A website completely devoted to WTF images and video.

A typical offering:

NASA is holding a poll to name a new module on the space center. The two leading candidates? Serenity and Colbert.

Forget boys - go for the frogs!  :)~

Two girls get married to frogs in India

Ok... For the Files of Weird. I have seen some really, really weird shit in my life, but this evening's activities rank pretty high.

I went to Border Downs a few weeks ago and took along some of my critical books. This afternoon, I unpacked them and noticed that the first volume of the Early Christian Monuments of Scotland was missing. The ECMS is the "Bible" of Pictish studies, so I am generally very careful to make sure it is packed up when I finish a road show. It is an expensive, rare, substantial book and critical to my studies. Obviously, I was a little paniced. I called zarhooie  and she oblidged me by looking through the room where we had held the class and calling some of the local folks who had been at the moot. I looked through the empty boxes, looked through my bookshelves, looked through the piles of books I have here, there, and everywhere. I looked everywhere it could be three times... and then I had to go to the Newcomers' Moot.

When dread_ex and I got back, I looked on the shelves and in the boxes again and still found nothing. Giving up on staring at the bottoms of the boxes, I decided I would use them to use organize in the basement. I put two boxes one on top of the other, and then headed for the basement. A few steps into the kitchen, there was an audible and tangible thump from inside the boxes and they were suddenly heavy. Startled, I looked into the bottom box - and there it was!

The whole thing sounds insane, but dread_ex  was right there, saw the empty boxes, heard the thump, can vouche for the weird. The whole thing is crazy and impossible... There really are only two possibilities - Border Downs has wormhole technology they are not sharing with the rest of the Kingdom or the Good Neighbors found it for me and thought it would be funny to give it back in a dramatic manner. I need to beat the truth out of zarhooie  the next time I see her, but tonight, just in case, I've left out some milk, honey, and a wee bit of Scotch, just in case.

...literally.

http://community.livejournal.com/wtf_nature/

I suspect this will appeal to some of you - an LJ community devoted to freakish animals and happenings in the natural world.

While in Boston, I absolutely fell in love with a portrait in the Isabella Stuart Gardner Gallery. We had seen any number of really beautiful items, but this one simple blew me away. I stopped dead and stared at it, I lusted after the gown and cursed that the museum did not allow photography. Once we got the to gift shop, I further cursed that there was not a single good picture of the painting in any of the guidebooks or postcards. Tragedy!

They did, however, have pictures of one of my other favorite pieces of the collection, Juana of Austria with a young girl by Sofonisba Anguissola.



I had seen Sofonisba's work before and had been interested to learn more about her.

I got a little derailed reading A Perfect Red and Moda a Firenze, but before long had several books on Sofonisba from the library. Ironically, reading Moda and Red first were helpful, as they helped me understand and appreciate some of the details in Sofonisba's work and understand the general time and place where she grew up.

Sofonisba was born in Cremona around 1532. As the daughter of a nobleman, being allowed to be educated as and work as a professional painter were somewhat unusual. However, she was quite talented, so these studies paid off and she was able to study under Campi, Gatti, and even (to some small extent) Michaelangelo. She came to specialize in detailed, intimate portraits, including self portraits and many of her immediate family.


The Chess Game (Check out those dresses! See why I love her?)

The new icon (see above) is also of Sofonisba, in one of my favorite of her self-portraits. I really am tempted to make her outfit... Also, I recently discovered that my hair is finally long enough to wear in such a style again (braided, then looped up around the top of the head). Happiness. :)

In 1559, Sofonisba was invited to come to Spain to be one of the court painters. There she befriended the newly arrived queen, Elizabeth of Valois and eventually the Infantas Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela.


Portrait of Queen Elizabeth by Sofonisba


Portrait of the Infantas by Sofonisba

Sadly, the Queen died young. Sofonisba stayed in the Spanish Court for some time, as painter and governess to the girls, but eventually the King of Spain arranged a marriage for her to a son of the Prince of Paterno. She was 38 or so at the time of this first marriage, quite old for a first time bride! While it seemed to be a reasonably happy marriage, she outlived him to marry again (at the age of 47!) to Orazio, who was to be the love of her life. They settled together back in Italy where, against all the odds, she happily painted and lived with her husband for nearly another fifty years.

Toward the end of her life (1623), she was visited by the young artist Van Dyke, who drew and painted her on several occasions and took notes on her recommendations for said works. Having recently been in contact with the Archduchess of Austria, he could have been bringing her letters and greetings on his visit as well, but that information is not actually recorded anywhere. Sofonisba died in 1625, aged 93 years.


Self portrait from 1610, about 80 years old

On the 100th anniversary of her birth, her husband placed an her tomb a commemorative stone that reads, in part:

"To Sofonisba, my wife...who is recorded among the illustrious women of the world, outstanding in portraying the images of man... Orazio Lomellino, in sorrow for the loss of his great love, in 1632, dedicated this little tribute to such a great woman."





Oh, and the name of that Archduchess of Austria? Isabella Clara Eugenia, the little Infanta Sofonisba knew as a child and the beautiful lady whose portrait so enchanted me at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Gallery in Boston.



