laphamsquarterly:
2012: NASA insists competitors for the Google X Space Prize adhere to standards designed to protect historic lunar sites and objects.
1987: Fed up with people like Don Draper trashing national parks, the NPS publishes Leave No Trace!, a set of guidelines aimed at keeping America’s open spaces clean.
I’m a little surprised we haven’t designated the moon a National Park already.
A few days after the events just related, M. Larreau set out for Paris. The winter, in his opinion, had become unbearable, and the cold was indeed terribly severe in the lofty chateau, perched upon its lonely pedestal of rocks. At four o’clock in the afternoon the whole valley became filled with a dense icy fog that rose to the foot of the castle walls. Nothing was to be seen in the dull, gray, hueless sky, except an occasional bird of prety, flying swiftly away from the glaciers. At night, the sound of the creaking doors and windows reverberated through the long corridors, and startled one from slumber. However anxious the capitalist might be to continue the work of improving Manteigney, he could bear no more, and wrapping himself in his fur overcoat, hastily started for Paris, leaving the field clear to the severities of the climate.
The snow fell in heavy flakes, covering the whole country with its thick shroud, so that the poor village, attacked on all sides, resembled a ship shut in by icebergs.
Gustave Droz, Around A Spring
Forgot my glasses and read a large sign offering martial arts as ‘Martin Amis’.
“Who needs a face lamp when you can have the whole object?”
”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Related: remember all those early-00s trend pieces about how macho Latino dudes were into Morrissey but “OMG did they know he was FETISHIZING them because he was GAY and wanted to have GAY SEX with them”?
Shopkeepers of the world: if you play mid-90s Morrissey songs in your stores, I will slip into a fugue state and load up my arms with your wares.
laphamsquarterly:
2012: Former President Bill Clinton parties with adult film actresses in Monaco.
1501: Pope Alexander VI, leader of the Holy Roman Empire and infamous (and licentious) Borgia dynasty, stages his own entertaining event featuring candelabras, chestnuts, and ladies of the night.
Read this Deja Vu and then Google ‘Ballet of Chestnuts’ for even more sordid details.
madmenfootnotes:
Genius Pal Angela pointed out an important costuming correlation. Presented without comment:
Joan is wearing the coat Roger gave her.
It pays to have an eye for fur.
laphamsquarterly:
2012: Canadian man jumps over Niagara Falls with only the clothes on his back.
1906: 63-year-old Anna Taylor Edison makes the trip with a barrel, a kitten, and a heart-shaped pillow.
Bring your cat on vacation to (over) Niagara Falls!
Miss Joyce was the nicest teacher in Rosemont School. She was never impatient and almost never cross. Besides, she was young and pretty and had curly hair.
Unlike other teachers, Miss Joyce never wore dark blouses and skirts or sensible shoes. She wore the prettiest clothes Ellen had ever seen. Ellen liked best of all a yellow woolen dress that made her think of sunshine on rainy winter days. With the yellow dress Miss Joyce always wore beautiful red shoes with high heels.
“Red and yellow, catch a fellow”, Otis whispered whenever Miss Joyce wore the dress, but Ellen made up her mind that when she was grown up she was going to have a yellow dress and a pair of red shoes with teetery hells just like her teacher’s.”
Beverly Cleary, Ellen Tebbits.
