Banana extravaganza!

"What could possibly go wrong?": Inventions from the nasty past

Call these "un-ventions". Things the inventor should have thought twice about. Things that might even be hazardous to your health and wellness (and wellbeing and stuff).

How many of these all-purpose-douche-and-enema machines did they sell, anyway? And you could wash the dog with it, too. Come to think of it, that's not such a bad deal. But boy would you ever need to clean the contraption between uses.

Hmmmmmm. That "word of warning" tells the whole story here, as does the "dual purpose" bit. I think these things are designed for ease of access, and I don't mean for taking a tinkle. And do you know what, I would NOT want to get caught in my zipper while wearing one of these.

This thing, this evil metal nose clamp, is supposed to prevent pain from hay fever, "catarrh", etc.? What the fuck IS catarrh? Is this something the human race used to get, but just doesn't get any more, or does it just no longer exist? Perhaps, like quinsy, lumbago and grippe, it simply went out of style. But hey. . . maybe that means that this contraption actually worked!

I'll try not to comment on the name of the inventor.

This is another evil thing you stuck on your face. I don't think this cured catarrh, or cat-gut-guitar or whatever, just "analyzed facial flaws" - and if the contraption is any indication, this poor woman is ALL flaws. The guy is obviously a sadist: this thing has 325 screws in it that can be tightened any way he wants.

A related issue is the Toilet Mask or (even more sinister-sounding) "face glove". I can't help but be reminded of This Is Spinal Tap's album, Smell the Glove. They still sell things that look sort of like this, things that strap on to a woman's face and make her look like Hannibal Lecter.

Hey, it's a new kind of hat, all right. A fake hat. A charlatan hat. A faux hat. A phony hat. A hat-that-doesn't-really-grow-hair. But if it didn't work, you could get a job as a chef in a robot factory.

I looked at this ad with great puzzlement, trying to figure out just what they meant by diseases of the head: mental illness, perhaps? Or was the inventor of the device perhaps thus afflicted? Then I read the description, and there it is. . . CATARRH! So catarrh, we've finally deduced, is a disease of the head. But you've got to get one of these to cure it, and unfortunately they stopped making them in 1932.

This is one of those marvelous Victorian orgasm-machines that I wish they still made. It beat the hell out of having your doctor shove his hand up your skirt, a common therapeutic treatment of the day. The ad even mentions hysteria, a catch-all term which basically meant "horny" (thus the need for one's doctor to feel one up and produce "paroxysm"). I think I'd rather have my paroxysms on a real horse, but if you don't have the space or the oats and hay, this might just do the trick. Whatever that is.

I don't understand this thing - looks like he has some sort of beehive on his head, or an underwater device, except that it's made out of felt. I've seen fabric cocoons that you can wrap around yourself, but this - is that a fire extinguisher or an oxygen tank sitting beside him? What are all those gizmos and egg-slicer thingies on his desk? I don't know if I want to get too deeply involved.

And your hair would smell just great!

This has the largest cringe-factor - no, wait. That one is coming next. But when you see the little naked baby under a sun lamp, you just die a little bit inside. If you want your kid to Stay Brown Th' Year Round, this is the way to go - until Child Protection finds out about it.

And I am truly sorry for this one, but I had to include it for the sake of historical accuracy. A long, long time ago I posted instructions for prostate massage, not because I was interested but because it read like a translation of a translation of some indecipherable foreign language (I won't say "tongue"), and thus was rendered virtually incomprehensible. This thing gives a whole new meaning to one of my favorite expressions, "Sit on this and rotate". It is obviously a dildo, one which needs to be well-lubricated for use: "Note especially those little vent holes in the nozzle through which the unguent inserted in the chamber below may be forced out by turning the knurled cap."

I cannot say another word about this.

Harold Lloyd: Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra

Somehow the bleakness of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra expresses Harold's grief at being mocked at the big dance better than anything. I mean, his pants fell apart and all. This is HL's low point in The Freshman, and I will say it was fiendishly hard to get the film and music to synchronize.

Harold Lloyd: Ride of the Valkyries

Another of my incongruous attempts to glom classical music onto scenes from Harold Lloyd. It almost works, in this case. This is the race to the church from Girl Shy set to Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.

Harold Lloyd: The Rite of Spring

Experimental filmmaking at its most wretchedly primitive. I got thinking: what if I rescored some of the great moments from Harold Lloyd's movies with great moments from classical music? The result, bizarre as it is, was captured on film (sort of). This is the fight scene from The Kid Brother set to Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

Atheist minister: what the hell is up with Gretta Vosper?

So what do you call a minister who does not  believe in God, the Bible, Jesus, the sacraments, or any of the usual tenets and accoutrements of the Christian church?

Gretta Vosper.

I still can't find any information on whether the United Church of Canada "defrocked" this woman or not, but they should. She never should have been "frocked" to begin with, or at least allowed to practice atheism as a form of Christian ministry. If by chance she is allowed to continue, ordination in a larger sense will mean absolutely nothing.

Such is my view.

