cheese it, the mads are calling!

Although never wholly out of sight and out of mind with projects like Cinematic Titanic and live-shows in the years since Mystery Science Theater 3000 went out of syndication, there has never been a reunion event to get the all the Mads and their hapless experimental subjects back together again. As Mental Floss happily reports, they’ll be on stage late this summer but tickets are going on sale shortly. In case you are curious, the name of this blog is an homage to players of MST3K.

decade or joyful mysteries

I spied an unusual piece at the Flohmarkt today, which I was eager to learn more about. It is indeed a single decade (referring to the ten round beads around the circumference that represents one iteration of Hail Mary) rosary ring, but like traditional rosary are not to be worn around the neck, this counter is meant to be rotated with the thumb and forefinger.
Inspired by Basque and Irish designs for more discreet articles of the faith when practising Catholicism was persecuted, these were also distributed to soldiers going off to battle so as not to get tangled up, especially during WWI. One could keep count of the traditional five decades by moving the ring to the next finger.  I am not sure if this is one of those, since it has the microscopic inscription ITALY on the obverse but perhaps as it is intricately worked and I am happy to have learnt something more about praying the rosary.

go canada!

Collectors’ Weekly curates a fine gallery of the collected and concerted advertising campaigns of the Canadian-Pacific holiday-making enterprise.
From the earliest days when the trans-continental railroad was complete, the company ran a screen-printing workshop, employing some of the finest graphic artists, like Thomas Hall and Norman Fraser, to create iconic and timeless travel posters to allure travelers to venture far and wide within its expanded empire that progressed from trains, to planes, cruise-liners and even resort hotels. Be sure to visit Collectors’ Weekly to be treated to much more of this dazzling, vintage ephemera.

doctor zaius, doctor zaius

A Kazakhstani scientist with the alliterative name of Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov was a pioneer in the early 1900s in the field of artificial insemination.
Praised and later eulogised by sociologist Ivan Pavlov, Ivanov’s chief accomp- lishments were in the field of animal husbandry and of interest to horse-breeders, but reportedly his research also dabbled in controversy, hoping to create ape-human hybrids, called humanzees—for no particular reason. Early trials failed and the premature death of simian donors and the aftermath of the Soviet revolution put a stop to his further experiments. Contemporaries even composed an opéra-bouffe called Orango to lampoon and chastise Ivanov’s ambitions, but it was not staged until 2011 to somewhat less knowledgable audiences. Let’s be sure to thank the Frinkiac for the ease in finding this appropriate illustration.