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| Angelo, sì, ma delle decomposizioni e delle putredini (O. Mirbeau, Il giardino dei supplizi, Poker d'Assi. Milano 1966, p. 4) TWS |
(Tinkerbell coloring sheet from www.funny-pictures.picphotos.net ; knife from www.essiebeex.blogspot.com - grazie)
Wednesday 28 January 2015
La fata del carnaio
Tuesday 27 January 2015
Amplified Horsefly
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| Homage to John Tenniel: Rocking-horse-fly TWS |
(horse and amp vectors from www.dreamstime.com ; fly legs from the instructions about How to draw an Housefly, found on www.pixgood.com - thanks)
Friday 23 January 2015
Saturday 17 January 2015
Thursday 15 January 2015
Monday 12 January 2015
Sunday 11 January 2015
Sweeping Dog in a Dusty Wonderland
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The sweeping dog Alice met in the Tulgey wood, in Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951) |
We need not fear the clowns
The clown is not exactly human. With respect of our norms for the average human, the clown is either too fat or too tall, too thin or too short. His mouth is painted to appear exaggeratedly large and his eyes and head are often too small. He is a misproportioned human. Nor are his cognitive skills near the norm; generally he is too stupid. And his body can also take abuse that no actual person could. He can be hit on the head with a sledge hammer and suffer no more than a dizzy swoon where the rest of us would be hospedalized with a concussion. He takes falls with abandon and always pops up for another slam. It is as if his bones were made of rubber. Instead of breaking, they snap back into place.
It's because the clown is marked as so ontologically different from us - expecially in terms of his imperviousness to bodily harm - that we have no fear for his life and limb. We can laugh at the way in which his body with his incongruities taunts our concept of the human, because the mayhem the clown engages is nonthreatening. We need not fear for the clown; nor, in the standard case, need we fear clowns. They are, for the most part, benign. Thus, though monstrous, clowns and the other denizens of slapstick incur no horror, since no genuine harm will result in or from their shenanigans.
from N. Carroll, What Mr. Creosote Knows about Laughter,
in Monty Python and Philosophy, Open Court, Chicago 2006, pp. 31-32
Saturday 10 January 2015
Holy Gore: a Randomly Generated Essay on Torture and Theology
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| The maimed offspring of a morbid maid: When Nonsense meets randomly spiritually sick Sadism TWS |
(essay created with this amazing generator: http://eg.radioworldwide.org/essay.php - danke!)
Thursday 8 January 2015
The daily, awful sacrifice - Dorian Gray and the Roman Catholic ritual
It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic communion; and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the sense as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement, and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled latern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the panis cælestis, the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice, and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers, that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers, had their subtle fascination for him. As he passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals, and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn grating the true story of their lives.
pp. 153-154
He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed he had for everything connected with the service of the Church. In the long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house he had stored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the raiment of the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain. He possesed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pine-apple device wrought in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided into panels representing scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation of the Virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood. This was Italian work of the fifteenth century. Another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus leaves, from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. The morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work. The orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and fleur-de-lys; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to which such thing were put, there was something that quickened his imagination.
pp. 160-161
from O. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, chapter 11,
Giunti, Milano 2003
Monday 5 January 2015
Saturday 3 January 2015
Thursday 1 January 2015
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