from the neighborhood: hogwarts hallway

My friend and colleague Jeremy refers to this portrait hallway on the third floor of the Massachusetts Historical Society as the "Hogwarts Hallway." It definitely feels like the portraits are watching you as you make your way through it. I get the feeling that at night, after the building is shut down, the probably take a wander around the other floors to socialize.

from the neighborhood: mhs spiral stair

This is the first in a series of snapshots I took at the MHS recently, when I happened to have my camera in my bag when I went in to work. (Some of them are a bit blurry or dim, due to not using a flash). This is a shot from the third floor looking down the spiral stair to the reception desk in our first floor lobby.

in which i am amused by the skymall catalog

. . . and choose to share that amusement with all of you.

This morning, I spent several hours on Midwest Airlines aircraft on my journey from Boston to Michigan, during which time I flipped through the complimentary SkyMall catalog provided in my seat pocket -- it's like Sears Roebuck for the 12st century! The sheer randomness and bizarreness of the SkyMall catalog never fails to delight. Here are a few of my favorite from this particular edition.


This young man clearly paused halfway through the conversion to cyberman for a senior-year style photoshoot.


While this item is being sold as a back massager, it is clearly a highly complex sex toy designed for a wild night of orgiastic delight.


This isn't exactly hilarious, but since I'm taking a class right now on collective memory, and we've talked some about how both Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy have figured in national collective memory over time, I found it interesting that these four images have been selected and placed side by side.


For all of you (I know you are out there!) who worry about unslightly white feet during the summer -- worry no more! Thanks to SkyMall, you can order your very own foot-sized tanning bed to make sure your feet are sandle-ready all summer long. (Doesn't it look like the person's feet are being melted off in the bottom picture? or is it just me?)

And finally, the creme-de-la-creme . . .


There's really so much wrong with this particular product that I can't even begin to do it justice here . . . but let me just point out that I love how the perceived options here are a) a fake, removable ass or b) a fake, surgically-created ass. Not just, you know, your bum au naturale.

Cheerio kiddos; I'll be checkin' in as time permits! Now it's off to cuddle on my parents' couch with cocoa, cat, and my weekly reading for Collective Memory before the early morning catches up with me.

links list: off to michigan edition

As this posts, I'll be in the air somewhere between Boston and Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I'm going for an all-too-brief rendezvous with my parents, youngest sib, a few close friends . . . and of course Toby the cat (see above). Meanwhile, here are a few of the week's internet finds to keep your brains active!

On a personal note, I've been cajoled into participating in National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo; please repeat seven times fast) in which writers around the globe feverishly churn out prose and log words written with the organization, which tracks the mountain of creative effort expended (no actual skills needed, thankfully, other than the ability to produce a great volume of words -- something I have always been fairly adept at). Writing starts November 1st with a goal of 50,000 words (1,666 per day) by the 30th.

Coolest news item of the week: San Francisco now requires composting as well as recycling. While I'm not holding my breath, I'd love to see Boston follow suit!

Least-cool news of the week award is split between the judge in Louisiana who denied a mixed-race couple a marriage license ("I'm not a racist, I just play one on the bench"??) and Jan Moir, the UK columnist, who wrote a truly nasty, homophobic column for the Daily Telegraph and (cool news again) was called out by Stephen Fry, and a record 22,000 others.

Also worth reading was Charlie Brooker's op-ed in response:

It has been 20 minutes since I've read her now-notorious column, and I'm still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo.

While we're on the subject of right-wing wackaloonery, commentator Debbie Schlussel recently got all bent out of shape about (of all things) Disney's re-design of Tinker Bell's costume, which she claims "masculinizes" the otherwise appropriately-feminine "nymph." This gave Jeff over at Alas, a blog, a wonderful opportunity to snark.

Maybe Ms. Schlussel would be happier if everyone lived according to the rules of this 1962 marriage manual, helpfully scanned and annotated by Gwen of Sociological Images.

I am probably not a nice person for finding fundamentalist Christians funny as well as scary -- chalk it up to necessary self-protection growing up in a conservative area where my childhood friends were convinced I'd end up in hell because I wasn't baptized. So on that note -- and in celebration of Halloween -- a church-sponsored book burning (story via Hanna) that will include translations of the bible (wrong translations obviously) and the face of Jesus which has been spotted on a toilet-stall door at an IKEA in Glasgow (via Melissa at Shakesville).

Hanna's new group blog, paper not included, is still in the planning stages, but until the official launch of the project, let me share a review she wrote recently of David Wellington's vampire thriller 99 Coffins, the sequel to 13 Bullets (I guess we're going for a number theme). I can't comment yet as I'm not finished with 99, but I thought the first one was great and am still rooting for the protagonist halfway through the second.

And before I sign off, two great library- and archives-themed jokes: the definition of "oldgasm" and a great shelf tag from Hanover, New Hampshire (if you don't get it right away, read the text out loud).

from the neighborhood: yellow pot

Hanna and I admire this pot every time we walk passed it on our way to the Clear Flour bakery.

from the neighborhood: graffiti wall

After this, I promise pictures of things other than graffiti for a while. But I just had to share this awesome wall of graffiti art outside the auto garage down the street from our apartment. It's an ever-changing work of art, but the colors of this incarnation make me especially happy.

Quick Hit: "Sexual Warfare: Rape and the American Civil War"

Research fellow Crystal Feimster gave a brown bag lunch talk at the Massachusetts Historical Society on October 9 about sexual violence in the American Civil War; I did a write-up of the conversation at The Beehive so if you're interested, hop on over to check it out.