Stanmore

H.R Giger's Dune

 

The Forever War

 

Sale of the Australian embassy in Tokyo - 1988

 

Dune

 

The Battle of Hong Kong 1941

 https://digital.lib.hkbu.edu.hk/1941hkbattle/en/map.php

Mount Yari (槍ヶ岳, Yari-ga-take)

Chi-Raq

 

Photius: The Bibliotheca

https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/photius_copyright/




The second treats of Heracles who after his spell of madness was cured with hellebore by Anticyreus who had discovered the remedy for this in Phocidus, where it was abundant; others each give a different version of this cure. He says that Nestor was loved by Heracles; that it was not Philoctetes but the Trachinian Morsimos who lit the pyre of Heracles; that Heracles, after the Nemean lion had bitten off one of his fingers had only nine and that there exists a tomb erected for this detached finger; other authors say that he lost his finger following a blow by a dart of a stingray and one can see at Sparta a stone lion erected on the tomb of the finger and which is the symbol of the power of the hero. It is since then that stone lions have likewise been erected on the tombs of other important people; other authors give different explications of the lion statues. From the pyre of Heracles a swarm of locusts flew out which ravaged the countryside like a plague before they were destroyed.



Codex 190, 147a39-147b6

The craft of Kissa by Kissa

Mount Aso (阿蘇山, Aso-san)

https://peakvisor.com/3d-map/peak/aso-san.html

Birthplace of Rodan

Located in Japan's Kumamoto prefecture, Aso-san (or Mount Aso) is the largest active volcano in Japan at 5,223 feet (1,592 m) above sea level (the second largest in the world behind Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii).

Midnight Mass

 

Gene Wolfe, “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” (1970)

Winter comes to water as well as land, though there are no leaves to fall. The waves that were a bright, hard blue yesterday under a fading sky today are green, opaque, and cold. If you are a boy not wanted in the house you walk the beach for hours, feeling the winter that has come in the night; sand blowing across your shoes, spray wetting the legs of your corduroys.

Swiss ammo straps

 

80

 

Pyramids of Giza Walking Tour

The Brisbane line: An episode in capital history

Grand Cathay

 

Aristotle, On the art of poetry; translated by Ingram Bywater

Lego Titanic

 

Freedom!

 

Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature

 https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/milman-parry-collection-of-oral-literature

Borg Defence

 

Far Cry 6

 

Spring Night, Delighting in Rain

春夜喜雨 chūn yè xǐ yǔ



好雨知時節 Hǎo yǔ zhī shí jié,

當春乃發生 Dāng chūn nǎi fā shēng.

隨風潛入夜 Suí fēng qián rù yè,

潤物細無聲 Rùn wù xì wú shēng.

野徑雲俱黑 Yě jìng yún jù hēi,

江船火獨明 Jiāng chuán huǒ dú míng.

曉看紅濕處 Xiǎo kàn hóng shī chù,

花重錦官城 Huā zhòng jǐn guān chéng.







Spring Night, Delighting in Rain - Du Fu



The good rain knows when to fall,

stirring new growth the moment spring arrives.

Wind-borne, it steals softly into the night,

nourishing, enriching, delicate, and soundless.

Country paths black as the clouds above them;

on a river boat a lone torch flares.

Come dawn we'll see a landscape moist and pink,

blossoms heavy over the City of Brocade.




Watson, Burton The Selected Poems of Du Fu (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002)

Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz playing chess (1963)

 

