Category Archives: amusements

amusements

Auction Amusements

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Is it the recession, have they improved, or is it me getting inured to their style, but our local auctioneers seem to have produced far fewer odd and amusing catalogue descriptions recently. But here is the best from their next sale. [My comments in italic.]

A watercolour of an officer retrieving his fallen helmet, with his horse, after Edouard Detaille.
[Why is he using his horse to pick it up? And why is he waiting for ED to do so first?]

A blue lined leather box containing six silver buttons
[And the point is?]

A pair of antique continental silver-gilt scissors, as a youth in short skirt standing on two hoops, his raised arms forming the blades
[I feel sure we should tell either Benny Hill or Frankie Howerd]

A fine late Victorian cased set of fish eaters for twelve, with matching servers, with engraved plated blades to the knobbly ivory handles, Virginia walnut case.
[I know what fish knives are, but WTF are fish eaters?  Presumably they devour the fish for you?]  

An old Elswick, Barton-on-Humber butcher’s bike.

Three army ammunition boxes and a belt of ammunition shells.
[It’s the belt that worries me!]

A box containing 4 wool-kit rugs

A charming wooden model of an antique shop and contents – working chandelier, till, wall clock, grandfather clock, radio, camera, warming pan, sewing machine, etc.
[The model warming pan works?  How?]

A pair of Buffalo horns and three wild west prints and another.

A chemist’s scales, in brass on mahogany box fitted with a drawer, with weights, etc., a postal scales and five spring balances.

A pair of Continental porcelain groups of frolicking cherubs, a figure of a Golden Oriole, 3 other birds, and 2 vases with Sevres marks

A Victorian display of exotic birds on a mossy branch under glass dome on a mahogany base retaining trade label of Ashdown and Son

An art deco Shorter wall pocket, scale moulded
[WTF?]

Two boxes of old wooden pegs, old cutlery, old buckets, a quantity of garden tools, and a box including a paraffin can, a satsuma vase, shoe lasts, an old iron, sewing implements in an old tobacco tin, etc.
[An interesting collection of old toot]

amusements, books, food+drink, thoughts

Squashed Buttered Nuts

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Noreen bought a book yesterday.  I stole it.  I stole it because it contains such twinkly brilliant gems as:

Bottled at Source. Abbey Well, Highland Spring, Glenpatrick, Ty Nant Welsh Spring, Pennine (bottled at source in Huddersfield) … Apparently, you can’t walk more than a hundred yards in the UK without falling into a natural spring, an Ice Age glacier, a gushing source of healing, sparkling spring water or a 400-year-old magical fairytale wishing well with purifying pixies, adjacent sandstone filter, bottling plant and market-research department.

Mozzarella. Mozzarella cheese comes in Silly Putty-shaped shiny balls … It tastes of nothing. Mozzarella is stored in those unsettling little water-filled tubs – displayed like some sort of soft-cheese Petri-dish specimen …

Muffins. Since when did it become acceptable to eat fairy cakes for breakfast? … You can keep the modern breakfast muffin. I’ll take the fairy cake any day. Not one of those chi-chi chain coffee shop cupcakes; a proper fairy cake, one with icing and those edible rice-paper cake-toppers in the shape of Mickey Mouse’s face, that crab thing from The Little Mermaid, the Wuzzles or the Popples.

Pacific-Rim Cooking. More fucking mangoes.

At several chuckles, sniggers or snorts a page Sausage in a Basket: The Great British Book of How Not to Eat by Martin Lampen is a must. If, like me, you loathe false food or if you just desire an amusement for that transatlantic flight, then this book will not disappoint.

amusements, beliefs, science, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week’s crop of the profound and amusing.

When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
[Mark Twain]

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
[Carl Sagan]

As an atheist I do not believe that there is a God in fact, but the fact of the beliefs of others that God is is highly consequential. It is less important what the real Islam or Christianity is, than what Islam or Christianity is for the people at any specific place and time.
[Razib Khan at ]

Science has nothing to do with common sense. I believe it was Einstein who said that common sense is a set of prejudices we form by the age of 18. Inject somebody with some viruses and that’s going to keep you from getting sick? That’s not common sense. We evolved from single-cell organisms? That’s not common sense. By driving my car I’m going to cook Earth? None of this is common sense. The common sense view is what we’re fighting against. So somehow you’ve got to move people away from that with these quite complicated scientific arguments based on even more complicated research. That’s why it’s such an uphill battle. People start off with a belief and a prejudice–we all do. And the job of science is to set that aside to get to the truth.
[Simon Singh in an interview with Wired at http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/mf_qa_singh/]

Q: How can you tell if it’s been raining cats and dogs?
A: You step in a poodle!
[Misty at Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/misty69/4969353334/]

amusements, people, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

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Not much by way of amusing or thought provoking quotes this week as we’ve been away, but here are what has passed by me…

What we’re suggesting is that something that doesn’t really interact with anything is changing something that can’t be changed.
[Dr Jere Jenkins quoted on Discover Blogs, 80Beats in trying to explain the theory that neutrinos are affecting radioactive decay half-lives]

