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February 17, 2006
Three Parts Vulgar, Seven Parts "Wow"*
Have you seen Boris Artzybasheff's illustrations?
(* My rating.)
Posted by michele at 5:45 PM | Comments (2)
February 14, 2006
Old Families, Shiny Things
You can be the most committed republican in the world (I use the label in its original sense, not to indicate GOP sympathies), but then a princess will come along in all her elegance and finery and you'll be as helpless and worshipful as the rest of them. I have been looking at a German presentation of the Russian Imperial Jewels. Oh! The gems themselves are, well, shiny rocks that I can't afford, but the pictures of the women who wore them are spectacular:
Her mother, Ksenia Aleksandrovna. What a wonderful headdress.
Zinaida Yusupova and her pearls. She's breathtaking.
Posted by michele at 1:56 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2006
100% true story
At various points in the night, I was woken up by a man (men?) looking for "Katya".
At 8 am I finally screamed, "Stop calling me!!!" I wondered why he was being so doggedly persistent, as though if he redialed enough times, Katya would eventually appear at the wrong number. I wondered what cruel woman had given him a made-up number.
And then a few minutes ago, another number I didn't recognise showed up on my cell phone.
"Hello. I am replying to your ad on craigslist."
"Uh, what ad?"
"The ad about domination."
"Wrong fucking number!"
So I put two and two together, run to the computer, do a search for "Katya" under Craig's List Erotic Services, and lo and behold: my number is one of two listed in a posting advertising that an "Extreme Russian Dominatrix is Ready to Make You Her Bitch".
THE MINUTE YOU ENETER MY ROOM, I will kick your balls so badly that your eye will get red. Then I will grab you by your small pathetic cock , and will make you scream for mercey.SPECIALTIES INCLUDE BUT NOT LIMITED TO:
-BONDAGE
-COCK AND BALL TORTURE
(ball busting, crushing, cock whipping, cock cruching under my heels, stretching, forsking torture , branding)
I called the other number listed and got a woman with an obviously Russian accent, who denied everything. Well, she knows now that a typo is costing her business, whether or not she wants to admit to it.
Kind of wimpy for an extreme dominatrix, don't you think?
Posted by michele at 3:55 PM | Comments (1)
Simpatichno!
I particularly like the roadwork on the eclair.
Posted by michele at 1:48 AM | Comments (2)
February 11, 2006
Meet Sveta and Olya Olsen
(click to enlarge)
I've developed a new, and slightly pejorative, online game.
1. Go to Paper Doll Heaven.
2. Select your celebrity victim.
3. Using the available wardrobe, construct the Russianest possible outfit.
4. If it's really definitive, send it to me and I'll post it.
Have fun!
Posted by michele at 11:48 PM | Comments (1)
February 10, 2006
Oh, the biting, biting irony of it.
The 'What Language Should You Learn' Quiz tells me that I should learn... Russian.
Posted by michele at 5:10 PM | Comments (1)
February 7, 2006
Baba Yaga Portal
Orson Scott Card notes in Enchantment, "Russian fairy tales were the only ones he'd read that were so grim, even the princess sometimes died." This ties in neatly to one of the traditional Russian fairy tale endings, used in lieu of the more optimistic, "...and they all lived happily after..." In Russia, tales conclude with the sentiment that "they all lived as happily as they could, until they died." In a world with Baba Yaga in it, it seems an apt enough attitude to take.
(Pretty sentiment, but can anyone verify - or quash - this for me?)
(click to enlarge)
A gateway to all (well, a few) things Baba Yaga:
Sur La Lune's modest collection of Ivan Bilibin's unforgettable illustrations - where Art Nouveau meets folk art lacquerware meets the Rider-Waite tarot deck - to Vasilissa the Beautiful, starring Baba Yaga. I read this edition when I was very young and Mr. Bilibin (more on his life and work here) set the impossibly high standards by which I judge and judged children's books.
Helen Pilinovsky gives a wonderful, beautifully-presented two-part study of differences in Russian and Western fairytale conventions (from which my opening quote was taken). Part One is an overview; Part Two ventures into the domain of Baba Yaga.
--
Oh! My mother always talked about wanting to bite my flesh when I was a little girl. Of what deep-down primal urge can Baba Yaga be the personification?
My daughter when you were smallHow I wanted to eat you.
Cast off flesh of my flesh
I wanted to keep you in me,
Digest my fear of losing you as I swallowed
You whole, plumped and roasted.
Can you forgive the way I fretted over the oven
And took the measure of your
Wrists with my worried fingers?
A poet's response to the Baba Yaga myth.
Posted by michele at 5:51 PM | Comments (0)
February 2, 2006
Spy Rock Clearance Sale
(I first came across this piece of landscaping genius in an inflight-shopping catalogue on a Continental flight from San Juan to Newark two weeks ago. Sadly, three and half hours wasn't nearly enough time to absorb all the wonders on offer, from "carpeted mobile pet steps" to help your little runt of a dog up onto your sofa, to a variety of home lie detector machines - a call to arms for suspicious spouses - and a sensory-overload morning alarm system, complete with vibrating pillow attachment, strobe light and some ridiculous number of decibels.
It occurs to me that, minus the pet steps, you've got the ingredients for a spy/interrogation/lite torture package right here.)
Posted by michele at 12:34 PM | Comments (1)
February 1, 2006
Calling this a history of Russia's gay culture seems a bit far-fetched
What makes the Bulla photographs particularly striking, and may cast light on the disappearance of Karl Bulla and the exile of Victor, is the unadulterated campness of many of the works.
The Guardian reports on the uncovering of a lost archive of early 20th century "private albums of photographs for body-conscious men and women" (with emphasis - at least in this article - on the men). Some additional shots from the archive, with a couple of "contemporary reinterpretations", the inclusion of which I don't really understand. (My cynical brain imagines curator Valery Katsuba refusing to release the contents of the archives unless his own work is exhibited alongside it.)
Calling this sort of meathead photography "homoerotic" is like finding lesbian undertones in the Russian woman's stereotypical fondness for uber-girly adornment and exaggerated form (super-pointy shoes, death-defying stilettos, and so on). Can't people just admire physique?
Also: "Muscle Maryas". Russian themes do so invite obviousness, do they not?
Posted by michele at 12:43 AM | Comments (4)