Feralfish - Nuggets!

The Hoodie

It was at the same time super comfortable, perfect for the streets, and also had that added value of anonymity when you needed it.

“The always-fascinating Paola Antonelli, architecture and design curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, takes us through the history of the hoodie, “a humble masterpiece” .” [via BoingBoing]

"Oh nuh uh, I am NOT turning off my flashlight just because you heard some lumping crying!"

(via And Now I Need To See A Left 4 Dead 2-Themed Adventure Time Episode)

Friar Park, George Harrison’s home from 1970 to his death in 2001.

The huge 1889 neo-Gothic mansion, with its grottoes, secret passageways, giggling gnomes, sprawling gardens and mysterious and quirky inscriptions, inspired quite a few songs by the former Beatle. Among them “Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)” (1970), a nod to its eccentric former owner; “Ding Dong, Ding Dong” (1974) which contains one of its many inscriptions: “Ring out the old, ring in the new / Ring out the false, ring in the true”; and “The Answer’s at the End” (1975), of which the title and a portion of the lyrics are taken from another one of its engravings: “Scan not a friend with a microscopic glass / You know his faults, now let his foibles pass / Life is one long enigma, my friend / So read on, read on, the answer’s at the end.”

“Flying Hour”, written in 1978, quotes an inscription from Friar Park’s clock tower:

Past is gone, thou canst not that recall

Future is not, may not be at all

Present is, [so] improve the flying hour

Present only is within thy power.

Wise words. Further, the cover of George’s first solo album ALL THINGS MUST PASS (1970) was shot at Friar park, as were the videos for the 1976 songs “Crackerbox Palace” and “True Love”, and I’m sure you’ve seen that bit in THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY of Paul, George and Ringo reminiscing in the garden. For George, the mansion was a treasure trove that kept on giving.

Having grown up in a similar spooky and magical place, also with bits of wisdom scattered throughout (“Fear not about what might happen / For what happens is never what you fear”), I’ve always been fascinated by Friar Park, so much that I visited it in 2011. I took this photo of its gate then (that’s not the house by the way, but one of its lodges):

As former Beatles press agent Derek Taylor wrote about the house: “It is a dream on a hill and it came, not by chance, to the right man at the right time.”

There’s some more to show even, so there will be a follow-up later on.

There are similarities and differences between such figures in reports about Basilides' teaching, ancient Gnostic texts, the larger Greco-Roman magical traditions, and modern magical and esoteric writings. Opinions abound on Abraxas, who in recent centuries has been claimed to be both an Egyptian god and a demon.[3] The Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung wrote a short Gnostic treatise in 1916 called The Seven Sermons to the Dead, which called Abraxas a God higher than the Christian God and Devil, that combines all opposites into one Being. 

wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraxas

Wikileaks rejected a State Department document and demanded that I destroy it.

My uncle worked for the State Department. He died a couple weeks ago. As per State Department policy, whenever one of their higher-ranking employees dies, the Department sends a small team to the home of the deceased to ensure they had no sensitive documents in their possession. It’s not that they distrust their dead colleague – they just don’t trust his family.

The Department team came to my uncle’s house one morning, spent a few hours rifling through his closets and drawers, and left with a small pile of papers. They expressed their condolences for my loss, then left. I never saw them again. Not even at the funeral.

On the night I visited and found him on the floor, dying of a heart attack, he told me something. It’s something I would’ve preferred to have never heard; something that made me wish I’d gotten to his house 20 minutes later to find him dead.

Continue reading.