The Normal Times

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  • by Antonia Fraser, originally published in 1975 and edited in 2000.

    This one is more valuable as a reference book than for entertainment. It’s especially useful for parsing out the various Henrys and Edwards that have sat on the English throne. There’s also a clear trace of the decline of British monarchial powers starting post- William of Orange. Little whittles in the beginning, then a major slide after the World Wars. 

    I didn’t get what I came for with this one, but I also wasn’t disappointed. It’s my fault. I’ve had a lingering curiosity rattling around for years. I’ve been wanting to understand where these monarchies came from. Who’s idea were they, what environment justified it, and why did it become the norm in so many countries for so long? None of these interests were answered by the book. In fact, it’s written for an audience that is at least generally familiar with British history. We begin with the Plantagenets and speed on through to the bastard house of Windsor. 

    Credit where credit is due. The content reads easily. The images are big, bold, and resolute. The vocabulary is casual, rather than academic. Sections and their chapters are organized intuitively. The order of the biographies is chronological. The book is large and has a library cover that holds up well. I would recommend it if the monarchs of England are of interest, but don’t expect a tome of detailed history. 

    See the stuffy men and women who ruled the island empire for yourself here.

  • Contemporary artist living in Istanbul.

    An autodidactic surrealist artist who depicts esoteric themes of the psychic states and matters of spirit using elements of illustration, fine line, and portrait panels. 

    Her work can be viewed and supported on several platforms, but I found her on deviantart.com/selfregion

  • The Myst Island Recreation Initiative, shortened to MIRI, was a project launched in 2003 by a handful people who were active on the Myst Community forum. At the time the plan was to build it in a sea or large lake. It was not meant to be a commercial enterprise so much as a retreat for fans of Myst. No funding had been secured, so it seems the most that was ever accomplished was some fun world-building designs. The website is an utter ghost town since 2004.

    Wayback Machine link: https://web.archive.org/web/20050213190949/http://s3.invisionfree.com/MIRI

    In an attempt to stalk these people to their potential new corner of the internet, which I failed at completely, I found that Disney apparently had been in the works for the same thing, though obviously, this would very much be a commercial enterprise, unlike the MIRI project. Myst creator Rand Miller confirms this in a 2016 interview:

    That was absolutely true. At some point, there were some really cool plans to do some stuff with Disney. We were looking at it as the ultimate incarnation of our world. Basically, there was a place down in Florida—it’s one of the island areas that they had that wasn’t used very much. But it had some walkways among trees, and an island area, and we went down and looked at it and walked around it, and it was incredibly Myst-like. It was perfect for Myst. So we were all excited. Their imagineering team was excited about embracing that and building some stuff into it and tying it into the rest of the park, where you could explore and have this real-world experience. But, the way Disney works, and the way it had to fit in with their bigger scheme of things, and the way we didn’t understand pieces of it, I think it fell apart from their point of view. That was a very exciting time. It was cool to try to pull that off.

    Rand Miller, 2016
    Discovery Island

    A now defunct blog named Jim Hill Media wrote in 2004:

    ”Myst Island” would have attempted to duplicate the look and feel of the award winning computer games. Only a limited number of guests would have been allowed out onto the fog shrouded island each day. They’d have been dropped off by boat early in the morning and then picked up in the late afternoon. Their mission was to explore the ruins scattered around the 11 acre island to try to figure out what happened to the island’s previous occupants. This day-long adventure would have been unlike anything that Disney theme park guests had ever experienced before. Just like the CD ROM games that inspired it, “Myst Island” would have no linear storyline. Guests could only discover the various puzzles scattered around Myst Island by exploring all its weird little nooks and crannies. Depending on which path they took, which artifacts they uncovered as well the order in which the guest discovered them, different secrets of the island would have been revealed. Theoretically, no two guests could ever have the exact same adventure as they wandered the terrain.

    Jimhillmedia.com
    Modern Discovery Island.

    The reason behind the idea was that park guests were becoming disgruntled with the hours long wait times for three-minute long rides. Theme park exit surveys suggested that park visitors might be interested in a longer experience. The idea was to test out the model on a small scale with this Myst project, to see if tourists would pay more for a different type of Disney theme park.

