History: America’s Dust Bowl
Reproduced with permission from the neOnbubble Learn You Some History series of student learning guides. This is a concise guide to the 1930s’ Dust Bowl that occurred on the prairies of America using photographs from the Library of Congress. America faced a problem in the 1930s. The Great Depression meant that average people couldn’t afford to buy foodstuffs that were grown by farmers throughout the states of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, and Colorado. This in turn left the farmers with a surplus of crops but no means of selling enough to pay for the luxuries to which they’d become accustomed: champagne, personal dirigibles, butlers, etc. Insanity threatened the farmers’ existence and some took to synchronised vegetable-picking much to the embarrassment of the wider American public. An ingenious plan was enacted by Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace to encourage farmers to grow a different sort of crop, one that would be free to the people of America and would give the unemployed something to do. That crop was dust. The idea was that by distributing dust freely people would be obliged to clean up a bit more giving them essential training for farmers’ butler and maid roles when the economy picked up. The farmers would be compensated for the new crop from federal coffers. Roy Kimmel of Texas coordinated the efforts. Prairie farmers quickly adapted their land to grow the new dust, often producing far more than they could reasonably store in sheds. New farming techniques needed to be learnt too. Tractors and dirigible-drawn ploughs were of no use in dust farming, the work requiring more manual labour. Farmers needed to wait for the right height of dust build-up before harvesting which led to booming business for the Oklahoma Measuring Stick Company, one of the few success stories of that period in America’s history. Dust distribution was highly successful, managing to blot out the sun when released in storms and culminating in huge amounts of cleaning throughout much of the midwest of America. The area soon became known as the Dust Bowl. Despite the apparent successes, however, it emerged in 1935 that there was a serious side effect to the dust crop. Physical disabilities of the young started to increase within the affected regions. In particular, Cranium Gigantism emerged mostly in boys leading to the adoption of oversized headwear. Dust Bowl farmers were reluctant to alter their farming techniques again even with the removal of the subsidy. The American government was forced to intervene in late 1937 and used its weather machine located in St Louis to drench the area and destroy the remaining crops. The production of so...
Fashion Faves – Rosie Tupper
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a fashion photoshoot that didn’t bore me to tears. I’m not sure whether there’s a feud going on between the style magazines and the fashion photographers but the two need to get together and up their combined game if they want to impress me. And I know that’s high on their list of things to do. However, I have just stumbled on (via Fashion Copious) this shoot by Nicole Bentley for Marie Claire Australia‘s May 2014 issue. Titled The Artist’s Muse it features model Rosie Tupper with styling, makeup, and hair by Jana Pokorny, Victoria Baron, and Koh respectively. I like this shot as it clearly brings across the feeling of snuggling up to an Ent for a picnic which I think is what Nicole was trying to convey. Rosie does an admirable job of looking content and protected which she would be being that close to an Ent. They’re very protective, especially if you’re a tree or possibly doused in something wood-smelling. I imagine Rosie rubbed a pine car freshener over herself for this picture. Here, Rosie’s demonstrating stroppiness which, quite frankly, I don’t think you see enough of in fashion photography shoots. Rosie is clearly stroppy at her Ent who has helped to douse the flames of Isengard and ended up flooding everything. Do you know a fashion model who likes to wear waders? Exactly! You’d be stroppy too. And now remorse from Rosie in this final shot. Rosie is regretting getting stroppy at her Ent. The first rule of Ent relationships is you don’t get stroppy with your Ent. You should see rule six; it’s equally odd. Rosie sits beside the window looking out across the flooded plains wondering if her Ent is ever going to return. She’s even dressed as a meadow to entice him back not realising that Ents are only really into...
