To those of you who live in Estonia or are of Estonian descent: please pardon my ignorance. Not only do I know next to nothing about your fine country but I can only fill this void with ridiculous and completely false information such as that your population is 54,640 and your main exports are rocks and sex slaves. This is terrible and I will do my best to amend this grievous lack of knowledge. For example, Wikipedia informs me that you are a Finnic people, which means that you enjoy an unfathomably difficult language. Good luck with that.
Also helpful is this wonderful parody for Estonia tv3, what I assume is one of at least three television channels in Estonia. It incorporates all the hallmarks of modern life in Estonia, like one room school houses, horse-drawn carriages, pigs heads, and toy stick horses. Of course it could all be a big ruse and, in fact, Estonia could be a nearly energy independent country with the most robust economy of the three Baltic states. Only the Estonians know for sure.
Right around Issue 03, our lovely copy chief Joanne Starer sent all the editors of Coilhouse a condensed document of guidelines based on the Chicago Style Manual. It tells us to spell out whole numbers one through one hundred (unless they are percents), italicize titles of books, newspapers & magazines, omit spaces around our em/en dashes, and many other such useful things. That was all fine and good, until today: the day that FakeAPStylebook on Twitter shook the world of journalism to its very foundations. The feed has amassed over 8,000 new followers in just two days, and it’s no wonder why: all issues of grammar, capitalization & punctuation have finally been revealed. This incredible new resource finally provides clarity to crucial concepts that the heretofore-accepted AP Style Guide completely overlooked. For example:
Use the quintuple vowel to transcribe the utterances of small children, “Daaaaaddy, I waaaant a Pooooony!”
Since the 1986 edition, the plural of McDonald’s is officially McDonaldses.
“Batman” may be used informally (“let’s go, Batman!”) and “The Batman” formally (“Mr. President, this is the Batman”).
The word “boner” is not capitalized, regardless of size.
Use a possessive proper noun in front of a movie remake title to convey crushing disappointment. (e.g. Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes)
In the news industry, an ’80s celebrity sex scandal is known as a “trifecta.”
Do not change weight of gorilla in phrase, “800-lb gorilla in the room.” Correct weight is 800 lbs. DO NOT CHANGE GORILLA’S WEIGHT!
“Your” and “you’re” may be used interchangeably if you are an idiot.
Avoid using the letter ‘G’ as it is unlucky.
The numbers one through ten should be spelled out while numbers greater than ten are products of the Illuminati and should be avoided.
Asgarda. Mountain-dwelling, scythe-wielding Amazonian cult? Paramilitary defenders of Our Dark Lady of the Orange Revolution? Exactly 37 new Asgarda fan clubs will pop up in Japan by the time I finish writing this post, and we still won’t be any closer to knowing who they really are.
Recently, a photo essay on Asgarda by Guillaume Herbaut in Planet Magazine captured imaginations all over the blogosphere. Coverage has ranged from cautious (Xeni: “sounds too awesome to be true in this cold, cruel world”) to shamelessly sensationalistic (English Russia: “A French explorer has found a group of amazons hiding in the woods”). Like most, I want there to be a legendary tribe of ass-kicking warrior princesses living in the mountains of Ukraine. I’m just surprised at how little fact-checking has gone into this tale, across the board. It’s worse than usual. For example, in their original article, Planet Mag writes, “in the Ukraine, a country where females are victims of sexual trafficking and gender oppression, a new tribe of empowered women is emerging.” Over at The Frisky,this statement quickly transforms to: “the women have seceded from society because sexual trafficking is rampant in Eastern European countries.” My old journalism professor would’ve pulled out fingernails for that one. On the other hand, there’s been a steady chorus of people calling “fake,” saying that this is a PR stunt for some movie, or that they’re just a bunch of Pennsylvanian LARPers who’ve taken it one step too far. This post is for them, too. Don’t be afraid to believe! Below, my humble attempts to separate the facts from the fiction about this all-female purported warrior tribe.