    There was a plan to transform the existing Discovery Island into the new Myst theme park. Disney had owned the island in Bay Lake since 1965 and closed its features shortly after the launch of the Animal Kingdom theme park. To this day the island is closed to the public. There were years of designing and budgeting done, then it stopped. There’s no trace of an explanation for what happened to the project. Just as there’s no trace of what happened to MIRI. 

    Modern Discovery Island.

    Given the time frame match, I can’t help but wonder if the MIRI guys tried to actually fund the endeavor and Disney offered to pick up the bill, or if Disney just sued them into oblivion for having a similar idea. What I would like so badly to believe is that the MIRI project managed to make it happen and decided to fuck off from the world to their Myst-themed commune. I doubt I’ll ever find any evidence of that. 

    On a nearly unrelated note, all this empty fishing did net me what I think is the old Angelfire website that I used as a cheat sheet when I was a tiny child trying to play this game on Windows 98. https://www.angelfire.com/ri/Riven5/mystisld.html

  • Remove the protector from the outlet port on the first visit. 
Each print engine may crank, but not the religious. 
It’s a great blend of upscale tranquility with affordable transportation 
For two. 
The parachute will save me.
More than the common sleep 
Of the recording below. 

The scone mix is sure scary. 
It’s every day for me. 
I must not steal. 
I can not play.
Strong quarterly earnings information
Is erased from the inflammation.

George made it illegal not to visit thee. 
Right back up for casual dressing.
Free application, security setup, dual camera video.
Liberty in literature.
Accepted for publication. 
There’s a press conference that needs dealing with.

Being born again as soon as possible. 
The armhole in the most recent fight. 
Address all correspondence to geography. 
Maintain active medication list. 
Minimize potential economic dislocation during the rally. 
But three times. 

Post reply please.
Wear me out. 
Is your Mercedes going young?
Is it the cylinder head clearance?
Is your sleeping partner considered a part time venture?
Maybe a chronic illness or disability. 
All gluten free. 

Prove that point. 
The railroad is his plan.
No more of the upholstered lounge chair. 
No more of the framed photograph of an unknown personality.
Undo an act.
First spread the frosting, then stitch the button down blouse. 

Finally getting some heat. 

The whole island will be at that conference. 
Even ink distribution. 
Keep doing that.
Until that typical ship horn sound,
When the simulation is done. 
Nuclear fission is like my baby.

  • Ian Davidson, 2016

    This one is a sweet middle ground between scholarly and easily digestible. There’s a brand of contemporary non-fiction that I call candy tales. It’s that poppy, junk food way of detailing the life of some vast historical figure in these already stale OMG Scandal Gossip or Totally Super Rad Bro tones. This one avoided all that. The author was most notably a columnist for Financial Times. The content is cited and sourced properly, but it doesn’t feel academic. When I received the book I had expected it to be larger, something like the abridged version of Gibbons’ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This is about the size of a standard contemporary novel. Closer to four hundred pages than three. There’s density here and more telling than showing, but so it goes with useful non-fic. If there is bias in the author’s relays I can’t pick up on them. The most intriguing figures of the Revolution, King Louie, Queen Marie, and ugly Maximillian, are all treated fairly. The chapters are ordered chronologically and within that chronology, the more minute events are layered well without too much sidestepping.

    Ultimately, I consider this a fantastic introduction to the French Revolution and about all there is to know concerning that history for anyone who isn’t writing a thesis.

    If you’d like to read about the self-righteous bloodshed yourself, buy it here.

  • Basil Gogos was a painter best known for his work on horror-themed magazine covers in the 1960s. He was born in Egypt and immigrated to the United States as a teen with his parents. He studied at the Art Students League of New York and the School of Visual Arts. His work appeared on the covers of magazines such as Creepy, Eerie, and Famous Monsters of Filmland. He also did album covers for bands such as Blue Öyster Cult and Alice Cooper. Gogos died in 2017 at the age of 87.

  • Paul Dion is the patriarch of the House of Dion. He is known most as the heir of the most ruined House in Palmetto.

    The “Good Revolution” was at its peak when Paul was only four years old. Once his family was incarcerated he was placed in the children’s holding facility on Rook Island. He was taunted almost daily by facility guards as his House fell, gleefully informing him when another of his relatives was executed. House Dion had been one of the most powerful in Palmetto, a steady rival to House Bourbon for the top seat. But House Dion had garnered far more bitter enemies with their particular brand of cruelty. The Directory decided to make an example of them. 

