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Probably the best RAW obituary from the past couple weeks. How DID that copy of Illuminatus make it from Oregon to East Germany?
January 2007
Monthly Archive
links for 2007-01-26
Radio Silence
Quartz City is raising anchor and jetting off to Italy for a bit and will return next month.
Ciao for now!
links for 2007-01-23
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Short documentary movie on photographer Stephen Shore
76 sign victory
Wow! I can’t remember any previous situation where a corporation (especially one the size of ConocoPhillips) making a decision in favor of aesthetics.
Nearly one year after we launched our campaign asking ConocoPhillips to reconsider their “destroy all balls” policy towards the historic blue and orange Union 76 Ball gas station signs, the Texas energy giant announced to the Wall Street Journal that they have changed their course. Focus groups held last fall told them what nearly 3000 signers of the Save the 76 Ball petition have already told us: people love the 76 Balls, and don’t want them to disappear.
The 76 Balls that come off their poles are no longer being smashed or cut into pieces, but being preserved for donation to museums like the American Sign Museum, Petersen Automotive Museum, NASCAR Hall of Fame, Museum of Neon Art and perhaps even the Smithsonian! And a new type of 76 Ball, colored red rather than orange, will soon be installed at up to 100 gas stations in the west.
Congrats to everyone involved. (And check out the obligatory Union 76 Ball Flickr pool)
links for 2007-01-22
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Captain Haddock from the Tintin books has a, well, unusual lexicon of insults he hollers at people. This site lists them all
Ladd Observatory, Providence
Chris Perridas has been blogging about H.P. Lovecraft and his time in Providence, Rhode Island and his post today featured the Ladd Observatory. Originally built in 1891, Lovecraft used to hang out there quite a bit:
Ladd remains a living museum of 19th century astronomy practices, complete with creaking staircases and a pleasantly musty attic smell.”
“Some of those rooms, like the one that houses the old transit telescopes, haven’t been fully renovated. As the door creaks open, visitors are greeted by a blast of cold air. The lights don’t work, but Targan shows groups around anyway, with the aid of a flashlight, pointing out how the telescopes were used to keep time by tracing the stars along the sky’s meridian. In the dark, with various strange-looking contraptions covered in dark sheets, the building has a certain haunted house-quality, and indeed, Ladd is said to be haunted by at least one ghost — that of noted Providence fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft. “Did he ever come here?” a visitor asks. “Are you kidding?” Jackson says. “He had a key to the place.” As a teenager, Lovecraft displayed a keen interest in the skies, even writing regular articles about astronomy for Providence newspapers. And he enjoyed the run of the observatory, thanks to then-director Winslow Upton, a friend of the Lovecraft family.”
I took a mini-Lovecraftian tour of Providence on my Loop The USA road trip in 1994 and fell in love with the little observatory the second I saw it.
I have my doubts that the swing set out front can ward off Eldrich Horrors, but maybe that’s how you summon Them in the first place.
Posted by Chris Barrus on Sat 20 Jan 2007 | Permalink
Category: Books, Esoteric Studies, Space
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Category: Books, Esoteric Studies, Space
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links for 2007-01-19
links for 2007-01-18
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Web 2.0-ish site of user-uploaded pictures of interiors from around the world
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Yet another geocoding bookmarklet for Flickr
links for 2007-01-17
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LA Times article on the slow restoration of Amboy and Roy’s Cafe
links for 2007-01-16
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Rumors are sweeping throughout Kashmir of a mystery millionaire who will pay a high bounty on the capture of giant owls. Now we hear that some are saying this is just a cover story for the CIA.