The photos are real. Herbaut is a gifted photographer who has captured enduring images from Chernobyl, Ciudad Juarez (harrowing & NSFW), the city of Auschwitz as it is today, and Hiroshima. He’s done fashion potraits of “trendy Mollahs” from Iran for Elle, and documented the victims of family vendettas is Albania. His objectivity as a photojournalist when it comes to Asgarda may be up for debate, but the man knows how to tell a story. Sixteen captioned images of Asgarda can be found on his page, under the title “Return of the Amazons.” More photos by Herbaut of Asgarda appear in the series Ukraine’s Cossacks.
Today has not been a good day. Not. At. All. Usually, you would join your other co-workers around the photocopier, placing bets on which intern can make the most copies of their face without blinking, but you’re in no mood for such frivolities. Today you can only stare at your desk in despair. How much longer can you go on working this soul-sucking job; planted in front of your computer inside the thin, blank walls of your cubicle? What does it even matter? How can you, a single, lowly person, possibly prevail in the face of the worldwide Jewish banking conspiracy? What’s to be done?
The answer, of course, is nothing. Take it from me, an insider who types these words on a golden keyboard while sitting atop a pile of money, sipping from a tall glass of still-warm Christian baby’s blood. Don’t get too down on yourself though. After all it’s Friday. That’s a good thing, right? Sure it is. So why don’t you just ignore the screams of Jessica as her retinas are seared with ultraviolet light and watch some documentaries about a few of the people who may or may not control the world.
That’s right, this week we offer you Secret Rulers of the World, Jon Ronson’s series detailing the puppet masters who work behind the scenes and the lovable loons who strive to expose them. The highlight for me has to be Episode 2, which focuses on David Icke, a man so crazy, it turns out that when he talks about the world being run by “a race of 12 foot, blood-drinking, shape-shifting lizards” he is not making a coded reference to Jews but actually means a race of 12 foot, blood drinking, shape-shifting lizard men. You don’t run into that kind of batshit insanity everyday; especially unaccompanied by an orderly. So enjoy all five episodes; hours of New World entertainment.
Now if you’ll excuse me, my baby’s blood is getting cold.
Unknown, ‘Civil War Veteran And His Wife’, hand-tinted collodion wet plate ambrotype, c1860s (via)
I don’t post vintage photos here very often (mostly because there are so many wonderful blogs devoted to them), but this one found over at Siege’s blog was too good to pass. You simply have to click here to see it in large format – there are so many incredible details! This looks like a still from a new movie – two talented actors, dressed expertly by a costume designer, captured by an in-demand photographer. But no; it’s a vintage ambrotype from the Civil War era.
Just look at them. If this image doesn’t inspire you to start spinning tales, I don’t know what will. What did he do for a living? Did he ever fall off a horse? Did he like doing magic card tricks? Was he allergic to bees? How did he meet his lady, so stylish with her ruffled bonnet and black leather gloves? Was their marriage passionate? Did she have a good singing voice? Did she hate going to church?
Tell me a story about them.
Update! This post is officially getting the Coilhouse tag “Misinformation,” because Siege has uncovered some new facts. “A TinEye search result led to Google led to a post on A Database that lists this as ‘Veteran of Waterloo with his Wife’ c1850s:
“Bruce Bernard saw this unusual photograph for sale at Christie’s in the 1970s. It appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine where he was picture editor and in his book Photodiscovery, he later tracked it down for the collection. The medal on the man indicates him as a veteran of Waterloo.”
Although it turns out this couple was from Europe, I still like Paul Komoda’s more American-sounding names from the comments: “Athanasius Scrimshaw and his good lady, Jerboa.”
It’s been a long, long day. When you haven’t been in meetings you’ve been at your desk alt-tabbing between solitaire and Excel, rearranging your budget so that you’ll be able to afford those sweet zebra-print seat covers you saw on Jalopnik the other day. Well, just stop it. You’ll never be able to afford them and Jalopnik was being ironic anyway. Also, anyone can win at solitaire if they pull one card at a time. Yeesh, have some self-respect. Close Excel and prepare for Friday filmage.
