Category Archive: LIFE
Black Lincoln Continental!
(photo c/- Joost J. Bakker)
You can keep your puerile, Ian Fleming-wet dreams about Aston Martins. Stow that yellow Rolls Royce and those Gatsby-roadsters. Forget fleets of pink Cadillacs and MGs in British racing green. My fantasy car is a 1973 Lincoln Continental Mark IV, with a moonroof and ‘opera windows’ (two little oval portholes in the back panels). 460 V-8 engine. Tinted windows; leather and cranberry-red Victoria velour interior. So jet-black that (as Douglas Adams would say) light just falls into it. I don’t care that this hulking beauty may not be so easy to dock in a crowded parking garage. I don’t care that the weight of the ’73 model (4,908…
Continue Reading →Ooops!
"Er...did you say..."Moonlight" or "La La Land"?"
Ah. yes…the Oscars. The Dream Factory. The Virtue-Signalling Citadel. The Selfie Gang-Bang. Trump-Hate Central. But apparently, they screwed it up…called the wrong winner. I thought we were ALL winners? But nooooooooooooo….Not used to working live, we guess.
Continue Reading →TVC Caption Contest # 2
For this contest, we offer “Las Meninas” by the sublime Spanish painter (and legendary snob) Diego Velázquez (1656) hung at Museo del Prado, Madrid. Please send us your suggested caption. Some inspiration may be drawn from our review of a book dedicated to the meaning of this royal Spanish domestic scene… The best three selections will receive prominent publication (with attribution, or anonymously if you prefer) and a unique TVC artefact!. You will need to send us your email address and postal address (no, we will not publish those and we do not spam).. T’s and C’s: The Varnished Culture is Marshall Tito in…
Continue Reading →A Hung Jury on Global Warming?
"What did South Australians use before Tom gave them candles? Electricity."
16 February 2017. Twelve years to the day since ‘implementation’ of the Kyoto Protocol.* You and I sit in a jury box. We have only just met. We bring to our mutual task our life experience and understanding of the ways of the world, our endogenous prejudices, and our gut feelings. The Judge sends us into our room charged to answer whether we are amid an interglacial, or, rather, is the globe warming – are anthropogenic CO2 emissions causing or contributing to this warming – and does this pose a clear and imminent danger, on the balance of probabilities? So we…
Continue Reading →My Funny Valentine
'It's a nice place for a picnic..."
Saint Valentine’s Day, February 14 David Farmer, in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, suggests there were actually two Valentines martyred in the 3rd century AD at Rome, so it is possible they were one and the same. He writes: “Neither of them seems to have any clear connection with lovers or courting couples. The reason for this famous patronage is that birds are supposed to pair on 14 February, a belief at least as old as Chaucer…” One Valentine rests in a Rome reliquary, where they thoughtfully labelled his scone: Santa Maria in Cosmedin is also famous for Bocca della…
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