Why does it matter? I was a member of the United Church for years and years, a lay minister, and everything revolved around scripture, Jesus, the sacraments. Worship. God. Prayer. Silly us! Now we find the Church has "evolved" and none of that is necessary any more. But if you want to subtract holiness from the mix, why not just go Unitarian?

In this video I sit and ponder what they sing in church (if they call it church now): if not hymns, then maybe "hers"? Warning: my feelings, and my language, are a little strong towards the end.

Save the country! NOW!

Come on people, come on children

Come on down to the glory river

Gonna wash you up, and wash you down

Gonna lay the devil down, gonna lay that devil down.

Come on, people! Come on, children!

There's a king at the glory river

And the precious king, he loved the people to sing;

Babes in the blinkin' sun sang

"We Shall Overcome".

I got fury in my soul, fury's gonna take me to the glory goal

In my mind I can't study war no more.

Save the people, save the children, save the country now

Come on people, come on children

Come on down to the glory river

Gonna wash you up, and wash you down

Gonna lay the devil down, gonna lay that devil down.

Come on people! Sons and mothers

Keep the dream of the two young brothers

Gonna take that dream and ride that dove

We could build the dream with love, I know,

We could build the dream with love

We could build the dream with love I know,

We could build the dream with love,

We could build the dream with love, I know,

We could build the dream with love.

I got fury in my soul, fury's gonna take me to the glory goal

In my mind I can't study war no more.

Save the people

Save the children

Save the country

Save the country

Save the country

NOW!

The future anchor of CTV News?

My eldest granddaughter, Caitlin. I watched her get born, and now she's thirteen years old and sitting at the anchor's desk! No doubt her career aspirations will take many twists and turns - but she does look great up there.

Bob Dylan on Nobel Prize

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author page!

Chicken love

Bentley the cat walks out on me!

"Definitely difficult to process" - the disaster that is Donald Trump

"I understand Trump is a polarizing figure. I understand his rise to power (first-ever president without any political or military experience, just for starters) is odd, unusual, shocking, etc.

But that’s precisely why the ramifications need to be discussed among citizens in a cool, calm, compassionate manner. Take a cue from the concession speeches of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – I particularly liked Obama’s comment (I’m going to miss that guy) to the effect of “this was an intramural scrimmage … We are Americans first.”

You and your friend are Americans first. It can be hard, I think, particularly for Canadians to understand, but America is, at heart, I believe, a rebellious country, a country that began in rebellion – a punk country, if you will, and Donald Trump was a punk choice for president.

So it’s definitely difficult to process, but shouldn’t cause a rift between you and your friend. When one Oscar Wilde character says accusatorily to another “You always want to argue about things,” the other character says “That is exactly what things are made for.”

I’ve often felt the truth of that. And never more so than with Trump. Go ahead and argue about him until you’re blue in the face and the bottle of chardonnay is empty.

Just respect the fact not everyone will always have the same opinion as you. And never, ever let it get personal." - David Eddie, The Globe and Mail.

Blogger's note. I am seeing this sentiment (in this case, a Canadian's advice to an American friend) in various places, and keep thinking of that line in The Way We Were: "People ARE their principles." If that is so, I cannot stay friends with someone who "is" Donald Trump, or embraces his hateful ideology. 

Can I keep on my friend list (real or Facebook-ish) someone who fiercely supports a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynist, wall-building, and just plain stupid world leader, someone who (if American) maybe even voted for him and thinks the country made a brilliant choice?

Can I stand to hear ANY more of that hateful Hillary-bashing?

The truth is, no one seems capable of the kind of calm, dispassionate discussion over a bottle of wine that this guy is recommending. He seems to be asking for witty repartee, a la Oscar Wilde, while all around us corruption is sprouting and flourishing like a cancer. Not much protest or social change ever emanated from a drawing room, no matter how cutting the witticisms. 

Even us so-called civil Canadians are screaming at each other about the terror of Trump. Am I happy about that? Of course not. It makes me terribly sad. But what's the alternative? 

I can't help but see this man's advice to his American friend as a version of "yes, he's a Nazi, but he's your friend! Why not talk it over? Don't ever let it get personal." But if we remain dispassionate, keep our emotions out of this, let our convictions go to sleep or be overtaken by that "oh, come on, be nice" mentality, we are truly doomed. 

And minimizing the horror of Trump's win by saying he's a "punk" President is - just that. Minimizing. If people believe this is a realistic or healthy way to proceed, they are wrong.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

President Trump: are you ready for this?

President Trump: the way the bee buzzes

Call this an extreme example of internet strangeness. This is an excerpt (a short one, at that) from something called Vaught's Practical Character Reader. Someone apparently found/scanned this very old and dusty book about - what? Phrenology? That's the assessment of character by feeling bumps on a person's head. So it can't be that. This is more like - well, what IS it? Face-reading? Making stuff up, more-like, based on a whole lot of strange drawings of heads and faces.

So if someone's face is a certain shape, well, good. They're obviously a worthwhile person. If not, get away from them! A woman is plainly a rotten mother because she has a sort of dip or curve in her head. On the other hand, HE would make a good husband because of the shape of his ears.

