Source of many excellent digital poster archives, those groovy Socialist historians in the Netherlands present us with photos of Turkish migrant workers in the Netherlands between 1965 and 1975. No one can do sideburns like Turks in the 70's! Bonus: the unintentionally-hilarious-in-English caption "Turks brood."
A later specimen of the cheating housewives spam had a site that was still active, so I was able to go find out the scoop. It turns out
Some married Woman feel they need more than they are getting at home. The Internet is great way to meet local woman who are looking for discreet sexual encounters with local men in their cities. No Strings attached! These ladies are ready and willing to meet right now. They don't play games. They know what they are looking for they don't play!!And
For just $1 you will get full access to our entire horny house wives data base.They also claim to have loads of adult content available for members, and even if you're not a member, they'll send you, "100% FREE PASSWORD SITES IN YOUR EMAIL... NO SPAM JUST FREE PASSWORDS TO TOP ADULT WEBSITES!!" if you'll just give them your email address.
On the heels of those mysterious (and pointy!) housewives, today's post at I'll Take Your Photo is strangely on-topic.
I was going to go find out what kind of site the "cheating wives" spam would lead me to (dating? porn? escorts?), but the DNS is not answering for the domains included in the specimens I have available. Google turned up only some discussions of the spam, and of the blogs I checked, only a comment in one of them remarked that all we apparently care about with these women is height, weight, and bra size. And no one involved in that discussion noted that the proportions are freakish. The first housewife listed is 5'9", 120 lbs, 36c. I mean, I suppose it could be done, maybe even without silicone, but I'm not sure I'd want to see her naked, for fear some protuding bone or boob would put my eye out. I like some curve with my housewife (or working wife, for that matter), thanks.
And yeah, this post is ever so likely to end up attracting search engine hits, but since the spam bots have already found the blog (so we've turned comments off everywhere), there's no use steering now.
Learn all about the Insular Areas in the US, also listed in the CIA Factbook!
I hadn't heard that the wise-cracking Jerry Orbach was battling cancer. Sadly, he didn't make it.
Why does some Mexican music sound like polkas? Because it is polkas! An interesting story about German immigration to Texas, the invention of the accordion, and that big stew of musical mixing.
The blog of a slide collector. I know the past wasn't really in those odd colors, but I like to pretend it was.
The iTrip (as well, no doubt, as similar devices) is illegal in England. Around here, you have to amplify the signal to be greater than 10mW (ERP) before you're a pirate.
Loyal reader John again comes through with a link to raptureready, taken from the lead article in the always entertaining Economist Christmas issue. Also in that issue, a modest proposal in response to the shortage of legally employable nannies: outsource the kids to India!
RaptureReady's tips on surviving after the rapture (assuming you aren't whisked away) are a bit one-sided. The emphasis is squarely on accepting Jesus, rather than how to score the best free stuff from now-vacant houses.
Through Steve, Don't Eat It! comes the stunning Hispanical porktastic product line of Dolores canning. I'm sure it's entirely possible that the sadness of the Blessed Virgin was caused by pickled pigs' feet.
Another trailer link: Retro Camping Club of France.
While looking up the use of another fantastical food product obtained at Big Lots!, obleas, I found that they are eaten with cajeta- a previous BL score! Excellent!
An outfit in Peru (Indiana) is a source for vintage trailers- they don't make em like that anymore! When they are remade again, they look like this.
Based on the book Jennifer Government, NationStates lets you be your own dictator.
Since we moved to a more serious web hosting solution, I've had better access to statistics, including which search queries people are using (on the up side, I don't have to scan through the URLs in the log; on the down side, the log parser my hosting company uses doesn't recognize queries from very many engines—I think I'll mention that to them). One of the benefits of such easy access is the ability to tell when someone has reached our pages due to a misspelled query. Today was at least the second time I've been able to go correct the spelling of a word in a blog post because somebody misspelled it in their query and ignored Google's "Do you mean...?"
It's like seeing some alternate timeline version of me: an art taxidermist! There's your standard jackalope, and your less-standard punk squirrel (mother's day is coming up....). If I worked in an elementary school, I would have one of the creepier items in my office, so the kids would gape at it, eyes like saucers. Since I only visit schools from time to time, I could perhaps settle on one of the smaller items to carry on my person.
Note: due to this site's posting on BoingBoing, it exceeded its monthly allowable traffic and is temporarily unavailable. Try again later, and buy some stuff to help her pay for her web bills!
The BBC hosts a web chat with Tony Head. Ripper may still happen, maybe as a one-shot instead of a series, but "the world needs Joss Whedon to do some movies and that's what he's doing." In other news, Tony hosts True Horror on Discovery UK. No idea whether or when it'll hit our shores.
According to this BBC piece about brain characteristics common to hoarders, hoarding appears to be qualitatively different from other OCDs. Just another in our ongoing series on hoarding. No, we don't have a compulsion to cover it, why do you ask?
Ursula LeGuin tells us "[h]ow the Sci-Fi Channel wrecked my books."
Adapted from Bernat patterns for knitting for the troops in WWII, an assortment of practical protective clothing. A few others, mixed in with some general patterns. And bless their boots, the Red Cross has ressurected some of their patterns, too!
Article on wartime knitting.
