I’m browsing through a collection of historic photos of prisoners on McNeil Island, 1875-1906 (through Ancestry Library Edition). The prisoners are photographed in pairs, probably to save on film, but it leads to each picture looking like a solemn portrait of a pair of friends or a promotional picture of an unfortunate comedy duo.

Please enjoy a delightful song of my own composition, written on the occasion of testing that Audacity installed on a work laptop actually worked.

I have just learned of the existence of a thing called an epergne! A drawing and suggestion of how wonderful a word it is is available from the lovely Cul-de-Sac blog.
OED says:

A centre-dish, or centre ornament for the dinner-table, now often in a branched form, each branch supporting a small dish for dessert or the like, or a vase for flowers. (From our quots. it appears that the earlier use was chiefly to hold pickles.)

Write a thoughtful and quiet explorations of feelings and whatnot that doesn’t necessarily go anywhere about the “unusual friendship” between the coroner and the lady who lives with the corpses of her sister and husband.

From the Publishers Weekly review of The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie, by Wendy McClure:

“Discovering that butter she churned herself was ‘just butter,’ McClure admits she ‘felt like a genius and a complete idiot at the same time.'”

The book comes out in April. I can’t wait.

These are all listed in the category “Girl’s Toy.”

Hand-cranked mochi machine (do watch the video- so perky!)
Somen slide! Includes a sack to carry it in!
Perhaps a toffee maker?
Child’s doughnut maker!
Cotton candy?
To all appearances, a hand-crank bread machine.
Put the kids to work makin’ sushi (they even have competition)
I love those bean-filled fish pastries!
Oooh, soft serve!
I didn’t know you could get novelty popcorn other than at the beach.
Perhaps a candy mold kit?
Chocolate banana pop maker
Small-dog based sushi roll maker
This is either a pasta maker or a pasta vending machine
Ooh! Make your own Pocky!
Whipped cream anointing gun
Ice cream? Yakitori?
Another Pocky kit
Sanrio chocolate fountain (there is a Disney one, too)
Adorable tiny sandwich shaper
This one is definitely a pasta maker
Make your own candy bars

Remember that movie (based on a story), The Sweater? Do you know how ingrained it is in Canadian culture?

An excerpt from the story is now featured in both official languages of Canada on the reverse of the Canadian five-dollar bill.

Can you even imagine a story that could be featured on US currency? You can watch the film here. Also quite interesting: the Richard Riot.

A description of world famous kitty Maru’s paw pose as being like a Japanese ghost made me check on Japanese ghost posture. Sure enough, they have a T-Rex arm thing going on.

Challenge number one: write a modern novel with lots of feelings and no resolution based on this tale of student faith healers trying to cover up a friend’s drunken cliff fall and their failed attempt to heal him.

Challenge number two: write a science fiction novel based on Mori Masahiro’s belief that robot have the buddha-nature within them and can become enlightened. Bonus points for working in his influential work on the Uncanny Valley, the fact that the concept of the Uncanny was originally applied to robots, and the beliefs in Japan about puppets having souls.

You may have heard about that survey of the religious knowledge of USAnians and wondered what the questions were. Here’s the full survey (and interesting to note that it’s not expected that a survey taker knows how to pronounce Episcopal, among other words) and the full report.

Perhaps more significant is the fact that there is no historical baseline for any of this data, so there’s no way to know if this has changed over time. There is also no indication that this knowledge is necessary or significant in people’s lives. The survey report admits all of this and the fact that it’s mostly a promotion for a PBS special on religion in the US. And when I first saw the promo for that special last month I thought “well, I guess they think that sucking up to religious people will help their government funding, eh?”