And if a bee buzzes around your head, you're going to be President.

A number of people in these illustrations have holes in their heads, or what looks like tape wrapped around them. Strange things, words, spring out of the heads of others. Eyeballs sprout out of someone's scalp. Very little is explained, though a lot of it is described as "needs no explanation".

None of this makes a damn bit of sense!

What this does point to however is something we still do, consciously or otherwise. We assess, or, more likely, judge others by their appearance, particularly facially. This usually happens in a split-second, upon meeting someone for the first time. We file away that impression and may stick to it, unless something else dissuades us.

In the case of Vaught's Practical Character Reader (and who is this Vaught, anyway? I don't like the look of this guy), it's all set in stone, unchangeable. Even if the fat man lost weight, he'd still be evil.

We now know that not one jot of this is true. People with big heads aren't evil. People with small heads aren't evil. (Note. Donald Trump IS evil - Ed.) Steam doesn't come out of people's skulls (too often). An "honest head and face" isn't necessarily a perfect oval. This is something that someone made up, perhaps to reassure themselves and/or others that their prejudices were correct.

This last one, not explained at all, has to be the strangest of all, but perhaps it's saying that if you set a bee loose in a room full of politicians, it will make a bee-line to the most suitable candidate. This system is more logical than democracy, or at least yields more favorable results. It might have worked in our favour last night. Instead, we had a stampede of barbarians at the gates, and all was lost for those who live by reason.

By many people's reckoning, this means that racism, a low grumble in a huge part of the world, might just rise to a mighty roar (as it has so many times before in history), unchecked by the counterforce of reason. It's a grim fact that the KKK voted Trump, and celebrated mightily last night.

What does this have to do with an old brown-paged book about face-reading? There is a connection.

The so-called innocent analysis of character by facial features isn't really innocent at all. It led to atrocities such as the dismissal of both Irish and African peoples as basically worthless, of "low type". If you're of low type, obviously you can't hope for anything better (so get away and keep your hands off MY resources).

The Iberians are believed to have been originally an African race, who thousands of years ago spread themselves through Spain over Western Europe. These remains are found in the barrows, or burying places, in sundry parts of these countries. The skulls are of low prognathous type. They came to Ireland and mixed with the natives of the South and West, who themselves are supposed to have been of low type and descendents of savages of the Stone Age who, in consequence of isolation from the rest of the world, had never been (?) competed in the healthy struggle of life, and thus made way according to the laws of nature for superior races.

I don't like what I'm seeing now, I don't like how the White Right just seized back power from the so-called liberals. There's a kind of civil war going on. Maybe we'll be drawing up facial comparison charts again. Or taking measurements of facial features. They did that once, remember? It kind of had something to do with your future. Or lack of one.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

November 8, 2016

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

Emily Dickinson

Do tomatoes scream when sliced?

 

Back in 1948, there was apparently nothing weird about riding across a lake on a motorized surfboard while wearing a nice suit and bowler hat and smoking a cigarette. Forget his lack of safety gear – inventor Joe Gilpin looks cool gliding along on the water.

The 20th century saw many astounding technological innovations. The automobile revolutionized the way people live and work, the internet changed the way people think about information, and the U.S. of A put a man on the moon. But some technological advances that came in the earlier part of the 20th century weren't exactly meant for the history books. Because they were stupid. Take, for example, this M3 sub-machine gun with a curved barrel for shooting around corners. It's the perfect gun for the "shoot first, look where you're shooting later" kind of guy.

You can carry it anywhere and everywhere. Like, office, public washrooms, even in public transport.

Inventor John H T Rinfret demonstrates his anti-bandit bag. To foil thieves the chain is pulled and the bottom of the case falls out so the contents are scattered over the floor. That'll stop those thieves from getting at the contents of your bag! No, wait. It won't.

President of Zeus Corp., Robert L. Stern, smoking a cigarette from his self-designed rainy day cigarette holder.

A woman adjusts her stocking by the light of the Goodyear's illuminated tires. The tire is made from a single piece of synthetic rubber and is brightly lit by bulbs mounted inside the wheel rim.

A man at a shipping exhibition in Olympia, London, demonstrating the ''Laryngaphone, '' a noise-excluding telephone which only transmits vibrations from the vocal chords when the microphone is placed against the throat or cheek. For the man who wants to annoy both his wife and his mistress.
(Blogger's note: not to be confused with Sonovox). http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2016/11/incredible-sonovox-do-not-listen.html

A nanny supervising a baby suspended in a wire cage attached to the outside of a high tenement block window. The cages were distributed to members of the Chelsea Baby Club in London who have no gardens, or qualms about putting a child in a box dangling over a busy street.

American science fiction writer and founder of the Church of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard uses his Hubbard Electrometer to determine whether tomatoes experience pain, 1968. His work led him to the conclusion that tomatoes "scream when sliced."

Can Bob Dylan paint?

Blackbird, fly

Swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. 

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.