After reading the quite entertaining book Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood, I have been looking up information on OCD (sometimes linked with anotherr FP interest, hoarding and garbage houses). I stumbled across a fascinating bit of research that suggests a genetic cause of OCD and related disorders! Yes, I sometimes miss the news for months on end, but you'd think I would have heard about this. More on OCD from Medline Plus.
The Frugal Housewife mentions (in 1830) using peach leaves to flavor a pudding-- this is certainly the first I have heard of this flavoring. Some half-hearted googling turns up some other mentions, most quite old, of flavoring with peach leaves. It sounds like they may taste of almonds.
A contemporary herbal mentions the leaves as having many positive effects, including "[i]n large quantities, they act mildly upon the bowels, securing mucous discharges without pain; and in this act many times leading to the expulsion of worms in their nests." Eek!
Bad news: lectured by patron upset about the "gay agenda" the library is pushing (his evidence: Gay Bingo poster in copy room next to many other posters and the fact that we own "books like Daddy's Roommate")
Good news: it's the same guy who did the same lecture at me before, but previously he complained about Seattle Gay News and Daddy's Roommate, so there's only the one rabidly anti-gay guy locally
Bad News: he fills out lots of complaint forms
Good News: since he does this over and over, I get to try out different coping strategies each time: this time I showed him a huge number of Christian picture books to show that we are not promoting one view over another. He felt that we were putting out poison and candy. I pointed out that this is why children need to be supervised in the library.
Bad news: He is never ever convinced and had no interest in checking out any of our lovely Biblical picture books
Good news: He rarely updates his rant. He's still talking about Daddy's Roommate (1990) instead of King and King and Family (2004).
Mind Hacks- looks like a neat book and is certainly a neat web log. I have been quite interested by the baby mind hacks my pal the new dad has been telling me about.
Yes, a knitted uterus. Teach your youngster how to knit and where her period comes from. Unanswered question: will it help men find their keys?
I can't find any evidence the collective has run across John Scalzi before, but he seems to be pretty funny.
It's a headline just begging for a cheap joke (and who am I to refuse?): Op can boost size of micro-penis. I'll leave most of the examination of societal attitudes alone, but I at least have to mention the equating of "proper" urination with "standing up." It also seems like there would be implications for FTM folk, but the BBC doesn't mention any.
A topic mentioned briefly in some of my library school classes was the Infoshop- a storefront librarylike affair intended to be grassroots, revolutionary, and aimed at opressed persons. My impression was that they ended up being collections of "underground" magazines and newspapers that the opressed were no more interested in reading that they were before they were stuck in an infoshop. Besides, if you want to be revolutionary, what better way than to get a municipal job you can't be fired from for anything short of arson (but only if it was arson at work and they could prove it wasn't due to mental illness) and then answer whatever questions the opressed have the best you can while buying library materials they seem to like (and not just the ones that your smelly friends are publishing out of their commune basement). But an actual grassroots library that could be brought out to preexisting gathering places instead of requiring people to find the building THE MAN has put the information in seems pretty cool. So I was disappointed that the nandeya (why? shop) seems to be more of a streetcorner Infoshop than a performance-art library installation. But maybe it will morph into that. Any librarians interested in making some nandeya-like fun here in the states?
So this guy always wanted to fly carried by helium balloons and did it the smart way- with hot air ballooning training, good safety equipment, flight planning, disaster planning, and permission from the local air traffic controllers. But I would be more interested in using his techniques to try a simulated moonwalk! Boiiiiing!
The BBC's discussion of Brian Wilson makes that Barenaked Ladies song make more sense.
Honestly, it sounds like something out of Seinfeld, so it'll get lots of media attention: a fast-food style breakfast cereal bar. Actually, it sounds like a really good theme party, with the necessary addition of cartoons and footie jammies.
Wondering where your favorite life-on-the-edge patron is, since usually he or she is at the library all damn day? Perhaps he or she is in jail. But there's still no way to see if they're at Harborview.
Telehaptics "combines virtual touch technology with networking to allow people to feel things locally that could be happening miles away." Teledildonics (probably worksafe) is more specific (probably not worksafe).
Speaking of deadly and mysterious incidents, do you miss the terrible tragedies of Kent, WA? Sure! We all do! Well, catch up on your old hometown's mayhem.
Yes, the "funny" aspect of this story is the killer lava lamp (actually a much less funny shard of glass through heart), but here are the elements that make it an FP story:
1. Kent, WA
2. Trailer home
3. the lamp was being heated on the stove for reasons unknown
4. "Police found no evidence of drug or alcohol use."
Some time ago, I deactivated fpcraig at forcedperspective.org, after entering it into a "remove me" page. The spam bots are still hitting it—my mail host bounced ten messages in the last month—but even more troubling than that is that my gmail account with that alias is getting spammed. I can only infer that eventually every alias that has ever been identified at any domain will be tried at gmail.
As an experiment, I think I'll set up an fpcraig alias in another domain I have access to, and which I know gets dictionary-spammed, to see if fpcraig is now just part of the spammers' alias dictionary.
If you live in a western state, you may, as of today, go to www.annualcreditreport.com to try to examine your credit report at any of the three major credit reporting agencies. So far, Experian's server failed (the NSAPI plugin says "No backend server available for connection"), and both Transunion and Equifax have been "unable" to show me my report on the web. Less than wholly satisfying. I'd be interested in hearing other folks' experiences.