furniture smut

do you have a leg fetish? do you have a “thing” for feet. i won’t judge you, because i do as well. just feast your bloodshot eyes on this vintage leg & foot porn. sabre legs with scroll feet?!?!…oh baby, there goes my slipcover!

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source: how to recognize and refinish antiques

i do believe that you are flirting with me, madam louise florence pétronille tardieu d’esclavelles d’épinay. 

your come-hither mien has me plucking out my hair in rage! your suggestive fingers have thrown me into fits! one coquettishly points to that supple mouth of yours, the other is inserted <!> into a book of ribald poems. surely these are the same fingers that traced the naked backside of jean-jacques rousseau and that clutched voltaire’s privy member. these are the hands that fingered the enlightenment! 

that lacy house bonnet of yours…it could only look finer were it lying wadded on the hardwood floor of my bedroom or flung recklessly across my chandelier. you are ever the flirt madam d’épinay, and i ever your helpless, awestruck admirer. 

enchanté, my darling, a million times enchanté.

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source: an anonymous 19th century poulet, translated by gustave lind in celebrated teases from antiquity through the modern period (1893).

you’ve been served…with the writ of idiots

According to the old common law, there is a writ de idiota inquirendo, directed to the Sheriff, to inquire by a jury whether the party is an idiot or not; and if they find him a perfect idiot, the profits of his lands and the custody of his person belong to the king; by the statute 17 Ed. II.c.9. by which it is enacted, that the king shall have the custody of the lands of natural fools, taking the profits of them without waste or destruction, and shall find the necessaries, or whose fee soever the land shall be holden. And after the death of such idiots, he shall render it to the right heir, so that such idiots shall not alien, nor their heirs be disinherited.

this is the type of thing that i wanted to learn in law school but never did. do you know how many “perfect idiots” that i would be smacking in the face with the writ de idiota inquirendo? [this is a rhetorical question, and the definitive answer is 7—one of them is my neighbour who is a card-carrying member of the flat earth society, another is future u.s. president sarah palin whose biopic, “nailin’ palin” will be airing on pbs tonight at 8/7 central.]

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sauce: the new wonderful museum, by william granger (1807)

tarzan and sherlock holmes are second cousins

this according to science fiction writer phillip josé farmer who posits in his (fictional) biography of the cheeky monkey lover that sherlock holmes’ mother’s brother’s daughter’s son is none other tarzan of the jungle. and it doesn’t stop there: lord byron, doc savage, and james bond have their own branches on this sprawling, fictional family tree.

and just when you thought that it couldn’t get any kookier, we learn that it is no coincidence that the great heroes of modern genre literature are all related. farmer suggests that they are all based on real people who descended from the occupants of a coach who—while touring wold newton, england in december 1795—were exposed to a radioactive meteorite. welcome to the fantasy world within a fantasy world of parascholasticism. »

Farmer suggested…that a (real) meteorite which fell in Wold Newton, Yorkshire, England, on December 13, 1795, was radioactive and caused genetic mutations in the occupants of a passing coach. Many of their descendants were thus endowed with extremely high intelligence and strength, as well as an exceptional capacity and drive to perform good, or, as the case may be, evil deeds. The progeny of these travellers were purported to have been the real-life originals of fictionalised characters, both heroic and villainous, over the last few hundred years, such as Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Doc Savage, and Lord Peter Wimsey.

Other popular characters that Philip José Farmer concluded were members of the Wold Newton family include: Solomon Kane; Captain Blood; The Scarlet Pimpernel; Sherlock Holmes’s nemesis Professor Moriarty; Phileas Fogg; The Time Traveller (main character of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells); Allan Quatermain; A.J. Raffles; Professor Challenger; Richard Hannay; Bulldog Drummond; the evil Fu Manchu and his adversary, Sir Denis Nayland Smith; G-8; The Shadow; Sam Spade; Doc Savage’s cousin Patricia Savage, and one of his five assistants, Monk Mayfair; The Spider; Nero Wolfe; Mr. Moto; The Avenger; Philip Marlowe; James Bond; Lew Archer; Travis McGee; Monsieur Lecoq; and Arsène Lupin.

on beyond zebra

we’ve talked about the alexander graham bell and george bernard shaw phonetic alphabets before and we have discussed benjamin franklin’s writing, but we have yet to talk about franklin’s own super kooky phonetic alphabet.

franklin was more than just a political revolutionary—he was also an alphabet one. he figured (much like the citizens of azerbaijan) that a new alphabet was essential in promoting a new national identity. and unlike shaw and bell who invented zany moustache alphabets, franklin determined that the best course of action was to build upon our already existing latin letters. while his spelling reform ideas were taken up by his homey, noah webster, webster thought his alphabet reform was too radical for the time. perhaps it was but honestly, those six new letters at the end are some of the illest glyphs going.