A Visit To Old Angelfire
In the olden days when the internet was young there rose from its vast sea glittering towers, home to people from far and wide, places where strangers could form communities and friendships. These towers had strange, exotic names like Tripod or Geocities or Angelfire. Tiled backgrounds and animated graphics were almost mandatory. Marquee text was currency. Lime green Times New Roman text was the status symbol of choice. Mostly. They weren’t pretty to look at is what I’m saying. The internet grew up and the towers shut their doors as the people built their own homes elsewhere. Some of them relocated. But some of the old towers remained. They were boarded up, uncared for, covered in graffiti, and smelled of wee, but they stayed standing, entombing memories of their past within. And it’s still possible to take a look around if you know how. I know how and I’ve just had a wander around old Angelfire for old times’ sake. It’s an old man with his cock in his hand (snigger). It’s actually from this page on Argentinian combat chickens. And I can finally remove “Argentinian combat chickens” from my list of phrases to publish on the web. What you’re looking at above – via this page (tiled background ahoy!) – is a screenshot of the VPlaces software running on Excite Talk, the virtual chatroom that I spent an awful lot of time on in the late 1990s. I loved that software. I loved the modified DLLs that you could download that made your avatar twice the size or gave you the ability to empty rooms or enter them even if they were full. I loved that it used the Visual Basic 4 runtime. Ah, memories. Okay, now this was a surprise because it’s, well, it’s quite good. I know. By Neena Bickram in 1998 this comes from a page titled The Tale of the Parking Meter God. It’s a photo story, it’s not a long read, but it’s well done. Go and read it. And when you’ve done that check out Neena’s Angelfire site more fully. Expect ponies. Expect fantasy. A fan-made desktop wallpaper of Keira Knightley and there are plenty more if your eyes can stand it on this page. The original image was 800 by 600 pixels in size. Can you imagine a desktop with that resolution now? It’s terrifying isn’t it. Parties were better in the days of Angelfire as this picture demonstrates. More party pictures from Paul “Gumby” Trusten are here in case you want to live the hedonism of alcohol and vest-wearing vicariously through them. A superheroine in bondage? Oh my! Yes, it’s...
Animated GIFs
A lot of the time animated GIFs leave me cold; I think they’re pointless and irritating. But sometimes I see one and think “yeah, that’s pointless and irritating but it’s also got something else, something captivating, something indescribable, something gah! about it.” This is especially true if the animation looks like it was pulled straight from a VHS tape. Here are some animated GIFs that made me think that very thing from a recent perusal through my RSS feeds. I think it would be difficult to come up with any situation when they might be useful for illustrating some point now or in the future, and it’s equally difficult to know what possessed someone to turn them into GIFs in the first place. But someone did and for that I’m thankful. Sort...
UFOs And The Nation Of Islam
There are a lot of religions out there which is pretty strange if you’re an adherent to one that purports to proclaim the one and only truth with the one and only all-powerful creator at its midst. And because there are a lot of religions it’s not particularly feasible for anyone to keep track of them all so sometimes it comes as a bit of surprise to learn about a new one or learn some new fact about the practices of one you’d not been aware of before. So it is with the Nation of Islam, a religious movement I’d only really heard about through exposure to hip hop music, pictures of Louis Farrakhan, and Brother Mouzone from The Wire. I guess my assumption about the group was that they dressed well, spoke well, had a fondness for bow ties, and listened to Public Enemy; overall, a minor and perhaps eccentric branch of Islam, US-centric, with some unsavoury views of the world if Professor Griff was typical of the group members. Today, though, through one of my Google Alerts I learned something else about the Nation of Islam: its patriarch, Elijah Muhammed, apparently met God (which is nice) and God showed him his UFOs(*). This comes courtesy of this article written by Safiyyah Muhammad: Hollywood and the portrayal of UFOs. Another religious movement that features UFOs. Ah, that’s just wonderful. Of course, it’s easy to roll your eyes and mutter “really?” under your breath but when you think about it at least there’s some microscopic thread that attaches a UFO-based cult to reality (no, I’m not advocating anything put forward on Ancient Aliens). The same can’t be said for deities appearing as animals or bushes or swiftly covering planets in water as part of a benevolent genocide, to name but a few preposterous events. The aforementioned article isn’t a great read but by all means give it a go if you want to learn how much money Independence Day grossed at the box office and whether Minister Farrakhan’s favourite sci-fi movie is The Day The Earth Stood Still or Plan 9 From Outer Space(**). So what do we know about these UFOs and what evidence do we have for them? I’ll answer that latter question first with an interpretive dance that involves rolling on the floor and convulsing with mimed laughter, holding my sides tightly, and then leaping up to perform a move reminiscent of a Whirling Dervish at full speed in order to symbolise my innards spilling out in all directions, unable to remain within the confines of my body any longer as the muscles and tissue gives...
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