wainscoting

There is something calming and satisfying about pouring over these meticulously arranged catalogue pages from a Chicago-based interior design company from 1919. These neo-classic varieties of decorative and ornamental buttons, friezes, trims, moulding and panelling look pretty elegant and were designed to be simply pasted onto furniture and base-boards and ceilings to tie the different and perhaps piecemeal elements of a room together as an ensemble.

cocktail hour

Discerning gourmand Nag on the Lake had two successive food and drinks posts that paired very well together indeed. First, there were the exquisite still-lives of artist Greg Stroube who imagined how the Renaissance masters might depict a Bloody Mary or a Lime Rickey with all its garnish and the hyper-realistic detail of Bellini (also the name of a cocktail, Prosecco and peach nectar) or Vermeer.
These delights of and for the palette are then served up with a selection of sumptuous recipes from the mind of Salvador Dalí from a cookbook being reissued over forty years after its first and only print run. The surreal and bizarre cult cookbook called Les Diners de Gala has over a hundred illustrated recipes—of the strange and decadent variety, like toffee and pinecones or frog pastries. Be sure to indulge more delectable delights on Nag on the Lake.

motor voter

Safely shielded from the majority of US campaign mobilisation initiatives, polling and cold-calls, I was a bit surprised to learn that Rock the Vote is still making appeals to engage the plebiscite. During the last mid-term elections in 2014, there was a considerable push to get a certain demographic to register and participate, though the whole exercise was criticised as a stunt by conservatives for baiting the invitation with liberal issues—like legalising drugs or free access to educational opportunities—prompted by personalities that didn’t count themselves amongst the voting-class.
It was a bit off-cycle for the first time I was eligible to participate in a national election but I do remember feeling inspired and even actively campaigning for Ross Perot, which I am ashamed to admit but at least that helped unseat George I. What is perhaps most daunting is that there is wide-spread apathy and a marked disconnect and a feeling that few—especially among the younger demographic, are stakeholders in this process. I am not surprised that people feel jaded and disenfranchised and maybe don’t have much of a choice ultimately, but I don’t think there’s really an authoritative, impartial voice there admonishing them either to invite them, just in their lifetimes of majority how different each outcome might have been. Visitors from the parallel universe of Field Marshal LaRouche and Grand Vizer Lamar are not really pleased with their present prospects with far stranger timelines on offer.

constellation prize

Although not entirely a brand new proposal (having first hinted of chaos in the skies back in 2011 but no horoscope columns have adopted the change yet), NASA has apparently formally recognised the fact that the Earth is not ruled by the tidy twelve zodiacal houses (presiding over thirty degrees of the celestial sphere each) but rather thirteen, with this johnny-come-lately Ophiuchus, the snake-handler pushing aside all the other months to make room.
This is particularly bad news for fellow—or rather ex-fellow—Scorpios (see the link up top) as I’ve now become a scale as of just now, and my Mom is a snake-wrangler according to NASA. The havoc is a point of contention, however, because although the sun and the planets move through different constellations (canonical and otherwise) and NASA was prompted to stir the cauldron since the skies have changed in the three thousand years since the Babylonians invented the divining art, astrology in the Western tradition was never based on the march of the heavens in that sense but rather on tropical tilt through the seasons. There’s no need to discount out of hand what you thought the stars had in line for you.