Yet more proof I could not possibly handle even the most glorious of small children … unless they came with pause and mute buttons.
[Comment at Whoopee]

Our ham is formed from cured RSPCA Freedom Food assured pork leg
[Tea shop menu, Rye]
WTF is an “assured pork leg” and how do you cure an RSPCA?

amusements, quotes, sexuality, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week’s selection of the amusing and inspiring:

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.
[Robert Frost]

Take it as a compliment, absolutely! And there’s certainly nothing threatening about an erection in and of itself. It makes no demands, requires no attention – it’s the man attached to the erection who might do that, and any man worth his sodium chloride knows that his erection is his own responsibility and no one else’s.
[Emily Nagoski at ]

Generic anger, envy and despair, coated in a thick, luxurious layer of can’t be arsed.
[Emma Beddington at http://www.belgianwaffling.com/]

Good advice is something that old men give young men when they can no longer set them a bad example.
[Unknown]

amusements, arts

Auctionalia

This month’s collection of the weird and wonderful from our local auction houses.

Mid 29th century Oak cabinet with two drawers fitted for cutlery above a cupboard flanked by barley twist columns.
[Do we get the time machine as well?]

Five pieces of pewter incl. a tobacco jar, a large musical jug, 2 brass  and wooden folding rulers, […]
[I think I find the idea of a musical jug even more alarming than the products of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation]

A ceramic flat back-two damsels and knave in boat, pair of brass candlesticks […]
[Surely if he’s in a boat with two damsels he’s a knave by definition]

Quantity of Shelley tableware ‘Chelsea, 2 Copeland Spode Italianate bowls, metal dog nutcracker […] 2 sets  boxed silver plate butter knives […] quantity of buttons,
wood planes etc.
[Implements for opening metal dogs or for cracking the mutt’s nuts?]

Glassware including a charmingly enamelled French milk bottle with wire closure, a pair of 19th century large tumblers, 5 cranberry wine glasses, and 6 other pieces
[I’m curious as to why the French enamel their milk bottles]

An early 18th century iron cannon retrieved from the Thames at The Woolwich Arsenal. The  barrel is approximately 68″ long with a bore of 3″
[Just what I need to adorn the loo]

A rare mid 20th century Songye “Kifwebe” mask (Democratic Republic of the Congo), this important mask was made for a dignitary of the Bwadi Bwa Kifwebe society, the ruling group of the Songge tribe, the heightened striations in white signifies death and reincarnation (there is a monogram atop the left eye, possibly the original wearer/owner).
[Well this auction house does specialise in ethnographic artefacts]

Charming William IIII rosewood cabinet upper section comprising glazed cupboard beneath an ornate gilt metal gallery above 2 frieze drawers and cupboard base flanked by Corinthian half columns raised on a plinth.
[This has to be the pièce de résistance … I can’t even picture what it might look like!]

The taxidermist’s art was also in evidence, with:

A stuffed canary
A stuffed ferret
Pair of stuffed Jays mounted in a glass cabinet
A Victorian arrangement of two stuffed owls under a glass dome

amusements, quotes, science, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

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It’s generally been a quiet week and I’ve been doing lots of Anthony Powell Society work, hence the lack of activity and only a couple of recent quotes …

If you allow annoying people to annoy you, then you’ve allowed them to win.
[Hypersexualgirl]

Nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first.
[GK Chesterton]

amusements, beliefs, environment, medical, music, pleasures, science, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

Another in the series of things which have struck me, or amused me, this week.

So look, I’m going to say this thing, and you’re going to listen and believe me because … I don’t know, why would you believe me if you haven’t believed it from anyone else? […] Because in the patient corners of your heart, you’ve ALWAYS known it’s true. It’s this:
You’re not broken. You are whole. And there is hope.
[Emily Nagoski at ]

There is evidence that male babbling (what you kindly call Punditry) is a Zahavian handicap.
During both foetal development and puberty, male brains are subject to damage from hormonal processes that convert the female body and neural system into a male one (more or less). This causes males to be, on average, poor at communication. They don’t understand what they hear as well as females, can’t form their thoughts into words as well, and most interestingly, can’t think about one thing while carrying on a conversation with another human at the same time, as females routinely do.
Therefore, ability to communicate at all, let alone well, is very difficult given the handicap of this developmental brain damage. Public communication (babbling/punditry) would indicate relatively high quality for any male that could do it. Thus, all that male babbling.
[Greg Laden in a comment at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/]

The Chap Olympiad has a number of things to recommend it, apart from the variety of potential experiences. One is that its resolute promoting of amateurism, eccentric sporting and events cocks an elegant snook at the revolting orgy of corporate arrogant dullardism that infuses all major sporting events. We don’t need their cocacolaMacanike extravaganzas in citizen murdering nations. Stuff ‘em.
[“Minerva” at http://redlegsinsoho.blogspot.com]

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.
[Albert Schweitzer]

Just as we should cultivate more gentle and peaceful relations with our fellow human beings, we should also extend that same kind of attitude towards the natural environment. Morally speaking, we should be concerned for our whole environment.
[Dalai Lama]

Minds are like parachutes: they only function when open.
[Thomas Dewar]