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another failed alphabetic reform: this.
recommended reading: this.

it-narratives were the it narratives of the 1700s

do you know what the hottest things going in literature were in the late 18th century? they were novels in which the protagonist was an inanimate object called “it-narratives.” the vogue for this odd genre started with charles johnstone’s the adventures of a guinea (1760), a 2-volume work narrated by a gold coin.

guinea became such a boxoffice smash that it was soon followed by such thrilling titles as the adventures of a cork-screw, the adventures of a hackney coach, and the adventures of a black coat (to name but a few). if you can bear it, here is the opening paragraph of adventures of a shilling (1710) by joseph addison.

I was born on the side of a mountain, near a little village of Peru, and made a voyage to England in an ingot, under the convoy of Sir Francis Drake. I was, soon after my arrival, taken out of my Indian habit, refined, naturalized, and put into the British mode, with the face of Queen Elizabeth on one side, and the arms of the country on the other. Being thus equipped, I found in me a wonderful inclination to ramble, and visit all parts of the new world into which I was brought. The people very much favoured my natural disposition, and shifted me so fast from hand to hand, that before I was five years old, I had travelled into almost every corner of the nation. But in the beginning of my sixth year, to my unspeakable grief, I fell into the hands of a miserable old fellow, who clapped me into an iron I chest, where I found five hundred more of my own quality who lay under the same confinement. The only relief we had, was to be taken out and counted over in the fresh air every morning and evening.

let us revel and rejoice

for on this day in 1869, parliament (and george clinton) repealed the duty on hair powder act of 1795. because of this, you and i and lady gaga no longer have to pay the man™ when we want to powder our outlandish wigs with lavender-scented finely ground starch.

141 years ago today, we™ changed the world forever—just as lady gaga sings in her song, bad romance, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

p.s. did you notice in the picture within a picture above that one monkey is powdering the wig of another monkey? haha…monkeys in powdered wigs, now i’ve seen everything.

the royal line

the other day, me and my three handsomest friends and orson went to a trivia night at a local pub. one of the first few questions was, “how many british sovereigns were alive in 1684?” orson, who is an actuary in real life* estimated that five was the maximum overlapage among generations. so we added one for good measure (ie. some sickly pipsqueak who ruled for 12 days, or whatever) and said six even though my other friends (who are more handsome than orson) thought this seemed way too high.

we were therefore quite floored when we found out that the answer was eight. it was at this point that i proposed that we adjourn the trivia game so i could go home and graph out the logistics of how exactly that this was possible.

a: it was a perfect shitstorm of joint sovereignty, the glorious revolution, and lord protectoring.

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* not professionally

thomas hills evertt: the enormous baby

This prodigious child, an extraordinary instance of the sudden and rapid increase of the human body, was born on the 7th of February, 1779. Neither of the parents was remarkable for either size or stature.

At the age of nine months, his dimensions were taken by Mr. Sherwen, and compared with those of a lusty boy seven years old. Mr Sherwen was prevented by the vulgar prejudice entertained by the mother against weighing children. He could therefore only say that, when she exposed to view his legs, thighs, and broad back, it was impossible to be impressed with any other idea than that of seeing a young giant.

His extraordinary size tempted his parents to remove him to the metropolis, and to exhibit him to the public. He was well proportioned all over, and subsisted entirely on the breast. His countenance was comely, but had rather more expression than is usual at his age, and was exceedingly pleasing, from his being uncommonly good-tempered. He had very fine hair, pure skin, free from any blemish, was extremely lively, and had a bright clear eye. His head was rather smaller in proportion than his other parts.

adapted from: the book of wonderful characters (1869).