    As his early years passed by in the facility, Paul became obsessed with fitness and strength building. Likely to combat the feelings of helplessness fostered by the smirks of the guards he had to endure during his foundational years. When his fellow detainees, the heirs of Houses Bourbon and Montjoy, developed an illicit fighting ring in the facility with the help of some bribed guards, Paul volunteered to be their prize fighter. Paul was a skilled fighter then and still is even as he begins his middle age, but in the end, he felt that he had never been regarded as a peer by the other imprisoned heirs. This sentiment would be confirmed after the boys all aged out of the facility. The fighting ring had been the closest he’d gotten to friendship in his long childhood, and when he found himself a (somewhat) free adult, he was shrugged off by his former bunkmates. Over his life, this developed into an obsessive and specific hatred for the Houses of Bourbon and Montjoy. 

    A youth full of humiliation, betrayed trust, and bitterness made Paul into a cruel and unfeeling husband for his assigned wife and an utter terror as a father. He raised his three children tyrannically, judging any act of theirs that didn’t work for the House of Dion as bordering on treason. He gradually became a heavy drinker, but hardly shows evidence of it. In social calls, Paul is very self-possessed and could be dangerously charming on a whim. His primary focus, ever since his release at age twenty, has been to regain as much of the losses of his House as he could in his lifetime and set his sons to the same task for when he was gone.

    You can read more about Paul here.

  • A vintage illustration of a ranch style home in Capetown, the legislative capitol of South Africa. Era is 1960s. I’ve been obsessed with homes that have middle courtyards since I was a child. The nicest houses I have ever been to in Louisiana all had them. With their lined bricks and contained explosions of flamboyant life.

  • Victor Hugo, 1862

    “It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”

    Victor Hugo

    I knew little about this story before I read it. I enjoy musicals, but I never knew anything about the one based on this. I hadn’t seen the film flops. I knew little about France besides too much of the language and a disorganized sense of its history, mostly gained when I was compelled to read A Tale of Two Cities for some school.

    This giant hardcover was a gift. I started it with no idea what I had in store for me. Just as when I had read Don Quixote, the first thing that struck me was how easy it was to follow. I was childish and deluded by the needless pretensions of college and thought all books before the 20th century were overly hard to read. Not only could I keep up with this story, but I also envied it ruthlessly. The ability to spin off the way Hugo does, chapters about the Paris sewer system, chapters about the briefly lived House of Orleans monarchy. The fact that one of the most important characters in the book appears in only the first chapter. The book proved how much of what I’d paid to teachers to tell me was a pretentious falsehood. One borne out of the Big Five and whose water gets carried by well-meaning professors who just want to pay their mortgage off.

    Experience the lengthy and luxuriously meandering magic here.

  • Why spend a while till we say
Double fall line?
Vegetarian cellulose capsule. 
Sweet and sturdy Sunday.
German ski training and safe boarding
From here. 

Come here.
Create our Directory here. 
Running back a certain picture. 
Stealing it in my school bag. 
Reinforce a picture when many children were very cute.
Philosophy of literature.
Include video tutorial.
Add theme interface,
Select into him.
Just now I found out what I felt while you eat. 
A stick of gum disease.
Then through ambush they will love.
Killer of men. 
Journal nearly ready. 

Our economic and corporate mural experience. 
Nudge is our art. 
Republican soul searching. 
Is zoning the cause, or does it lessen the impact?
Skip over banner and go deep.
Domain alias not found!
An input text field component. 
Ballet or hip pain?
Gin soaked barroom queen.
Rock your body. 

Gas engine races idle.
Totally secure bookings were promised. 
But learning science is far from love. 
Its cellulose character is copied from one page,
To the next star,
To the next napkin.
Unlike fine wine. 
But, ah well,
The image panel will be expected to present
Hard evidence of unintelligent abiogenesis. 
So aardvark up and energize.
Cum and get exposure. 
Leave the toilet bowl,
Leave the club to go fishing right outside in the parking lot.
Horror and ghost story collector. 

And few remember.