memes, personal, pleasures

[17/52] Pussy Porn


[17/52] Pussy Porn, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Week 17 entry for 52 weeks challenge.

Over the long weekend we’ve started the process of clearing out the rat’s nest known as our study. Progress has been slow, but steady.

Anyway I was sitting at my desk early on Monday morning, and trying vainly to wake up, when I heard this rustling sound. I checked and the pickled pussy wasn’t in Noreen’s chair so I thought “oh well she’s probably burrowing under Noreen’s desk somewhere”.

Some minutes later I heard the rustling again, and turning round saw Sally emerging from the cardboard box which was stacked inaccessibly behind my chair. This had clearly been sleeping place for the night having clambered over various obstacles including my big camera bag.

Just what is it about cats and boxes?

amusements

Auction Oddities

Our irregular selection of oddities and curiosities from the catalogues of our local auction rooms.

An old petrol can, oil can, a wooden beer tankard, and other items relating to Castrol incl. postcards, a key ring, and salt and pepper pots.

A silk opera hat.

Old artefacts, incl. magnifying glasses, penknives, record needles, a hip flask, a razor, a netsuke, etc.

An ornate Victorian EPNS butter dish frame, with cow finial, and some mixed cutlery.

It was the ‘cow finial’ that amused me.

A good George VI silver helmet milk jug and sugar bowl … in fitted case.

What is a helmet milk jug? Is the ‘milk jug and sugar bowl’ one piece of silver or two?

A glass display box, containing woodland birds including chaffinches.

An interesting mixed lot including carved nutcrackers in the form of an elk with glass eyes, a charming miniature picnic basket, composite doll, Royal Doulton vase, wooden handled corkscrew, papier-mâché Easter egg, clock, etc.

Somehow ‘nutcrackers’, ‘elk’ and ‘glass eyes’ don’t seem to go together!

A pair of Royal Doulton penguins on orange bases marked ‘Best Wishes’, a brightly coloured folksy figurine of Richard II, Cutty Sark ship in bottle, busts of Verdi and Moliere, Keats’ death mask, camera Kodak, Volle 620, royal commemorative ware, pewter ware, horse brasses, old razor, etc.

Penguins standing on oranges. The odd ideas some people have.

Two shelves containing Copeland porcelain soup plates, a quantity of Melba bone china Melba Rose tableware, mirrors, decorative plates, brassware, cast iron doorstop, dog pyjama vase, figurine of a brown bear … tribal carvings, etc.

WTF is a pyjama vase?

At this point I think the Welsh got the better of them …

Two Lladro humorous figures of chldrren (sic) in aeroplanes.

A large Royal Crown Derby figure of a Beefeater, holding a pike, mark in red, ‘Made exclusively for James Leather Ltd, London W1′.

I know what it means, but it does conjure up some strange imagery!

An early 20th century oak chimneypiece with elaborate carved decoration flanked by Corinthian columns, painted white.

A rocking donkey on a pine frame in brown woollen coat, and a small rocking elephant seat.

Why does the pine frame need a woollen coat?

beliefs, food+drink, people, quotes, science, thoughts, topographical

Quotes of the Week

Here’s this week’s selection of words that have caught my eye in the last week …

We’ve replaced the time we used to spend cooking food with watching people cook food on TV.
[Fiona Yeudall quoted in “Foodies: Are food crazies getting their just desserts?”, The Globe and Mail, 19 March 2011]


“No data yet,” he answered. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgement.”
[Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes]

It is important to reflect on the kindness of others. Every aspect of our present well-being is due to others’ hard work. The buildings we live and work in, the roads we travel, the clothes we wear, and the food we eat, are all provided by others. None of them would exist but for the kindness of so many people unknown to us.
[Dalai Lama]

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
[Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes]

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
[Richard Feynman]

I grew convinc’d that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life.
[Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography]

If it’s not fun, you’re not doing it right.
[Bob Basso]

Marshall’s corollary to the last: If it isn’t fun, don’t do it.

environment, history, topographical

Ancient Awesome

No, not me! Only one of those adjectives applies to me. It is ancient peoples who continue to surprise us by their abilities and their foresight.

A couple of weeks ago I came across this on Good and its progenitor article at The Canadian Press.

As we know, Japan has recently suffered a huge earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Construction codes for major buildings in Japan mean new build is relatively earthquake safe, but older domestic buildings in remote areas don’t have this advantage. Japan is used to earthquakes and the population are well drilled for them.

Japan also should be used to tsunami as they often follow (the right type of) earthquakes. And yet there is no civil planning for tsunami. But once upon a time there was tsunami planning!

Sometimes hidden, more often ignored, there are hundreds of stone tablets along the coast of Japan warning people about tsunami. Many of these tablets are 600 or more years old and carry inscriptions such as

If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis

and tellingly

High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants. Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.

This later is on a tablet (pictured above) in Aneyoshi which this year saved the lives of the village’s inhabitants — all of Aneyoshi’s houses are built on higher ground. As one 12-year-old said:

Everybody here knows about the markers. We studied them in school. When the tsunami came, my mom got me from school and then the whole village climbed to higher ground.

