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Typically modern

It may seem at first illogical that a radical theory of rationalism and consciousness, fit to puncture ahistoricism & the nostrums of both right & Fabian simpering, should be, in inchoate form, outlined in the short introduction to a 1936 collection of horror stories.

‘The writer of the ghost story should be a rational man, otherwise he cannot build up the matter-of-fact framework which is so horrifyingly shattered by the incursion of the Impossible. Any credulity would make his readers sceptical from the start; and he would underestimate the amount of preliminary mining and sapping of their confidence in the rational which it is necessary to undertake before he shows his hand. But though he must be by habit a materialist, he must be one with chinks in his armour. He must be devoid of simple faith and also of completely honest doubt - in other words, he must be a typically modern writer.’

C. St. John Sprigg, Uncanny Stories

Christopher St. John Sprigg = a ghost identity of the incomparable Christopher Caudwell.

(Most of) my #GardenStateComicFest haul 😁 (at Garden State Comic Fest)

#gardenstatecomicfest

the retrieval of horse skulls from clay floors, beneath flagstones and within niches in house foundations, is a reasonably widespread phenomenon. This practice is well attested on a wider European scale and the questions that this custom raises in Ireland are equally pertinent elsewhere. The focus of discussion in the existing literature relates to two differing interpretations for this practice, i.e. representing a ritual or a non-ritual motive.

Head to Head: Sacrifice V’s Acoustics. Paul Duffy discusses some differing interpretations for a horse skull deposit at Haynestown, Co. Louth - Irish Archaeological Consultancy

#ireland #archaeology #ritual #medieval #macabre

“it has no parallels in other ancient synagogues.”

Unique Mosaics Found In Ancient Israeli Synagogue May Depict Alexander The Great And Samson

#synagogue #archaeology

Dark Media

Dark media can loosely be divided into three subcategories:

Dead media - The object is no longer in use but we still want or value its effects and properties. For example, gramophones may no longer be in popular use but we still have stereo systems that play music.

Haunted media - The object is currently in use but in a non-normative way. This is particularly relevant to ghost hunting and its relationship with photography; the camera acts as a revealer, able to show things that the human sensorium cannot mediate. Haunted media can also act as portals - for instance the video tape from Ringu - which allow a connection between two different planes of reality - again exceeding the normative bonds of media where we assume that it can only mediate between what we understand as 'the real.'

Weird media - reveal a gulf or gap between the natural and the supernatural (Thacker refers to realities flatly as 'ontological orders.') Here, there is again a portal but no connection. The media reveals the negative, non-communicable invisible around us. Here he references Lovecraft quite heavily but is keen on the fact that the ontological order weird media connects only exists apophatically - eg; 'indescribable, unnatural, unlike anything I've ever seen, inhuman.'

Occasional blog of Tobias Revell: Dark Media

#technophilia

Middle East immigrants began to arrive in northeastern Florida in the 1890s and early 1900s, from countries like Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and what was then Palestine. Many came from the rural Mount Lebanon region between Beirut, Lebanon, and Tripoli, Lebanon. Most were Catholic or Christian Orthodox. The first to arrive worked as fruit peddlers. Within a generation, those same immigrants opened corner stores, often in working-class neighborhoods where Jim Crow laws restricted opportunities for African-Americans and dark-skinned Arabs. In the backs of those stores, they made sandwiches with meats and cheeses that they pulled from the shelves. As chains displaced mom and pop groceries, they transformed their corner stores into sandwich shops that were, in many communities, Arabic analogues to Jewish delis.

In Jacksonville, Camel Rider Sandwiches are Ubiquitous

#floridiana #americana #food studies #arab-american

Texans Spot Another Cube UFO and a Possible Flying Humanoid

#UFO

My siblings and I were not picky eaters. My father would not have picky children. He would give us a bite of food, and not tell us what it was until we were done eating. Then, he would tell us that we had finished eating beef tongue, or pig intestine, or the tiny right wing of a sparrow, or a sea snail, or something without a name that tasted like the bottom of the ocean.

Sizzler and the Search for the American Dream

#food studies #americana #sizzler

“They know me socially but generally have no idea what my status is in the art world. This is a hick town. While he himself hails from the “aristocracy,” he said, “generally speaking it’s a hick world down here.”

William Eggleston: Making a Name, the Southern Way

#american south