Today: Jesus Camp, a documentary about the now defunct “Kids On Fire School of Ministry”, a Pentecostal summer camp in North Dakota. It follows three children who attended the camp in 2005 where they are taught how to become part of God’s army. A lighthearted tale of willful ignorance and homeschooling, this is the film to show your atheist friends if you wish to see them become apoplectic and jittery with spittle-flecked rage. Or to pass the time while avoiding the siren call of compulsive spending.
Seriously, zebra-print isn’t going to make that ‘89 Camry any cooler.
At first, I hesitated blogging about The Vigilant Citizen, a site that exposes the Masonic/Illuminati symbolism present in everyday things ranging from pop stars to national monuments. The site had to be a joke, I told myself, poking fun at occult nuts the same way that Christwire pokes fun at religious zealots. I’m not so sure, though. It feels like too much research to be fake, and yet it feels too silly to be real (case in point: Lady Gaga, The Illuminati Puppet). Whether or not the site is faux, it’s attracted some true believers! As one commenter writes in response to the the Gaga post:
This is truly amazing im shocked. I believe god told me to check this site. I feel like a total fool I wad becoming a fan of hers. Im totally conviced that this is what she’s trying to convey.
So dive right in, and have an occultastic good time! My favorite article is a toss-up between Top 5 Worst 9/11 Memorials and Vigilant’s analysis of the Denver National Airport (part of his Sinister Sites series, which examines the architectural occultism of buildings from all over the world). In a style that reminds me somewhat of Weird New Jersey, the latter article gives us a spooky tour of the most evil airport in America, introducing us to the apocalyptic horse with glowing red eyes that guards the entrance, the airport’s nightmarish murals, the arcane symbols embedded in the floor, the gargoyle statues, and of course the Nazi swastika-shaped runway. All part of the impending New World Order! Enjoy.
GeoCities – or GeoShitties, as we all oh-so-cleverly called it – began in 1994 as a community of themed “virtual cities.” There’s a list of all the GeoCities neighborhood names that ever existed on this page, which also offers an illuminating explanation of how the whole process worked:
When GeoCities first started offering free web pages to the public, they decided to create themed neighborhoods. Each neighborhood was then divided into blocks (each block was numbered between 1000 up to 9999). A user would then adopt a block and thus create their own pages within that block. Thus, a user would then have their own web pages located at a URL in this format: http://www.geocities.com/neighborhood/XXXX (“XXXX” would be a four digit number). The whole management of each Neighborhood was run by volunteers – known as ‘Community Leaders’ (CL’s), which is what made the GeoCities experience so special.
This whole process was known as “homesteading”, and each user had their own “homestead”. Community Leaders helped out each “homesteader”, and created a friendly atmosphere which contributed to the rapid explosion of personal web pages on the internet.
And though it’s probably been years since any of us have even looked at a GeoCities page (and that’s probably a good thing), to some of us, those pages, with “BourbonStreet” and “SoHo” in their URLs, represented a special time: the period in which audiovisual sharing first really took off on the web. Geocities, along with Angelfire and Tripod, were among the first wave of free personal self-expression sites for the masses. It was the first time that people who weren’t born-and-bred web geeks began to establish an earnest online presence, clumsily piecing together basic HTML (“hello! border = 0!” was the big insult to fling at someone whose page lacked a certain finesse). Sure, it contaminated the web with a lot of bad poetry, but it also brought us a plethora of wonder: band fan sites, zine reviews, scanned photos of interesting strangers from across the world.
GeoCities will completely cease to exist by the end of the year, and all its sites will be wiped from the face of the web forever. Feast your eyes on few of the relics that will be soon be gone [edit: But there's hope! æon writes in the comments, "jason scott of bbs documentary fame and a team of volunteers are archiving the whole thing." Click here to learn of their valiant efforts.]:
How to Dance Gothic (this and other sites like it are basically where Voltaire scraped all the jokes/lore for his “how to be goth” Hot Topic bestsellers from)
So… anyone here remember a beloved Geocities site that they’d like to share? Anyone here guilty of actually having ever made their own Geocities page? Let us take a moment to commiserate and recall our first memories of the web, our favorite haunts, the ways we discovered one another. Efnet. Dalnet. Undernet. Midgaard. Webrings. Guestbooks. X of the Y sites. ASCII-embellished sigs. BBSes. Alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die.
