It’s that time again…
…time to start strategizing for that annual test of taste, that carnival of consumerism, Holiday gift shopping.
source: Amazon.co.uk
Happily, Jolyon Fenwick and Marcus Husselby have ridden to the rescue with a guide to the perfect gift for those one one’s list for whom it’s not the thought that counts: Einstein’s Watch: Being an Unofficial Record of a Year’s Most Ownable Things…
From the publisher’s description:
What is the value of Gandhi’s glasses or a collection of Braille editions of Playboy? And how much is an artwork consisting of ten million $100 banknotes worth? In this gloriously eclectic overview of 2009’s most ownable objects, Jolyon Fenwick and Marcus Husselby present a treasure trove of over 100 desirable things bought or offered for sale this year. Ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, the cache of curios includes: a hard disk of MPs’ expenses over the last five years; Einstein’s watch; Uncle Monty’s cottage from Withnail and I; the last ever cheque issued by Woolworths (it bounced); a holy water sprinkler (made by Parker pens); official posters from the Obama campaign; Captain Cook’s boomerang; Super Lemon Haze marijuana; Black Canary Barbie (described as ‘filth’ by Christian Voice [pictured on the book's cover]); and, the key to the binoculars storeroom on board the Titanic.
source: Designs Through Process
As we scrawl “Dear Santa,” we might note that today’s a great day to March right down the Middle, in honor of Victorian novelist, poet, and translator George Eliot– Mary Ann Evans– who was born on this date in 1819 in Warwickshire.
It’s only rock and roll…
Special bonus: the first known footage of Jimi Hendrix
As we tap our toes, we might recall that today is the birthday of the intellectual Father of Rock and Roll– the Father of the Age of Reason and author (in Candide) of the immortal– and sardonic– advice that each of us should “tend his own garden,” Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire; he was born in Paris on this date in 1694.
When radio goes wrong…
source: Pandora
From radio broadcasts around the U.K. and the Empire: bloopers, blunders, and embarrassment– all collected at RadioFail.
One should turn one’s volume up and consider, for example, this report of nuclear proliferation…
Or this breathless eyewitness account…
Or (your correspondent’s favorite), this dispatch on an attack against Israel.
Much, much more at RadioFail.
As we twiddle our dials, we might draft a long and involved, dramatically-arched sentence or two, as today is the anniversary of the publication of Henry James’ first novel, Roderick Hudson (1875).
Happy Holidays– or else!…
Via Retrospace; more at the Flickr Kitch People Postcards Pool.
As we strike our poses, we might hum at the memory that it was on this date in 1861 that abolitionist, activist, and poet Julia Ward Howe set to paper the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” (It was first published the following February in The Atlantic Monthly, and set to music that William Steffe had already written.)
The second most traded commodity on earth…
From The Oatmeal (aka Matthew Inman),
click image, or hereDo visit the site, and check out such gems as “How to Use an Apostrophe” and “Six Reasons Bacon is Better than True Love.” (Tip ‘o the hat to our friends at Laughing Squid)
As we add yet another sugar, we might recall that it was on this date in 1307 that Wilhelm Tell, or we Anglos tend to know him, William Tell, shot an apple off his son’s head.
Tell, originally from Bürglen, was a resident of the Canton of Uri (in what is now Switzerland), well known as an expert marksman with the crossbow. At the time, the Habsburg emperors of Austria were seeking to dominate Uri. Hermann Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, raised a pole in the village’s central square, hung his hat on top of it, and demanded that all the local townsfolk bow before the hat. When Tell passed by the hat without bowing, he was arrested; his punishment was being forced to shoot an apple off the head of his son, Walter– or else both would be executed. Tell was promised freedom if he succeeded.
As the legend has it, Tell split the fruit with a single bolt from his crossbow. When Gessler queried him about the purpose of a second bolt in his quiver, Tell answered that if he had killed his son, he would have turned the crossbow on Gessler himself. Gessler became enraged at that comment, and had Tell bound and brought to his ship to be taken to his castle at Küssnacht. But when a storm broke on Lake Lucerne, Tell managed to escape. On land, he went to Küssnacht, and when Gessler arrived, Tell shot him with his crossbow.
Tell’s defiance of Gessler sparked a rebellion, in which Tell himself played a major part, leading to the formation of the Swiss Confederation.
