Clusterflock presents... live from the 19th century

We are having a history post frenzy over at Clusterflock today. You should join in!

An afternoon in George's Arcade, Dublin

Nora, the amateur

Amateur: lover of. One who does it for the love of the thing, the passion, the rapture of the moment. This is Nora. The following two videos are likely to make you cry if you're sensitive to this kind of thing.

Eek! We ate Grandad!

So we were supposed to be the smart, cool ones, right? New theories circulating in fossil circles suggest that we hunted, killed, ate, and made jewelry out of the Neanderthals.

Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

For added colour to the evolution topic, see also here and here.

I bet there was a little interspecies breeding, nonetheless. You can see it sometimes.

Anyway, it may not have been all happy cannibalism and species war:

"We do need more evidence, but this could indicate modern humans and Neanderthals were living in the same area of Europe at the same time, that they were interacting, and that some of these interactions may have been hostile.

"This does not prove we systematically eradicated the Neanderthals or that we regularly ate their flesh. But it does add to the evidence that competition from modern humans probably contributed to Neanderthal extinction."

And here is a photo of the name of the street

I used to walk down to get to the beach, when I lived in Barcelona last year.

Here's a totally boring photo of a beach on a sunny day

and I bet it fills you with longing. Probably moreso if you're in Ireland today, where it is raining, relentlessly, than if you're in Texas, where it is warm/hot already, or New York, where it is heating up, or where this was taken, Barcelona, where the parrots roam wild and free.

Wonder if I could make a silk purse out of it?

Jumbo puffed pig snouts

This is one of those things you come across when looking for something else and you've just got to put it somewhere. Show others. Illuminate.

Where's that bloody Chinese Flyin' 'orse, then?

Pete n Dud talk about art.

Why do we have no fur?

We have had a Scientific Discussion over on Clusterflock, to debate the issue of why it might be, that humans evolved to a state of furlessness.

So you think banks are out of touch, eh?

Bank advice, in queue. I'm guessing the answer is... fuck no! Just leave it all up to my bank!

An intriguing tableau

Pooches, pooches who need poochhomes

Dude just reminds me of Tar, who also has this issue with ear rebellion. This is Mister Bigglesworth, a "cheeky mongrel puppy" who has been in Battersea Dogs' Home for approximately half of his young puppy life. UPDATE: ok. This one reminds me of George Michael. I can't hold it in anymore.

Liberty, described as "affectionate... loyal... highly responsive", who is currently Battersea's longest resident, at the Home since last August.

Penny, who is very sweet and talented but mustn't be given any chewsticks because she will bury them. Tar also has this difficult compulsion, even when there is only carpet to bury his chewsticks in. We have not thrown Tar out on the street, despite his foibles. Please don't throw your lovely dog out on the street because you discover their foibles.

Photos of dogs who need homes. Most of the dogs in this photo shoot are variant Bull Terriers. My guess is they have all been chosen because of their good temperament and cute physical appearance, to highlight the need for new homes. Bull terriers tend to top these Lists of Dangerous Dogs that have been made mostly arbitrarily, in order to ban certain breeds in Britain and Ireland. Not all bull terriers are Bad.

All the dogs in this photoshoot are all at Battersea Dog's Home, and I hope after this, they will all find new and loving homes, tout suite.

If these photos remind you of how much you need a canine in your life who understands pain and sorrow and has vast capabilities of empathy and paw offering, you will find your own local pound stuffed full of them. Some of these dogs have been at Battersea for months. They usually don't get more than a few days of a chance in your local pound.

How sad, how lovely

Take an hour to listen to this hour long documentary about Connie Converse. Listen to the songs, and her voice. There's an uncanny quality in her. Her songs go on journeys into yearning, into the uncanny.

This is an incredible story. Connie Converse wrote songs on her guitar and sang them in the mid fifties: songs of such intimacy, wit, hip, poignancy and unconventionality that would not be really heard at all in the mainstream until Joni Mitchell came along, and that was just a totally different epoch later. Say what you like about Bob Dylan, intimacy was not his strong suit. This woman was writing these songs before any of these people showed up. Before the Beatles showed up, for Christ's sake. Before Elvis showed up. Before rocknroll showed up. Long before the lone human singing her own songs on a guitar showed up.

It's an hour long radio show, and there are also photographs of Connie from around the time the recordings were made, in Greenwich village in 1954. These songs have just emerged for the first time, a couple of months ago.

Connie Converse left New York, dispirited at lack of record industry interest in her songs, in 1960, right when Bob Dylan was arriving in town. She moved to some city beginning with M: somewhere she never really felt right in, though she had by the sound of it a very close supportive group of family and friends around her. One day in 1974, she packed up her volkswagen, dispatched a bunch of farewell letters, and headed off. She has not been heard of since.

She would be 85 now. I so much want to call out to her, to tell her that people are listening, that we love her songs, that there will be so many people who will listen to and love her songs now. That she was living out of time and place, that people care about her story. That I care about her story.

Connie Converse! I care about your story. I love your songs. You matter. You absolutely matter.


Connie Converse website
on myspace

Ok one more

Play him off, Keyboard cat!

You can get more here.

Health club type places, part 2

On a perhaps related topic of humans gathering at some ungodly hour before noon to go on some shared quest, though they don't perhaps understand why the hell they're doing it, I recall a fire alarm going off in an apartment I found myself staying in, in Memphis Tennessee, one August. Within 24 hours I was staying unexpectedly in an apartment there, hanging out with a bunch of local artists, and was getting woken up by a mandatory fire alarm pretendy drill thing early in the morning.

I had to climb down 10 flights of stairs to the street, with absolutely no idea of whether the whole fucking place was on fire or what the hell was happening. It was a time of ridiculous things happening. Everything was intensely calm. I would have been chill if Chicken Licken had come running up to me that very minute. Out on the street, the alarm stopped, I sniffed the air, got the notion that nothing was on fire after all, figured they'd probably wake me again if it was, went back upstairs and slept for another hour.

Health club type places

So I have just been to a health club type place in the basement of a hotel, where all hotels keep their health club type places, and I spent a couple of hours meandering between sauna, freezing cold plunge pool (coldest I have ever been in, other than winter ocean) and steam. The sauna and steam room were good and properly hot, and I now feel magnificent. It is as though there had been a layer of crud all around me, like in my aura or someshit, and it has now been cleaned away. And I only know this because I can feel the absence of the layer of crud from my aura. That is how I know. By tomorrow morning this feeling of the absence of the layer of crud will have vanished, and I will again no longer know whether I have a layer of crud building around me.

I've been trying out various health club type places, and this is the only one with a cold plunge pool, which really is an essential aspect of the whole thing for me. The cold plunge pool is where it all happens. It's the salt in the sea, the msg in the chop suey, it's the butter in the mash, the gravy on the roast. I feel intensely clean, relaxed, profoundly contented and very, very antisocial.

UPDATE: ok, as I was falling asleep for my nap directly after having written this, I found myself thinking: not antisocial, of course, but unsocial. Antisocial would be flinging peanuts at people having chats. Unsocial is crawling under your duvet for the winter, because you understand burrowing creatures' need to hibernate.

They do this only to get what they want

This is what we're up against. Try arguing with that.

How do they hold up? How do they survive?

Baby pandas milk it. Except for the general tone of playful friendliness, these guys remind me of Cartman.