What was your first circle of friends on the web? Do you still keep in touch with them? Where did you get your first taste of this great series of tubes?
Belzebuth (aka Belzebub, Beelzebuth), whose name means “lord of the flies” is prince of demons according to the Scriptures. Milton calls him foremost in power and crime after Satan, and most demonographers call him supreme chief of hell. Belzebuth is also known to rid harvests of flies. His favorite color is chartreuse.
Even if you’re not remotely interested in the occult, chances are you’ve been exposed to at least a few of the critters compiled in that hugely influential Dover collection, Treasury of Fantastic and Mythological Creatures; it’s been kicking around for decades. Several of the most fascinating and grotesque beasts contained therein are from a series of 19th century illustrations produced for Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal, aka, Demonographia. Louis Breton drew the set of 69 illustrations of various demons as described by Collin de Plancy, which were then engraved by one M. Jarrault.
Did you know that in addition to vomiting flames and commanding forty legions (most of these dudes seem to command an awful lot of legions… or, alternately, inflict lesions), the Egyptian deity Amon has the power to reconcile differences between friends? Or that Ukobach the Inferior, a lesser minion who maintains the oil in the infernal boilers of hell, also probably invented deep-frying? Is that wild? That is wild! Did you know that? I did not know that. Weird, wild stuff.
For a while, proper reprints of the grimoire were very difficult to obtain. In fact, they’re still pretty pricey, but you can download the entire book in PDF form (in fairly good quality).
Furfur: a count of hell who rules 26 legions. He appears as an angel or a stag with a flaming tail and speaks only lies unless enclosed in a triangle. He speaks in a raucous voice. Furfur sustains marriage, can cause thunderstorms, and speaks on abstract things. He has also been known, on occasion, to “get Yiffy wid’ it.”
Several more frisky demons and (paraphrased) descriptions from Demonographia after the jump.
Update, 02/24/09: Some good folks over at NPR (thank you, Andy Carvin and Bob Boilen!) are looking into the oversight written about here. They’ve since added proper credits to the piece. Also, Zoë is currently listed as the #2 seller on iTunes classical. All’s well that ends well.
I think my Coilhouse cohorts will agree that one of the very bestest things about being involved with this venture is being able to give props to lovable people who do lovely things. I’ve been meaning to sing the praises of cellist Zoë Keating for ages now. She’s a visionary artist with immense talent and soul… and a sweetheart to boot. When we first met several years ago, she was playing second fiddle (so to speak) in Melora Creager’s honorable neo-Victorian outfit, Rasputina. At the time, I was astonished by Zoë’s incredible ear and deep, rich tone. As it turns out, I was only hearing select facets of what she’s capable of.
Zoë Keating opening for Amanda Palmer last year. Shot by AleXIXandra.
More recently, Zoë has been self-producing and releasing solo recordings of a project she calls One Cello x 16, in which she deftly uses live electronic sampling, looping and repetition to create lush, beautiful layers of sound. Zoë is classically trained but a swashbuckler at heart; her music builds a hypnotic, swaying bridge between the old guard and the new. Ambient, pop, and orchestral sensibilities trade off, with each distinctive element bolstered by her powerful musicianship and sensitivity.
Regretfully, the reason I’m finally getting around to writing about Zoë is a bit of butthurt I’m feeling on her behalf. NPR’s show All Things Considered used a song of hers yesterday without permission or credit. Zoë’s been featured on NPR before –a great opportunity for her– but in my opinion, that’s no excuse for their programmers to assume she’d be fine with them arbitrarily yoinking her work and using it anonymously. NPR is supposed to support off-the-beaten-path artists, not exploit ‘em, right?
