23 pages of dessert recipes should help.

For full disclosure... I study Material Culture, that it, the things societies make and what it says about the people who make them - my particular area of interest is "imaginary" America since about 1876. This is definitely imaginary America.

I also suffered from an eating disorder all through high school, and I would do just about anything to spare the little girls I love the pain of dealing with the impossibility of body image, but I really can't, so I'll just rail against the system. And I'm not immune from it either - I am intelligent, successful, healthy, and most importantly, loved, but those moments of crippling self-doubt don't go away. I was shocked the other day to learn that a friend's wife is exactly the same height and weight that I am. It came up because they've had a hard time getting pregnant and I asked if the doctor had suggested she gain some weight - she always seemed so thin. Granted, we have very different body types, but I was still completely taken aback; it just didn't seem possible.

This is running into the realm of my depressing blog, so I'm going to stop here and go over there. I'll close with saying how lucky I am that I am told, on a regular basis, not that I'm beautiful, because that would be a load of horseshit, but that IT DOESN'T MATTER.

Rainy days inside.
Puppies.
My stupid white nosed cat.
My pretty black nosed cat.
Warm snuggliness in the morning.
Warm snuggliness at night.
Warm snuggliness during rainy days inside.
Movies that are bad in all the right ways.
Movies that aren't bad in any way whatsoever.
Red kitchen appliances.
The black cords I'm wearing today.
Red wine.
Red wine.
Red wine.
Egg sandwiches at 2 AM.
Finishing a really beautiful baby quilt.
Books, books, books, books, books.
Tom Waits.
Bubbles.

Repossessed poetry (self-indulgent)

These are not my poems. These were written by my friend Kate Temple-West. She's been a poet since we were about 6 years old. Actually, I have one of her poems from when we were 9. Here it is:

The Purple Dog
Under the Magic cherry tree
lives a little purple dog;
who is as cute as he can be.
He likes to visit me,
for afternoon tea.


Kate Temple-West, c. 1986


My sister found that in a book we cleared out of my Mom's house.


I also have a video (yes, VHS) of the first play she wrote and produced. Circa 1992. I even have the program. I'm saving that for when they teach her in schools. Then I can pull down a boatload on it.


But last year she did a 30 day poem challenge. One poem a day for 30 days. This one was my favorite. Have you read The Phantom Tollbooth? It has the Terrible Trivium, who traps travelers into useless tasks that can never be accomplished, and the Lethargians, who you can't see but who are sent to enforce laws against thinking and laughing, and the Senses Taker, who can convince you that your only purpose in life is to answer useless questions. It think that Kate's Deadly Shoulds belong in this pantheon.


The Deadly Shoulds


Let them go
All of them
Do not let
one shadow
remain
of the shoulds
the deadly shoulds
Scrap them
Burn them
Trick them
Vomit them up and out
They will try to snare you
with their wheedling whining pleas
their antiseptic perfume
their weighted compliments
their prickly handshakes
They will grey your flesh
Cover you in dust
File you under undone
They will rifle through your dream machine
Put red rubber stoppers on all your gaskets
Plug up the exhaust system
Chase out the fairies
Choke out the magic plants
and leave you trussed 
vacant
and full of lists.


Kate Temple-West, April 15, 2009 (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=72352596375)

But as a person who just wants to make everyone I care about happy, I have to give you all this one too:

You can’t make other people happy.
That's the conventional wisdom.
But I want to. 
I want to push them off cliffs
into oceans of their own happiness.
Maybe I can do that. 
After all, conventional wisdom agrees 
its very possible to push people off cliffs. 
I will lure them to their cliff edges 
by baking violet cakes topped with dandelion frosting 
and placing them on the paths leading up. 
I will bribe the birds to sing sweeter the steeper the climb.
I will tell stories to distract them, 
and when we reach the top 
I will lie and say their shoelaces are untied.
And then I will run at them, 
pushing with all of my weight,
a low deep battle cry booming from my chest 
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
until we sail out beyond the rock, 
flying for a moment
before tumbling into a frothy sea 
full of frolicking dolphins, 
laughter washing over our bodies 
in waves.


Kate Temple-West, 2009 (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=76129211375)

And finally, this one's for me, because today my horoscope said that even though I'm grown up now, I can still believe in the things I believed in when I was a child. And for me that means believing in magic. And if I'm going to believe in magic, I might as well believe in that horoscope. And in Kate's poem that is the magical stories we shared when we were children:

I looked down a rabbit hole and saw only dirt, no cottontail, even.

I pushed my way into the back of the wardrobe and found a fox stole with the head intact. It had claws and fangs and smelled like mothballs.

I walked over a bridge in the woods, eyes closed, and found myself on the other side of the stream.