Isabella Clara Eugenia, Archduchess of Austria (1566-1633), c.1598
Frans Pourbus II
Oil on canvas, 134.9 x 98.2 cm 
© Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

My thanks to the wonderful folks at the museum who were so kind as to send me a *huge* scan of the beautiful portrait, so that I may study it in greater detail.

All y'all WoW players are dorks. Dorks with a lot of company, though, it seems. ;)

Population and Finances

Gah. The gods hate us. Yesterday, I was able just to wear a light spring jacket. Today it is stoopid with cold and snow again. It's just wrong! I want the spring I was promised! *pout*

How very odd... 

Hexapus discovered!

It has been a very long day and it will not be an easy couple weeks, so I am pleased to stumble across a little amusing oddity.

On the way home from work today, I saw a vertical rainbow. I quickly snapped a photo from in my car - it didn't turn out great, but you can still see it, just to the left of the street lamp...



This apparently IS a relatively unusual phenomenon! Apparently it is called an infralateral arc. According to Japanese legend, vertical rainbows are suppose to presage a huge earthquake, at least when they appear between mountains. Yikes! We have had enough with avalanches of snow as it comes out of the sky! We don't need to have all those towers of snow come crumbling down!

A better example is here. *sigh* Can I go there?
 

...because it is too delightful not to share! This is an account of the Scientology protests from last weekend. Whether or not you agree with them, this is a good sign that the geek shall inherit the earth.

http://deathboy.livejournal.com/1082404.html

This weekend was a seriously mixed experience, and not really one I want to talk about.

Instead, I'll simply post this photo, literally taken on the road. The sun was caught just right by the cloud so that it lit up as if it were illuminated from within and made the entire right edge glow in rainbow colors. Of course, the photo doesn't do it justice and most of the colors cannot be seen. Still, it was a little bit of bright wonder, and made me smile.





Messing with the color saturation only brings out a little of the colors... Really a shame...

So, how odd is it that I have been to two of the thirteen creepiest places in the world?

http://www.concierge.com/ideas/parties/tour/detail?id=1563

(The Mutter Museum and Mary King's Close for those of you playing at home) 

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Dinner tonight brought another strange sight - fencingkitty and I ate dinner at a local buffet. It was a mix of American and Chinese food and actually very good. Most of the food was pretty typical, but I balked at the mutant eggs:




Not just one or two double-yolked eggs, but a whole tray. Odd.

Alex the Grey Parrot has also left these lands. He was an important reminder to us that intelligence is not reserved to us monkey-folk.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/12/parrot.obit.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

So, this idea I've had came up while I was chatting with a friend tonight. If I suddenly decided I wanted to sell my house and all my stuff, I mean practically ALL my stuff, what would I keep? Assuming I had time to plan and pack appropriately and planned to come back some day:


What would you keep?

*sigh*

How in the world have we come to this? We are apparently a country which values waging war, executing people, and denying civil rights... and all this largely in the name of a man who advocated peace, forgiveness, and love. Am I the only one to whom this seems insane? Especially in a world that grows smaller everyday, it seems it would be wise to be better stewards of the earth and better brothers to one another...

I had a particularly odd small world moment today - I left work at lunchtime to volunteer for Fair Wisconsin. They sent me to a rallying point near Woodman's on the East Side. I arrived just in time to get the very last of the walking routes that had not yet been visited. The volunteer asked me if I thought I could find the target neighborhood or if I needed a larger map and after a half-second glance I was able to definitively say yes, I could find it... Of every ward, every district, every neighborhood in Madison, which did I get? Mine! As in I got the streets and addresses which literally included my house number! Madison is just not that small a town...

So off I went door-to-door... Usually, they assign you a partner, but since they were short handed, the guy doing the odd houses in that neighborhood had left some time earlier and I was on my own. That was fine for the first few hours, but once it got past five, I realized exactly how very dark my neighborhood gets. I do not generally make a habit of walking about after dark, but I have faced enough of my personal fears and demons this summer/fall, so what's one more, eh? Still, once I'd hit all the houses on my list and it was past seven PM, I'd been on my feet and walking for over 4 hours and I called it quits. *sigh* Quality blisters in the name of a doomed effort.

Well, while the referenda were won by the forces of evil, at least not all was lost - Doyle will likely win, and Joe Parisi, Herb Kohl, and Tammy Baldwin are all clear winners. Sadly, Kathleen Falk is in serious peril, and standing at 50%/50% the outcome won't probably be announced tonight. On the other hand, John Gard is in a similar situation... one can only hope he is defeated by morning. Oh, and happiness! Santorum is out! :) He's not directly my problem, but I am still quite pleased. We have the House and still have a fighting chance at the Senate - there are three seats still in contention and the Republicans would need two of them to have the majority. We won't have a clear majority, but with two independents already, it is possible that it could be 2 Indep, 49 Dem and 49 Rep. Interesting times, that.

Anywho, it's off to bed with me, with a prayer for this broken world of ours.