20 Sites, n Years

Going for a Beer By Robert Coover

He finds himself sitting in the neighborhood bar drinking a beer at about the same time that he began to think about going there for one. In fact, he has finished it. Perhaps he’ll have a second one, he thinks, as he downs it and asks for a third. There is a young woman sitting not far from him who is not exactly good-looking but good-looking enough, and probably good in bed, as indeed she is. Did he finish his beer? Can’t remember. What really matters is: Did he enjoy his orgasm? Or even have one? This he is wondering on his way home through the foggy night streets from the young woman’s apartment. Which was full of Kewpie dolls, the sort won at carnivals, and they made a date, as he recalls, to go to one. Where she wins another—she has a knack for it. Whereupon they’re in her apartment again, taking their clothes off, she excitedly cuddling her new doll in a bed heaped with them. He can’t remember when he last slept, and he’s no longer sure, as he staggers through the night streets, still foggy, where his own apartment is, his orgasm, if he had one, already fading from memory. Maybe he should take her back to the carnival, he thinks, where she wins another Kewpie doll (this is at least their second date, maybe their fourth), and this time they go for a romantic nightcap at the bar where they first met. Where a brawny dude starts hassling her. He intervenes and she turns up at his hospital bed, bringing him one of her Kewpie dolls to keep him company. Which is her way of expressing the bond between them, or so he supposes, as he leaves the hospital on crutches, uncertain what part of town he is in. Or what part of the year. He decides that it’s time to call the affair off—she’s driving him crazy—but then the brawny dude turns up at their wedding and apologizes for the pounding he gave him. He didn’t realize, he says, how serious they were. The guy’s wedding present is a gift certificate for two free drinks at the bar where they met and a pair of white satin ribbons for his crutches. During the ceremony, they both carry Kewpie dolls that probably have some barely hidden significance, and indeed do. The child she bears him, his or another’s, reminds him, as if he needed reminding, that time is fast moving on. He has responsibilities now and he decides to check whether he still has the job that he had when he first met her. He does. His absence, if he has been absent, is not remarked on, but he is not congratulated on his marriage, either, no doubt because—it comes back to him now—before he met his wife he was engaged to one of his colleagues and their co-workers had already thrown them an engagement party, so they must resent the money they spent on gifts. It’s embarrassing and the atmosphere is somewhat hostile, but he has a child in kindergarten and another on the way, so what can he do? Well, he still hasn’t cashed in the gift certificate, so, for one thing, what the hell, he can go for a beer, two, in fact, and he can afford a third. There’s a young woman sitting near him who looks like she’s probably good in bed, but she’s not his wife and he has no desire to commit adultery, or so he tells himself, as he sits on the edge of her bed with his pants around his ankles. Is he taking them off or putting them on? He’s not sure, but now he pulls them on and limps home, having left his beribboned crutches somewhere. On arrival, he finds all the Kewpie dolls, which were put on a shelf when the babies started coming, now scattered about the apartment, beheaded and with their limbs amputated. One of the babies is crying, so, while he warms up a bottle of milk on the stove, he goes into its room to give it a pacifier and discovers a note from his wife pinned to its pajamas, which says that she has gone off to the hospital to have another baby and she’d better not find him here when she gets back, because if she does she’ll kill him. He believes her, so he’s soon out on the streets again, wondering if he ever gave that bottle to the baby, or if it’s still boiling away on the stove. He passes the old neighborhood bar and is tempted but decides that he has had enough trouble for one lifetime and is about to walk on when he is stopped by that hulk who beat him up and who now gives him a cigar because he’s just become a father and drags him into the bar for a celebratory drink, or, rather, several, he has lost count. The celebrations are already over, however, and the new father, who has married the same woman who threw him out, is crying in his beer about the miseries of married life and congratulating him on being well out of it, a lucky man. But he doesn’t feel lucky, especially when he sees a young woman sitting near them who looks like she’s probably good in bed and decides to suggest that they go to her place, but too late—she’s already out the door with the guy who beat him up and stole his wife. So he has another beer, wondering where he’s supposed to live now, and realizing—it’s the bartender who so remarks while offering him another on the house—that life is short and brutal and before he knows it he’ll be dead. He’s right. After a few more beers and orgasms, some vaguely remembered, most not, one of his sons, now a racecar driver and the president of the company he used to work for, comes to visit him on his deathbed and, apologizing for arriving so late (I went for a beer, Dad, things happened), says he’s going to miss him but it’s probably for the best. For the best what? he asks, but his son is gone, if he was ever there in the first place. Well . . . you know . . . life, he says to the nurse who has come to pull the sheet over his face and wheel him away. ♦

Get Back

 

Yuanyang

https://www.tasteatlas.com/yuanyang





Yuanyang is a drink that combines coffee and tea. It typically consists of three parts coffee and seven parts black milk tea—a combination of water, black tea leaves, and either sweetened condensed milk or evaporated milk and sugar.


This coffee-tea combination originated in Hong Kong, where it is commonly sold by street vendors. Each vendor usually has a signature recipe that may differ in the choice of coffee and the proportions of both beverages. The name yuanyang (which refers to mandarin ducks) was given as a poetic reference because the ducks represent a symbol of conjugal love in which opposites attract.
It is said that this particular name was coined because it also shows how opposites, in this case, coffee and tea, attract and can function well together. The drink can be enjoyed hot or iced.

Happy Birthday Jimmy Carter!