I scrambled over the crumbling brick wall and found another patch of poison ivy.

I crawled through the drainpipe and came out the other end, a little farther away from where I had started.

But I could smell the roses of Wonderland, taste the Turkish Delight of Narnia, see the majestic river of Terabithia, hear the birds chirping in a secret garden, and feel the velvet air in my own as yet unnamed enchanted world.


Kate Temple-West, 2009 (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=78160626375)

Grocery store checkout line magazine covers

Anyone who's been to the grocery store with me in the past year or so has probably gotten my spiel on magazine covers, if not been subjected to standing in line with me while I take pictures of the checkout line magazines.

I don't know when I noticed but at some point it struck me that these covers all have one thing in common - they juxtapose a weight loss plan with pictures of baked goods or incredibly high calorie comfort foods. I'm not sure what to do with this. It goes beyond the impossible body types of most magazine cover models - they're beautiful and posed and dressed and coiffed and ultimately airbrushed. As much as people talk about the message these images send, we all know, somewhere deep down, that these pictures aren't really real. They're staged and altered. That's why magazines also have the "caught on camera" features with celebrities looking, well, still better than most people, but way, way more normal than they do on the covers of magazines.

The women's magazines in the grocery store line (I never see them anywhere else, so that's what they are) carry a very different connotation. These magazines aren't about celebrities, they're not even supposed to be Martha Stewart-type shelter magazines. These are the magazines that are supposed to be by mainstream women, for mainstream women. They're not about celebrity lifestyles, they're supposed to be about mainstream lifestyles - for women who are interested in tips on slashing grocery bills, easy weeknight meals, and miraculous cures for every disease and disorder under the sun. So what's the message? You should be able to eat anything and stay thin? Make these things for other people, but watch your own weight? Is it the 1950s Mom who makes steak for her husband and eats salad herself? I don't know. I haven't worked it out yet. But it's percolating in there.

So, for your consideration, a selection of grocery store magazine covers:

Ellipses

Today is dedicated to the ellipsis. For the non grammar nerds out there, that's this: ...

Last year, I tried to give up ellipses. I went cold turkey. No more ellipses. Cut them out of my punctuation vocabulary entirely.

Christ, it's harder than quitting smoking. They just slipped right back in there.

I've been told that I write just the way I speak. There have also been lots of complaints that I trail off at the end of sentences. So until my speech patterns change, it looks like the ellipses are here to stay.

So here's to you, ellipsis. We're going to be together for a long time.

Ack! My friends just come up with too many wonderful things.

Amanda Jain found this doing research at the Lee-Fendell house.

Alexandria Gazette, September 6, 1851:

WANTED, A HUSBAND.—Being desirous of entering into the holy state of Matrimony, with a sensible, loveable man, I have adopted this plan to accomplish that, which, by the custom of the world, I am debarred from doing in any other fashion. As no one will buy a pig in a poke, or trust to lottery chances, I feel it incumbent upon me to say, that I am what the world calls handsome, and have a disposition to drive away dull care. My husband must be from 20 to 30; good sense preferred to good looks; and no simpering fool, who imagines a lady taken off her feet, by his smiles, no uneducated ape in lavender kids and yellow stick, no mature dandy, such as promenade for smiles of silly girls and impudent starers, no mustachioed baboon, need apply, as no one will please me but a sensible, educated gentleman, who appreciates domestic happiness by the possession of one heart. If such an one is desirous of taking to himself a wife, who has a small fortune, and who would try to make her husband happy, he will receive the attention of the advertiser, by addressing through the Post Office, a note to ADA.

-----------------
As some of us dec art geeks know, there was an explosion in flatware during the 19th century, and a lot of it was given as wedding gifts. Here's hopes for ADA (thanks Marissa for the picture)

From Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review.

Lydia Pinkham

Lydia Pinkham is known as the "mother of American patent medicine." Her "sure cure for... feminine weakness" (i.e. menstrual pains) derived its effectiveness primarily from being 18% alcohol or 36 proof - roughly the same as tequila.

An article on "Pinkham's Vegetable Compound" from Nostrums and Quakery by the American Medical Association.




Saul Zalesch at http://ephemerastudies.org posted an 1869 Pinkham handbook today (making this my favorite thing today. Yes, a lot of these come from Epherma Studies.) Go read what he has to say about it.

And an additional nod to Mrs. Pinkham, from the Irish Rovers...

For Tuesday, 2/1/2011, Part 2

This is my other favorite thing today, thanks to Kate Temple-West...

For Tuesday, 2/1/2011

This is my favorite thing today. A ten-foot tall robot lecturing on the glories of Ovaltine.


http://ephemerastudies.org/gallery/ovaltine-wonder-robot-1934/