Sadly this was not the case in many other towns and villages along Japan’s NE coast, even where there are ancient warning tablets. After the earthquake many people went back to their homes to get their valuables, including children, only to be caught by the tsunami.

So how is it we forget the wisdom of the ancients? Apparently it takes three generations for memories of disasters to fade. Disaster survivors pass on the memories to their children and grandchildren, but after that the knowledge isn’t maintained. Clearly the ancients knew this and erected warning tablets to remind their descendants. We, of course, ignore them; there hasn’t been such a disaster in living memory, so we think we know better.

Maybe we ought to take more notice of the wisdom of the ancients? Maybe it really is time we started learning practical things from history?

amusements, arts

Still Crazy After All These Years

From time to time I go back and look at old Osbert Lancaster pocket cartoons. Lancaster was nothing if not prolific. He effectively invented the pocket cartoon in 1939 when he started drawing for the Daily Express (then a quality newspaper) for whom he drew some 10,000 cartoons — one a day, 6 days a week — over a period of 40 years. This was in addition to writing and/or illustrating many books and working as a stage designer.

Every few years from the early 1940s to the 1970s Lancaster published a selection of 60 or so recent cartoons in small pocket-sized volume. I’m lucky to have been able to collect most of them as they are still available at reasonable prices on the second-hand market.

Lancaster drew a pocket cartoon for the Daily Express every day, and as with Matt (currently in the Daily Telegraph) or the late lamented Calman (in The Times), each pocket cartoon had to be topical. Many insert a rapier to the heart of some current news story; indeed some are so sharp and pithy that you couldn’t publish them in these politically correct times. But what always surprises me is how topical many of Lancaster’s 50 year old cartoons remain. Here is a good example from Lancaster’s collection Tableaux Vivants published in 1955. Sadly the early volumes do not give the specific dates of each cartoon (the later volumes do), but this must have been originally published in the Daily Express some time in 1954 or 1955.

Could one publish this today. Yes, despite some howls of protest, it’s sufficiently anonymous and subtle one probably could. But whether one could get away with calling an Indian lady cartoon character Mrs Rajagojollibarmi I somewhat doubt. And although Lancaster was himself from the upper classes and built his cartoons around the fictional Earl of Littlehampton (Willie) and his wife Maudie Littlehampton, there are many cartoons of the lower orders as well.

Two of the other things I love so much about Lancaster’s cartoons are his ability to pick brilliant names and his attention to detail. For example he invents, inter alia, a chauffeur called Saddlesoap, a waiter (at a gentleman’s club) called Mousehole, an accountant called Whipsnade and peers (many agéd) called Stonehenge, Basingstoke and, of course, Littlehampton. He was also an inveterate observer of people, and had an esepcially keen eye for the heights (and depths) of ladies fashion. So he gets the details deliciously right every time. Here are just two examples:

Delightful!

nudism, sexuality, thoughts

Good Willie!

3 Comments

Continuing our theme of normalising nudity and sexuality, I have an intriguing question. Well I think it’s interesting anyway.

My friend Katy has recently been to see the National Theatre production of Frankenstein starring Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch. You can find her post about it here. At the end of it she says:

Still, at least I got to see Jonny Lee Miller’s willy […]
Good, but still nothing to beat Ian McKellen’s just in case you were wondering.
I’m doing a survey. Famous Theatrical Willies Wot I Have Known.

And it made me wonder … What makes a “good” willie? What is “good” for you? Size? Shape? Surrounding hairiness, or lack thereof? Some vague aesthetic beauty?

And here I’m talking in a non-sexual context; not about what makes for great sex with a specific partner — although they could be the same, of course. This is the willie to look at and appreciate aesthetically, and perhaps desire to know better (regardless of your interest in its owner); in the way you would appreciate Michaelangelo’s David, sans figleaf.

And for those of you who like yoni … What makes a good yoni? Again, what is good for you? Aesthetically.

Intriguing isn’t it? And surprisingly difficult. We have enough trouble saying what we like in a face, and we see hundreds of them every day. And we’ll happily discuss what we like about faces and other body parts. Lads in the pub may even discuss the finer points of boobs. Yet we never, at least in my experience, discuss the aesthetics of genitalia. And yet we all know they’re there. And we’ve all seen a few (although even the most diehard genital observer would probably never come close to seeing as many as they do faces). So why shouldn’t we discuss their aesthetics as well?

And, yes, I’m going to have to go and think about my likes and dislikes too!

freedom of speech, medical, science, sexuality

Male Circumcision

1 Comment

I’ve blogged about the circumcision of male babies as being child abuse and mutilation before (see here).

There’s a useful article, supporting my point of view, on CNN from a day or so ago. It suggests that boy babies should not be circumcised but that the option be given to teenagers when the subject can give informed consent.

The comments I’ve read support the view that boy babies should not be circumcised; if parents/medics are not worried about hygiene than it is better to teach boys to wash their members properly.

As one might expect there is, of course, debate about how a teenage boy can make an informed decision until he has some significant sexual experience. And indeed I would agree with the view that you can’t make a proper decision without that sexual experience.

I would actually go further. How about we make circumcision (male and female) illegal until such time as the person can legally give informed consent – and in my book there would be no exceptions regardless of religious (or any other) considerations barring genuinely and immediate life-threatening medical conditions.